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Minolta 3D Camera

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the neat-toys dept.

Bookwyrm writes "This was just an interesting technology toy/tidbit I ran across. Metacreations and Minolta have teamed together to develop what appears to be a modified digital camera that allows you to take '3D' images. The camera stores/digitizes the image data in such a way that Metacreations' software can (re)construct a 3D model of objects in the picture along with their textures. While mildly neat in itself, it would be interesting to consider how far you could develop this technology. Could you do real-time 3D capture using a video camera with these techniques (and sufficient computer power)?"

4 of 150 comments (clear)

  1. Re:3D extraction from video by chialea · · Score: 4

    NASA does it too. the mars rover Marsokhod has steroscopic vision, and some very nice SGI's make 3d models out of it that you can move Sojourner and other rovers around in...

    Lea

  2. Re:Is there gonna be any Linux support? by Rombuu · · Score: 4

    I don't use windows much, and not at all at home. So this new "technology" isn't of much use to me.

    Who cares what operating system you use? You think /. should not have any stories about stuff that won't run on your damn computer?

    Get over yourself.

    --

    DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
  3. 3D extraction from video by Animats · · Score: 5
    3D depth extraction can be done in real time. See Point Grey. [Their site's down today; I hope they didn't go out of business.] They build a nice hardware/software system with three cameras arranged in a triangle. Three-camera stereo works much better than two-camera; most of the ambiguous cases go away. Their hardware is overpriced and their software is closed-source, but maybe somebody will deal with that. The algorithm isn't that complicated, but it's really expensive computationally. Their first implementation used a DSP, a hardware convolver chip, and a Transputer, but they've since moved to more standard hardware

    Canoma is a re-implementation of some work done at U.C. Berkeley in the mid-90s. The Berkeley group liked to do big things like buildings, and modelled the central part of the Berkeley campus. They got their aerial photographs using a camera on a kite; there's an architecture prof at Berkeley who's developed good techniques for doing this. Much cheaper than a helicopter.

    Both Canoma and Metaflash are semi-automatic systems. The user has to manually identify corresponding points and edges between multiple images. This can be a lot of work. One more generation and somebody will have this fully automated.

  4. Read the small print guys by Kon · · Score: 5

    It has a range of 90cm. At 20cm it has a accuracy discrepancy of 1mm. At 90cm it is probably close to 1cm. It can't take pictures of areas larger than 90cm distance.

    The screenshots neatly show reconstruction of a simple piece of pottery. Jesus, but if that isn't the simplest 3d object then I must be smoking something.

    You'll get better stereoscopic results taping two $14 disposable cameras together! (I've done it, it works, just get the focal distance right).

    Another example of useless technology. And I cringe at all the thousands of useless vertices this solution will create in 3d models. No thanks!

    Oh, and note the accuracy discrepancy of 1mm is from a photo of a ping pong ball. Like we all need pictures of perfect round circles :P