Make sure your sensor is connected to the computer. In case your sensor requires an external power supply, also ensure the adapter is plugged-in. In the Windows device manager check if your device is listed and marked as functioning correctly. Ensure that you have the latest sensor drivers installed.

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The following table sums up the minimum hardware requirements and provides links to update necessary vendor specific drivers.

CPU	Intel Core 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom X3 8750 processor or better, 2GB of RAM
Video Card	ATI Radeon HD 5700 or NVIDIA Geforce GT 240 or better Update Driver NVIDIA, AMD, INTEL
Sensor Type	ASUS Xtion Family or PrimeSense Carmine Family or Microsoft Kinect family Update Driver ASUS Xtion, PrimeSense, Microsoft Kinect
OS	Windows XP / Vista / 7 / 8

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ReconstructMe already supports a variety of commodity 3D cameras and we are working hard on integrating new and exotic ones as soon as we take notice of them. We felt it is about time to put details into perspective. Therefore we are kicking off a camera review series to cover sensor specifications, installation instructions and more.

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Please refer to this FAQ entry.

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ReconstructMe performs most of its operations directly on the GPU. ReconstructMe utilizes OpenCL to communicate with your device. Therefore, ReconstructMe supports all graphic cards that support OpenCL.

Please consult your vendor specifications to ensure that your GPU is compatible with ReconstructMe. Usually all decent cards from NVIDIA, AMD or INTEL are supported. Note that OpenCL is not limited to graphic cards but can work with any accelerator device, such as CPUs. Most vendors offer OpenCL drivers for their CPUs as well.

Make sure to install the latest driver before running ReconstructMe.

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Please refer to this FAQ entry.

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1. Download ReconstructMe installer from our frontpage.
2. Start the installer. The ReconstructMe setup window pops up. Click on Next to proceed with the installation.
   
3. Read the terms of service and accept them by ticking the checkbox underneath the License Agreement. Click Next to proceed with the installation.
   
4. Select the directory in which you want to install ReconstructMe. Click Next to proceed with the installation.
   
5. Click on Install to start the setup.
   
6. You may have to grant administrator rights to the setup by clicking yes on the popup-window.
   After that the setup will start.
7. Wait for the installation to finish.
   
8. ReconstructMe is now installed. Click the Finish-button to exit the window and proceed with the setup of the drivers for your sensor.
   

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OpenCL.dll provides the language ReconstructMe uses to communicate with your graphics card. OpenCL.dll is usually being installed by your display driver. Older display drivers, however, do not support OpenCL.dll. Therefore, please update your display driver and note that your graphics card needs to support OpenCL (which most decent graphics cards do) to run ReconstructMe.

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No, a license will not effect reconstruction performance. Instead, please check if your system has a powerful graphics card inside. If you have a powerful graphics card, try to update your display driver and make sure that ReconstructMe uses the correct device.

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If you need to replace only single hardware components of your computer, chances are that your license still remains valid. The license holds a certain number of hardware hashes (usually 5). At least 50 percent of the hardware hashes of the license have to match the current system hardware hashes.

If more components broke or you had to replace your entire machine, please write an E-Mail to shop@profactor.at including the order number and the issue you ran into. Note that E-Mails without order numbers will be ignored.

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Please place the license file inside Documents/My ReconstructMe/License directory. If for any reason your user’s name contains special characters such as ',ä,ü place the license file in a neutral named directory instead. Then apply the license file as outlined in How does licensing work with ReconstructMe?

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Check if your license expired. Just open the license in your favorite text editor and see the issue_date. From this time, the license is valid for version which are released from issue_date to issue_date +360 days. If so, then your license is still valid, but not for that version.

When you have replaced hardware components your license might also become invalid. See How do I get a new license if my computer breaks? for details.

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Users can recind from their order within one week after purchase. Please write an E-Mail to shop@profactor.at including the order number and your issue you ran into. Note, E-Mails without order numbers will be ignored.

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Your license never expires. The license comes with fixed number of maintenance days. During this period of time you are free to update to newer ReconstructMe versions. After the period you cannot update to a ReconstructMe version that was released after your maintenance period. Consider purchasing a new license or revert ReconstructMe to an older version.

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You will need to purchase a ReconstructMe license whenever you use ReconstructMe in an commercial context. Since 15th of September 2015 the ReconstructMe scanning application is free for non commercial applications.

As a developer, when you download the ReconstructMe SDK it will run in unlicensed mode by default. This means a set of limitations are active:

Image watermarks

During scanning the reconstruction shows an ‘Unlicensed ReconstructMe’ or similar text overlay.

