by Corey Wormack
Every year our home has three young athletes who are awarded standard trophies at the end of each season. With the advances in technology we thought maybe 3D scanning and printing could offer a more personalized, memorable solution, but what type of system to use? To the internet, and after a lot of research, trial & error, and with the timely release of ReconstructMe version 2, we decided to build our solution around their software.
The new version allows us to 3d scan a person in color adding a new level of realism and allowing the final product to really stand out! After many hours and several different outfit changes, for the whole family, we developed a pretty efficient workflow and were ready for prime time! Our first chance to apply what we had learned in public was at a very large regional volleyball tournament.
We arrived the night prior to the tournament and tested our system in the large convention center lighting. Yeah – it worked! We were now ready for the hordes of sports fans to purchase our amazing piece of memorabilia. What we had not realized was that it would take customers a little while to warm up to the idea that they could have a “minime” of themselves with 3d scanning. Comments from “cool” to “creepy” with everything in between, but by the end of the show we had sales.
So how did we configure our system? We had a laptop with an NVidia Quadro 3000M video card, Asus XTION Pro Live sensor, a modified manual turntable based on Fredini’s design, and a tripod.
Why were we successful? The ReconstructMe UI allowed people to see the process in real-time and as it quickly displayed the scan data. The fluorescent lighting only required some quick post processing cleanup of our captures. The final products were then sent into Sculpteo for color printing.
Where do we go from here? We look forward to the next version of ReconstructMe which allows the user to create great 3D print ready busts like the 180 displayed on the ReconstructMe website. This will simplify our work flow and allow us to have consistent results.
