Hobbyist level 3D scanner
January 29, 2016 3:49 PM   Subscribe

I'm looking for a cheap or DIY 3D scanner just for hobby/fun purposes. Has anyone used or can anyone vouch for a decent one?

I'm looking to scan in a few 5 to 7 inch sculptures and objects and get out a 3d model file.
I don't need a full color texture capture. It would be a plus if the scanner could capture 360 degrees around an object in one "pass".
I have the know how to do file conversions and touch-ups in 3d after it's scanned in so that's no issue (unless the scan's so poor it takes hours to fix :) ).

These are the 4 I've been looking at:
Laser-line scanners: MakerScanner (I have 2 PS3 eye cameras) and Sardauscan
Camera-only scanners: Autodesk Memento (123D Catch's big brother)and VisualSFM

Are there any decent options that I'm missing out on? Are there any you've used that have worked well?
posted by Chicoreus to Technology (12 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've seen good results from the combination Kinect + turntable.
posted by Too-Ticky at 3:53 PM on January 29, 2016


Still photos + Autodesk 1-2-3D Catch?
posted by Alterscape at 4:13 PM on January 29, 2016


I've seen good results from the combination Kinect + turntable.

Link or software recommendation? I'm interested in this too.

I've had... OK results, with something called "David Laser Scanner" but when I go to their actual pages it's a product page for a structure light scanner, so maybe they dumped their DIY stuff in favor of some actual products.

I've tried a few kinect things with mixed results but it was a few years ago.
posted by RustyBrooks at 5:01 PM on January 29, 2016


I am not sure how practical it is, but I have always liked Friedrich's milk scanner.
posted by phil at 6:00 PM on January 29, 2016 [1 favorite]


That's a fairly interesting take on an old kind of destructive test I used to see. In the old one you put the thing you want to scan in a box. You fill the box up with black epoxy. You use a CNC machine or something like it to cut a fixed increment off the top, and take a picture. You take off another increment and take a picture. You end up with a set of "slices", where the black part is empty space and the non-black part is part of your object. If you have a lot of time and don't mind losing your object, you can get very high quality results.
posted by RustyBrooks at 6:05 PM on January 29, 2016


I've been playing with Agisoft PhotoScan. It seems fairly effective though I've been using it with buildings, not sculptures.
posted by BungaDunga at 6:54 PM on January 29, 2016


Seconding Photoscan -- I use it at work, I just didn't namedrop it here because I understand the license is pretty expensive for an individual (but maybe that's the pro license)?
posted by Alterscape at 8:32 PM on January 29, 2016


The Standard license is $179 (an order of magnitude cheaper than the Professional one) and it looks like it should do for the poster's purposes.
posted by BungaDunga at 11:03 PM on January 29, 2016


Sorry, I don't have any information regarding the software that was used with the Kinect.
posted by Too-Ticky at 1:48 AM on January 30, 2016


Response by poster: RustyBrooks: Yeah, the David Scanner ditched ALL of their free programs and DIY stuff : (
The Kinect turntable might be this or Kscan3d or Scanect. Unfortunately, for my purposes the Kinect scans always look just a bit too lumpy untextured which means tons of cleanup.

Phil: That milk scanner is so cool!

I'll probably do a test run with camera images from my cell phone camera and one of Autodesk's free products and see how it goes.
posted by Chicoreus at 11:04 AM on January 30, 2016


I agree that the Kinect scans are not great. I had always hoped someone would figure out a way to improve that via multiple scans but I never saw anything great. It was especially not great with small stuff. The nicest thing about the DAVID laser scanner was that it was scale invariant. You printed a special background, but that background could be of any scale you liked from a few inches to 10 feet. I got semi-lumpy results out of that too, however, I was using a very bad/coarse laser and a not very good camera.

I will try that Agisoft thing - they have a 30 day trial and $200ish isn't bad if it works.
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:48 PM on January 30, 2016


What about the Sense 3d scanner? I haven't used it, but it looks decent.
posted by dhruva at 5:26 PM on January 30, 2016


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