Mesh watermarks

Once you save the reconstruction result, you will find a 3D text ‘ReconstructMe’ combined with the scanned object. Additionally artificial spheres are added to the output.

Slow mesh generation

Mesh generation is slowed down on purpose by a couple of seconds.

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ReconstructMe enables / disables and modifies functionality based on the license applied. By default ReconstructMe comes unlicensed and with some limitations. Once you purchase a license the following happens

Generate hardware hashes
The license is bound to the hardware and in order to generate your license, the ReconstructMe team needs to know the hardware information (the hashes) from the computer you intend to run ReconstructMe on. After purchase a team member will be in touch via E-Mail requesting your hardware hashes.

Todo so, start ReconstructMe and copy your hardware hashes to the clipboard using the Copy to clipboard button as shown in the image below.

Reply to the E-Mail mentioned above and don’t forget to paste the hardware hashes into it.

Applying the license
Once we’ve received your hardware hashes we will generate a license file and return it to you via E-Mail. Copy this file to Documents/My Reconstructme/Licenses. Open ReconstructMe, navigate to the License tab and click Select License. In the dialog window to open select your license file and click Open.

This should apply the license and the licensing tab should reflect a valid license as shown below.

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Usually the process takes between one and two working days depending on your time-zone and time of purchase. We give our best to serve as fast as we can, but the process is not fully automated. A positive side-effect: you are talking to real humans.

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ReconstructMe runs by default in LITE mode. LITE mode is for free but comes with some limitations. By purchasing a license the limitations are removed.

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Please see our usage guide for first steps on scanning with ReconstructMe.

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No, a license will not effect reconstruction performance. Instead, please check if your system has a powerful graphics card inside. If you have a powerful graphics card, try to update your display driver and make sure that ReconstructMe uses the correct device.

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Make sure that your system meets the minimum hardware requirements. If you own a system with multiple graphic cards built in, make sure that ReconstructMe is configured to use the most powerful one. You can do this by manually selecting the device in the Device tab of ReconstructMe. Next, ensure that you have the latest GPU drivers installed.

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Make sure your sensor is connected to the computer. In case your sensor requires an external power supply, also ensure the adapter is plugged-in. In the Windows device manager check if your device is listed and marked as functioning correctly. Ensure that you have the latest sensor drivers installed.

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Achievable accuracy depends on various factors such as

Sensor resolution and accuracy

ReconstructMe results are strongly linked to sensor accuracy. Accuracy tells you how how closely the output from a sensor will match the ‘true’ value. Unfortunately, the term accuracy is used differently among sensor manufacturers and therefore you can often find figures on the resolution of the sensor only. Resolution is the ability to resolve differences. Its the minimum theoretical difference it can spot. High resolution therefore means the sensor is able to resolve small differences. The accuracy of a system can never exceed its resolution. In practice the accuracy is much lower than the resolution.

Camera tracking

ReconstructMe tracks camera movements by evaluating differences between camera images. Therefore, if the target object does not offer any features to track (e.g planar objects), tracking will be faulty and so will be the resulting scan. Camera tracking is also effected by the amount of movement between two subsequent camera frames. The larger the movement the higher the chances for bad alignment.

As you probably have noted by now, it is hard for us to come up with a single number on the accuracy of the ReconstructMe, as it depends on many factors. However as a rule of thumb with most currently available sensors, ReconstructMe achieves under ideal environments an accuracy of 5-8 millimeters on a 0.5 meter part.

The following comparison stems from discussions about ReconstructMe accuracy. It compares a high quality structured light scan and ReconstructMe scan of the same object. Worst case deviations are 5mm around object borders.

If you accuracy you can achieve is far from the above, you might want to read about improving the quality of your results: How can I improve the quality of my scanning results?

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A selfie is a type of self-portrait photograph, typically taken with a hand-held digital camera or camera phone. Shown on the right a self-portrait of a female monkey, who had picked up photographer camera and photographed herself with it.

ReconstructMe extends the selfie idea to 3D. Using the self-portrait feature in ReconstructMe, everyone can generate 3D printable busts in a minute. Below is good example of an 3D self-portrait outcome without any manual postprocessing.

What do I need to do?

Follow these steps to generate a 3D selfie

1. Position the camera horizontally and on eye-level height infront of you.
2. Activate Selfie mode in ReconstructMe’s Surface settings area.
3. Click the Suggest Defaults button if you are unsure about good settings to start with.
4. Click Start to begin the selfie scan.
5. Turn around 360 degrees in either direction – reconstruction will stop automatically.
6. Wait for the post-processing to complete and save your model.

