Who Wants a 3D Scanner, Anyway?

splineboy asks: "In June 2002 a sun-starved computer engineer walked into a small room armed with an old PC, a 20 year-old video camera, some lasers, glass rods and an awful lot of duct tape. His mission was to create a program capable of converting a real world object into a computer model that could be manipulated, stored and eventually reproduced using stereolithography. After several hours of gluing, taping and generally walloping things with a hammer, Project Splinescan was born. Originally running on a batterd old machine (AMD-500), the prototype scanner proved the concept of low cost 3D scanning with a few rough scans. Now that a stable, multi-platform 3D scanning solution is on the horizon (even high school kids are building their own) - a question rings clear through the ether: 'OK, you proved you can make it work, but what's it good for?'" "What are the potential uses of a portable, low cost 3D scanner? Medical? Animation? Special Effects? Archeology? Ceramics? Lego Modelling? I've got my ideas about why 3D scanning seems to be getting so popular, but how would you like to see these projects developed in the future?"

Comments

blueprints

[PapaZit]

Quantapoint uses a similar (but much more developed) system to generate blueprint for buildings.

Film Industry

[Zimok]

LOTR used this technique alot, to scan molds of armor and the orcs used in CG art.. ect

Shadow scanning

[ggambett]

There's an even easier and simpler alternative that doesn't even use lasers... nothing but a lamp and a ruler! http://www.vision.caltech.edu/bouguetj/ICCV98/

The results are remarkably good for such a simple setup.