Look Ma! no lasers (3d scanning via webcam)

[PEU]

I just found this video at engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/23/cambridges-proforma-does-3d-scanning-with-any-stationary-webcam/
it amazed me how simple they made the 3d scanning with just a webcam, I hope they release this in an usable software soon

[domino11]

Pablo have you seen The David Laser Scanner Site? (http://www.david-laserscanner.com/)

[PEU]

yes, long time ago, but this one uses no lasers at all, that whats triggered my interest

[riesvantwisk]

There are also some projects that use a Video Projector to project a phase pattern on a image. This also seems to work quite nice.

The technique is called : Structured Light 3D Scanning

Here is a link : http://mesh.brown.edu/byo3d/source.html

I have seen some open source projects around this aswell, but couldn't find the links anymore :(

I do wonder with the project shown above on edgadget how well the system is capable of analyzing and digitizing curves, round objects so the speak...

Ries

[normand blais]

3D scanning from pictures ,output .PLY files
http://www.my3dscanner.com/

[Robert M]

Hey Norm…. Guys !
Have you seen this one too : PhotoSculp (http://www.photosculpt.net/)?
Robert ;)

[MetalHead]

Wow - I am amazed at where graphics has progressed to in the last few years.

[pav180]

Normand,

I checked www.my3dscanner.com and their output is .ply, but it is not polygon format. It is a point cloud. One needs to make an effort to build a mesh. I made a trial with my simple Canon camera and it works not bad at all, but the scan needs to be rendered and polygonized. It is free service which is good. I will continue experimenting to see if there is any practical use of it. This would be great to make 3D copies of objects on a go without asking anybody's permission.

I have also tried "new" PhotoSculpt. They have become commercial big time since I checked them last time but I cannt use just textures it in a real world. I guess they still haven't figured out how to kill photodistortion. Maybe I am stupid. But the site very professional, MetalHead is very right.

Meanwhile there is free service which uses 2 stereoscopic images to build a model http://www.scanetica.com.au/Default.aspx

All these services are different. The stereo guys need not more than 2 photos, my3dscanner needs at least 3 photographs. I am still trying to find out which one is more practical.

[PEU]

Very Cool Paul

Here is my face in 3D, kinda creepy seeing me rendered this way, but very accurate:

http://peu.net/temp/peu.swf

[normand blais]

Very good from some picture .You could machine your face . Paul you can try meshlab to convert pointcloud to mesh stl or obj. free too! http://meshlab.sourceforge.net/

[Robert M]

Hey Amigo….
In my point of view, the real creepy part is when we pan over 90°…..empty :eek:
I Know you better then this….
Robert :D

[pav180]

Normand,

Thanks for a hint. I tried my3dscanner.com with a set of old 10 photos from Paris and then I meshed them in MeshLab. It was not great because of the scanning noise which I could not figure out how get rid of..

Then I cheated and downloaded 500 MB Geomagic trial (it is 15K priced I guess) and this is what I got:
Photos -> Point Cloud -> Mesh .stl (in blue). It looks that the devil is in in details, i.e. in post-processing, not scanning. I could be wrong.

I've got a scan which is too dense for me, there are too many polys. It is nice to scan with your camera, but I am still looking for a practical use of all these "easy" scanning technologies.

[Kobus_Joubert]

Vectric Aspire has some tools to SMOOTH that noise very easily.

[PEU]

Hey Amigo….
In my point of view, the real creepy part is when we pan over 90°…..empty :eek:
I Know you better then this….
Robert :D

you discovered my secret, I have no brains :eek: :D

[normand blais]

Look Ma! no laser, no brain.
It could be deceiving some time with those 3d with picture apply to the mesh .The picture has lot of details ,the mesh not so much.It is an illusion .Smooting wont help, it already lack details.

[PEU]

I think what they may do is to apply the image on a somewhat predefined skull, thats why the mesh is not that good compared to the 3d image

[pav180]

Normand and Pablo,

It is very true that texturized mesh can be very deceiving and misleading. This is why I did not use it.
There is a snapshot of a point cloud (2nd image) with vertex color and oriented normals (it makes the point cloud look better, you are right. It is not texturized as there is no mesh yet).
Mesh (3rd image) has no texture on it, but I made edges be displayed. I had to decimate the model from 250K to 70K just to display it, and the quality of the original mesh had detiriorated.
I am not saying I am too happy with the model. It was noisy and smothing had killed details - you are right again on this.
To tell you the truth, I still cannt figure out if the scanning itself was good or not. Let me experiment further, but thank you and other people for friendly help.

[pav180]

I keep experimenting. This is just one of the projects.

[Allegheny]

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/37021/?nlid=4264&a=f

Sounds early in the process/development, but looks to have promise.

Brian
Taxachusetts

[pav180]

Allegheny, thanks a lot for an interesting lead, but it is just another Photosynth made with mobile phones. What else can you expect from Microsoft? It is not bad for visualization as it forges images together, but it has nothing to do with true 3D surface reconstruction (scanning) which would enable 3D reverse engineering and manufacturing.

The result must be at least .stl but much better if it’s .step or .iges. What you get from even mobile Photosynth is either jpegs or a sparse .ply point cloud. What is the use of it other than house insurance or chatting with friends? Can you download the model to your machine?

[PEU]

This is new from autodesk: http://labs.autodesk.com/utilities/photo_scene_editor/ they will release photofly version 2.0 next week

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9jU-VUBhSQ

[Robert M]

Thanks for sharing Amigo….sometime…in this time pressing age…..we can’t see all…..amazing, promising stuff….
Later, Robert ;)

[fabrun]

Some interesting link
http://www.3dsom.com/
http://davidleonardtv.wordpress.com/2011/02/02/turn-kinect-into-3d-scanner-explained-full-tutorial-with-code/
http://www.technologie-innovation.fr/kinect-de-microsoft-devient-un-scanner-3d

[AuS MaDDoG]

Vectric and an X-Box Kinetic!!

http://www.vectric.com/WebSite/Vectric/news_announcements/2011-vectric-maker-faire.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Vectric+Newsletter+-+Issue+18+-+May+2011&utm_content=Vectric+Newsletter+-+Issue+18+-+May+2011+CID_65c2840ce705aa3b933115bd95f4c1da&utm_source=Campaign+Monitor+Jan+11&utm_term=Read+More

Cheers
Tony.

[KenC]

Thanks Tony, the X-Box Kinetic rig is fascinating!