Your model is now ready to be opened in your favorite 3D printing application or uploaded to any 3D printing service. The video below runs through the above steps.

Any best practices?

Here are a couple of things to take into consideration when generating selfies for optimized results.

Ensure you have enough space

When scanning yourself by turning in front the camera, make sure that you are the only object within the reconstruction volume. Double-check this in the live preview at the Volume tab of ReconstructMe.

Rigidness and constant facial expression

Try to avoid changing your facial expression during the scan or the pose of your body. When doing a colorized selfie, avoid changing the position of your pupils with respect to your eye. We’ve built in a couple of helpers in ReconstructMe that will help you to achieve this.

• Use the Handling / Start delay setting to increase the time before scanning starts. This will give you enough time to put you in optimal pose.
• Activate Handling / Sounds. This will play a countdown sound at start and a ta-da sound when the scan completes. So, no need to stare at your screen. Note, you need to set Handling / Start delay to a minimum of 5 seconds to hear the countdown sound.

Constant lighting conditions

When doing a self scan without the help of somebody else (e.g by rotating in front of the camera) make sure that the lighting in your room is diffuse or use a spot-light that is placed directly on the camera and facing in the same direction. If the room you are sitting in has a window through which light enters, make sure that the window is directly behind the line of sight of the camera. Even better: get the help of a friend who moves the camera around you and who avoids casting shadows on you.

Camera placement and calibration

Make sure to place the camera horizontally on eye level height before the scan starts. The same placement should be taken when the scan starts and the camera is weaved around you by a friend. If you get a visible seam artifact in your result do the following

• Modify the start position so that the camera looks from behind your shoulder. This will place the seam on the back of your model where it won’t be as visible as if the seam runs straight through your face.
• If you have a PrimeSense Carmine 1.09 we recommend to use a custom calibration file. Download the file and tell ReconstructMe about it in Device / Sensor.

What do I get?

When in selfie mode, ReconstructMe generates a 3D bust that is printable without further modifications. Here is what happens in detail

Watertight

Watertight refers to a property of 3D meshes that allows the 3D printer to determine the inside and outside of meshes. A mesh without holes is often referred to as watertight, because when you fill-up the inside with water, no water will drop out. ReconstructMe will enforce this property.

Cut

ReconstructMe slices the model on the bottom to generate a nice planar stand of your bust, so that it does not fall over when being put down.

Oriented

ReconstructMe will place the origin of the model on the center of the base of the bust with positive z-direction pointing upwards towards its head. This will allow you to directly import the bust in your favorite 3D printer application and your bust should already be placed on the printer’s virtual platform.

Scaled

Since your 3D printer won’t be able to print you in full-size, ReconstructMe scales your model down to 20cm when saved. Note, the saved model dimensions are in millimeters.

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Scanning can be a tedious process if the scanning environment is not optimal. Here are some general tips on how to optimize your scanning results.

A high frame rate is vital

Make sure your graphics card is a decent one. ReconstructMe performs most operations directly on the GPU. If the GPU cannot cope with the amount of data your sensor generates per second, you will observe a drop in frames per second. For smooth scanning you should observe frame rates between 20-30 FPS. Everything below will feel jerky and directly affect the quality of the scan result.

Keep the sensor pointing at the object

Tracking can only succeed when the volume to be reconstructed is in view. Pointing the sensor away too far from the object or stretching the distance between the sensor will lead to reconstruction errors. Keep in mind that sensors require a certain minimum distance between the sensor and the object (e.g Kinect requires a minimum distance of 400mm).

Ensure to have geometric features

Stable tracking requires geometry that is non-planar and non-symmetric. Make sure that whatever you reconstruct does not entirely consist of a single plane, a cylinder, a sphere or anything else that looks alike from different perspectives. When keeping the sensor fixed and turning an object infront of it, make sure everything inside the volume turns.

Move slowly

Depending on the FPS you achieve, you might need to move the sensor more slowly. Fast movements of the sensor will lead to blurry data and thus to reconstruction errors.

Avoid direct sunlight

The title says it all. Some sensors (those depending on infrared light) don’t play well with direct sunlight exposure. If you need to scan outside, choose a cloudy day or scan at night.

Make sure to have enough space

When scanning an object you should calculate for some extra room, so you can move around the object without effort.

Scanning a rotating object

When scanning a object that is rotating, make sure that the reconstruction volume only captures rotating elements and not static elements. Otherwise this would confuse the tracking algorithm which in turn would lead to loss of tracking.

