The messyness of the moddels would depend on how well the photographic images were, and on how well they were taken.
The benefit is that with enough good photos the model-making is automatically done. Even lighting on the subject is preferable, but lots of models we see in games have less than perfect skins.
I'm sure this kind of technology will be of use to the gaming world before too long.
Natural lighting doesn't have to be a problem: