while I mainly have experience with laser scanners starting at 5 or 10k
this seems to be an interesting tool. the gallery shows some quite impressive
scans and you can by hand move the laser scanner and thus do not need
to rotate the object.
for 200 bucks not a bad idea.
however I am curious if anybody maybe used it already. Does it hold what they
claim?
I succsessfully used the demo version with nothing more than a laser level from the pound shop a few months back.
I cant remember the name of the software I used to skin the point cloud, as that feature is disabled in the demo version. It could well have been Mesh Factory.
As a test I scaned an egg box. Also my webcam that I used is very low resiloution. 640x640. So I would expect the comersial version with a decent laser and camera to produce exelent results.
I will find the pic if I can.
After I got my 3rd laser (paid only 1) I finally got one with a line thats somewhat close to 1mm. So no real scanning with high detail.
You also got to manufacture a pretty decent “pattern holder” for the camera alignment, if it is wonky a bit, the scans get fugly.
It also very much depends on how you move the laser, I got myself one of those pullback kitchentimers and mounted the laser on it. You pull it back and wait for 15 minutes which is a 90° sweep
But very feral.
So it is a nice dirty solution, but it requires some DIY assembling the scanstation.
Also you get no textures for scanning. And if you got anything that mirrors or is black it´s about to fail.
A green laser would be better, but the better the laser the more expensive it gets. And if you build a nice rig yourself you´r at 600-1000 euro quickly.
I never went on with the scanning because at home I had no room for the rig, and with the low quality output from the demo its no fun ^^
Maybe I´ll pick it up again, but I barely need it, so.
And I literally searched 4 times here for it.
Type in David and you will not find this thread you posted.
Sometimes I ask myself about the search engine here.
I have done a small test with David 3D (http://vimeo.com/15231447) and I was quite happy knowing that my setup was really thrown together. With better conditions, changing some of my hardware or tweaking the parameters I certainly would get better results.
The best quality i’ve had was when using an old analog camera connected to the PC via TVCapture card. The picture quality is pretty good there, and you get a little more resolution out of PAL (720x576 instead of the standard 640x480). Also adjusting the camera exposure (if possible) is great help for making it see only the laser.
Another thing to have in mind is that sometimes you’re better off turning the camera at 90 degrees so that you get more of the object to fit the camera.
Slow and steady laser sweeps work much better than fast ones (because of the camera’s framerate). You need something that will sweep the laser very slowly. If you have some kind of precisely timed automatic “sweeping mechanism” you can try scanning without the calibration panels. What you do then is you sweep the calibration panel once, then remove it and repeat the exact same motion again. I think it’s possible to scan really large stuff that way, but i haven’t tried it.
I think that the search engine looks in the tags and thread titles, it doesn´t really parse all texts unless told implicit. My guess is, it matches the searchterm in the tagcloud and the titles and if you got a hit it parses the text for highlighting. If every search would parse all posts word by word the server would vomit
Jein.
I didn´t pursue it further, in my old flat wasn´t really enough room , but I got a new one and who knows maybe one day I´ll pick it up again. But it is troublesome to find time for it. One only has so much sparetime left and you can´t do all at once
And I tried Insight 3D it works really nice, but it is a PITA to handle, also not a very active project, I think the guy hacking it is pretty much alone.
Grape3D looks intresting though, personally I like turtables more than merging scanned shells together. And in the end the theory behind it is the same…
What I think is are the advantage of turntables, you can scan the texture along with the scanpass, you got no shells to merge and a steady pass. However you run into problems with strange shaped objects that would require a topscan or bottomscan to catch it all or get cavities.
But the trouble isn´t really the scanner, it is the software.
But real problem stays there.
So you managed to have a great 3d model via scanning. Now you need to do some more sculpting there.
How will you retopo this? Using blender? Or ‘remesh’ and ‘project all’ in zbrush?
These figures for animation, with hands like a cross and legs like…, this wont be your case.
I mean, a dynamic free from topology sculpting solution and a nice tool for re-topology is what you’re asking for. Most of you. Especially the second. @cekuhnen , besides re-topology I also found a great solution for your other quest, UV mapping -not stretched. In the same app.
You use a robot for the laser movement - you would not suggest using the hand for that?
I think it is possible but I have found that - as pesho stated - slow and steady laser sweeps works best. It is really a cheap and easy setup to be honest. Just an arduino board (http://www.arduino.cc/ - and mine is a cheaper clone as the arduino design is open source) and a cheap servo (http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.20087 ) that I bought on dealextreme. The laser is even connected to the servo by a rubber band, it is really low budget and thrown together
In the future I’m planning to try it again but then I will opt for a Logitech Quickam Pro 9000 or another HD webcam, now I’m using the PS3 eye cam. I also found the movement of my servo quit jerky so I may also replace the servo with a cheap steppenmotor (I think the correct english word is brushless motor !? ) which is also cheaply available on dealextreme or ebay.
If you really do so, I suggest to buy a external powered green laser, it is worth the extra money.
You´ll not be happy with the red battery powered ones, the lines are just too thick and it is not as intensive making it hard to scan darker things.
And a lot depends on your camera, the more settings you got the better you can adjust it to have maximum contrast between the dark and the laserline.