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This is most likely due to the limitations of the free version of ReconstructMe.

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Table of Contents

1. Specifications
2. Body & Design
3. Technology
4. Scan Results
   1. Test Scene
   2. Selfie Scan
5. Conclusion
6. Availability
7. References

Intel is currently doing a major push with it’s 3D sensors. It has several options available; close range like the Intel RealSense F200, and now the Intel RealSense R200. It seems to be destined to become part of future Intel hardware like it’s notebooks, but it is also available as a developer kit. Currently the R200 can be bought here.

What we like:

• Very compact built
• 60 frames per second for 480×360 depth
• High quality reconstruction
• HD at 30 fps

What we don’t:

• Difficulties with black shiny objects

Installation

Intel’s sensor is rapidly evolving, so they are regularly updating their drivers and SDK. As the time of the writing, this is how to install the R200:

1. Uninstall any previously installed Intel RealSense Runtime or Camera Driver.
2. Connect your sensor to an USB3 port
3. Wait until Windows has detected the sensor and installed a driver.
4. Install R200 Camera Driver (2.0.3.53109)  and SDK Runtime (7.0.23.8048)
5. Install the ReconstructMe release (2.5.1034).
6. Download the IntelRealsenseR200_60fps_640.txt and place it into Documents\My ReconstructMe\Sensor
7. In ReconstructMe, go to Device > Sensor Selection, deselect Automatically detect sensor, and select the downloaded configuration file.

Specifications

Imaging Component Overview:

	color	depth / IR
Active Pixels	1920 x 1080	640 x 480
Aspect ratio	16:9	4:3
Frame rate	30 fps	30/60 fps
Field of view (D x V x H)	77° x 43° x 70° (Cone)	70° x 46° x 59° (Cone)

Available Resolutions. Bold settings are recommended.

	color resolution		depth/IR resolution
FPS	width	height	width	height	Bandwidth MB/sec
60	640	480	320	240	61
60	320	240	480	360	32
60	640	480	480	360	72
30	640	480	320	240	30
30	1280	720	320	240	83
30	1920	1080	320	240	182
30	320	240	480	360	16
30	640	480	480	360	36
30	1280	720	480	360	88
30	1920	1080	480	360	187

Body & Design

The Sensor looks slick, and is very compact. It is approximately 130 x 20 x 7mm, making it one of the most compact sensors on the market. It has to be connected to a USB3 connector, and does not require any extra cables.

On the back side there is a magnet, which makes it possible to clip the sensor to metalic objects like the back of a tablet.

Technology

Behind the shiny body of the dev kit there is more than it seems. The sensor actually has three cameras: two IR cameras (left and right), and one RGB camera. It uses these two cameras for stereo vision (unlike the PrimeSense/Kinect technology, which uses a speckle pattern). Additionally, this camera also has an IR laser projector to help the stereo vision recognize depth at unstructured surfaces.

Scan Results

Test Scene

To evaluate the performance of the R200, we have set up a test scene that contains a lot of different objects that provide a challenge for most 3D sensors. Here is what it looks like:

From left to right, here is what you should look at when checking the comparisons:

• Tiger with black stripes. Blacks are difficult for most sensors, and the tiger is quite small. It is about 25cm long, so reproducing it in quality will be difficult for such a large scene.
• Behind the tiger, there are several ther smallish objects: a dark brown horse, and the bright grey statue.
• A transparent glass containing scissors. The glass is practically impossible to reconstruct with any sensor, since it is transparent. The scissors are very thin and therefore very difficult to reconstruct.
• Behind the scissors there is a coffee box, that has a shiny reflective surface with some color information and a red top. Shiny reflective surfaces are the worst thing that can happen to any sensor.
• In front of the head there is a complex industrial object, made of untreated cast iron. These types of objects are highly relevant for the producing industry.
• The head is our reference head. It is a comparatively small one, comparably to the size of a child’s head.
• To the right there are some more metalic objects, a transparent water bottle, and some black objects.

We have scanned the scene with the following procedure:

1. Set up ReconstructMe with Volume size 1545mm, position in front of the camera 224mm.
2. Start pointing the camera straight towards the scene
3. Move to the left
4. stop scanning

We have repeated this scanning process for several different setups of the R200, and with different ReconstructMe optimization settings. All processing was done on a Windows 8.1, Intel i5-370 @3.4GHZ CPU, and with an AMD Radeon HD 6900 Series graphics card.

