A process for graphically guiding a user of a capture device (e.g., smartphone) to more accurately and completely capture a series of ground-level images of a building. Ground-level images are captured as the picture taker moves around the building—taking a plurality (e.g., 4-16 for an entire building) of ground level images from multiple angles and/or distances. The series of captured ground level images may be uploaded to an image processing system to create a 3D building model and returned to the user or processed locally. The returned 3D building model may incorporate scaled measurements of building architectural elements and may include a dataset of measurements for one or more architectural elements such as siding (e.g., aluminum, vinyl, wood, brick and/or paint), windows or doors.