CMU School of Drama


Saturday, March 08, 2014

An Affordable Full Body Studio Grade 3D Scanner

hackaday.com: Looking for a professional 3D scanning setup for all your animation or simulation needs? With this impressive 3D scanning setup from the folks over at [Artanim], you’ll be doing Matrix limbos in no time! They’ve taken 64 Canon Powershot A1400 cameras to create eight portable “scanning poles” set up in a circle to take 3D images of, well, pretty much anything you can fit in between them!

7 comments:

rmarkowi said...

I've enjoyed watching these large 3d scanners being developed. I remember watching the Mythbusters (I think) doing a special with a similar setup to this, but this particular setup is the first one I've seen with this resolution. Well that's not entirely true, there are systems which much higher res, but they are all so expensive! I would love to make an array like this, and see how fine you can get with these arrays and what you can do software-wise to make 3-d models and such.

simone.zwaren said...

I am really curious to see how this 3D scanner will effect the world of gaming and animation. As of right now video games seems to be getting to look more and more realistic, but the actual movement of the characters is still pretty stiff. I wonder how scary realistic these games will get. And then how will this translate into the movie industry. Movies like the Matrix can be taken to an entirely new level, how exciting.

simone.zwaren said...

I am really curious to see how this 3D scanner will effect the world of gaming and animation. As of right now video games seems to be getting to look more and more realistic, but the actual movement of the characters is still pretty stiff. I wonder how scary realistic these games will get. And then how will this translate into the movie industry. Movies like the Matrix can be taken to an entirely new level, how exciting.

Camille Rohrlich said...

Like Simone, I wonder how this technology will affect visual media, more specifically film. This summer I saw a movie set a few years in the future where big-name actors were now being scanned by studios, and entire movies and TV series were being put together on computers using the actors' scans. I walked out feeling weird, because it seemed so unrealistic yet I know that we are already developing the technology to make those kinds of things happen.

Keith Kelly said...

This 3D scanner is very intriguing and I wonder how effectively it works. The article makes the device sound very effective, but its difficult to tell based on the pictures provided. This device could change the way in which video games are created. I think currently that this technology wouldn't be fast enough to capture fluid movements and process them into a video game model. I'm also curious to see how this technology could be used for fashion. I would be cool to see a fashion designer's line scanner and transformed into a digital collection that users could view online or on iPads while watching the show.

Unknown said...

My first and immediate thought of course went to the applications to the video game world. I think this could definitely be used in a multitude of applications in that industry from capturing motion to just getting an accurate depiction of the human body. Other than the video game world, I also think that, like Keith, this could potentially be used in the fashion world as well to digitalize models with a designer's work on them.

Unknown said...

3D Scanning and movement recording have been around for a while, it hasn't really been a cheap tool, but it has been around. This seems like the next step in making it more affordable, and as it gets more affordable, applied in more areas and industries. For example, I know the video game industry has been using this and other similar technologies to capture and create movement templates for games. However, it'll be interesting seeing the scanning part of this technology for capturing and digitizing things we see as opposed to just movements. Personally, I think the system will be fast enough to capture most movements and not appear stiff/clunky. That being said, there will always be improvements that can be made. I do wonder how much more realistic we can get in some games, since many of them (especially sports ones), already look very realistic.