30fps, color 1920×1080, depth 480×360

This mode requires a very fast pipeline between the CPU and the GPU, because both the high resolution color and depth needs to be uploaded to the GPU for each frame. Let’s see how ReconstructMe can deal with this data.

Optimize for reconstruction Speed

ReconstructMe scanning is smooth, but the scanned quality is obviously not very high. Using the high resolution R200 with the speed mode seems like a waste. Not recommended.

Balance reconstruction speed and quality

This setting makes perfect use of all available resources. Scanning is pretty smooth, and the coloring is nice. The checker board pattern behind the head is clearly visible. The heads structure looks well defined. To my surprise, it produces reasonable quality with the shiny coffee cylinder. The tiger’s stripes are unfortunately not clearly visible. All objects except the ones made of glas were captured. No problems with black objects.

Maximize quality

This produces an excellent high quality result. The colors are clearly defined, the tiger’s stripes are clearly visible, all 3D strucures are very well made. Excellent result for such a large scanning sphere! Unfortunately it is only possible to move very slow, because this setting takes a lot of resources and my AMD graphics card is not the fastest any more. That’s why we have also tried this setup on a brand new Nvidia Titan. Unfortunately we got blue screens whenever we used this resolution. We suspect that the Intel drivers still have a bug. When moving to a slightly lower resolution, 1280×720, everything worked perfectly.

60fps, color 640×480, depth 480×360

This resultion is comparable to Asus Xtion’s data, except double the frame rate! Let’s see how ReconstructMe handles this.

Optimize for reconstruction Speed

Oh my, this is incredible fast. Although the scan quality is obviously not the best, tracking performance is extremely fast. You can move the sensor very quickly without losing tracking, because the tracking calculations can be done much more often with such a high frame rate. This setup is recommended when you want to track your camera movement, and for quick previews.

Balance reconstruction speed and quality

The quality of this reconstruction is comparable to the 30fps version. Although this has approximately the same quality, reconstruction is much faster, as there is much less data that needs to be transmitted to the GPU. I would recommend this setting for your regular reconstruction tasks.

Maximize quality

Interestingly, the quality of this reconstruction is highly similar to the 30fps one. It seems that the change of color resolution does not have much influence on the reconstruction quality, probably because the depth resolution is at a constant resolution at 480×360, so the higher resolution color does not give any additional information.

Selfie Scan

To evaluate the quality and performance of selfie scans, we have configured ReconstructMe with the option Surface > [x] Selfie 3D Scan, then we have applied the selfie defaults. This sets the volume size to 1000mm, at a distance of 455mm from the sensor. Also, it automatically creates a watertight mesh and scales it ready for printing. I have scanned myself with two different settings: balanced quality and maximum quality, and I have used the 60fps sensor configuration as described above. Here are the results:

Balance reconstruction speed and quality

The whole scanning process was quite fast, ReconstructMe really likes this configuration. The quality is quite good as well, colors are quite good and the model was reconstructed correctly. Unfortunately the R200 seems to have some problems with my hair, it came out a bit greenish in this setup. Overall, I’d say the scanning quality is very good with this setup, and also speedy.

Maximize quality

With maximum setting reconstruction is much slower, so I had to rotate a bit slower so ReconstructMe is still able to track my position correctly. The resulting model has a much higher resolution, it increased from 250.000 triangles to 650.000 triangles. This also makes the color information a bit sharper. If you have a fast GPU, I recommend using this setting for your selfies.

Note: All the screenshots are done with lightning enabled in Meshlab. The result is that all models seem a bit blocky instead of smooth, but the advantage is that this way it is a bit easier to evaluate the scan quality. When lightning is disabled, this is what the result looks like:

Conclusion

The Intel RealSense R200is a worthy contender to the Asus Xtion Pro Live. It has higher color resolution, higher depth resolution, and higher frame rate. It is also much smaller than the Asus sensor. The only disadvantage that we have found so far is that it has some problems with dark texture. Currently the driver is in heavy development and not yet production stable, but that will change soon as Intel starts shipping more hardware with this sensor and the F200. The R200 is able to provide 60 frames per second for depth data with a resolution of 480×360, and it is also possible to achieve full HD resolution for the RGB data at 30fps. All in all, the Intel RealSense R200 is an excellent sensor for ReconstructMe.

Availability

Currently the R200 can be bought here.

References

• Introducing the Intel® RealSense™ R200 Camera (world facing)
• Intel® RealSense™ Data Ranges
• Intel® RealSense™ SDK 2015 R4 Documentation
• SDK Design Guidelines Intel® RealSense™ Camera (R200)

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