How to Capture 3D Models of People?

I am looking for a reasonable way to capture 3D models of people. Even capturing only a head and neck would be sufficient to print a "piano bust".

I'm thinking a short video clip of the subject, moving around to get many angles, should be sufficient and convenient input. It could be captured quickly, with the subject reasonably motionless.

AutoCad 123D Catch seemed promising, though it requires "about 40" discrete photos. It is not clear what resolution is needed. They say 3MB should be enough. However, I have not been able to get decent results even with inanimate objects. It seems that hours of effort, and attempts to follow their guidelines, only produce unusable results for me.

Does anybody know of software or methodology that might work well?

Try the David Laser Scanner.

{EDIT] I just looked around on their site and see that the price has gone WAY UP! It used to be you could get the kit for under $100 US and the software was free. You didn't even need to buy the kit if you were mechanically inclined enough to setup the hardware yourself.

Take a look around for do it yourself laser scanning tutorials and plans. There are probably several different ways of doing it cheaply these days.

I've gotta say that I got pretty good results with 123d catch. Search for these threads

"123d Catch scanning software printed result"

"Game changing 3d scanning software"

I tried to put links to them but it wouldn't let me.

These were inanimate objects though. I think a real person would have to remain very very still to get good results. Have good consistant lighting for each shot and make sure each photo you use is crystal clear.

I bet with enough fiddling you can get it to work for you. The advantage too is that it give you a color scan- which is pretty cool. The odd thing is that if there is a shadow on the object when you scan it, it will print with that shadow permenantly painted on it- like David Bowie's make-up in the "Blue Jean" video. (Sure sure of course we know what you are talking about- that video is only 30 years old. Why wouldn't we remember it off the top of our heads?)
I just stumbled across it the other day and it reminded me of the 123d shading effect.

Ive searched for the very same thing and ive only found one way it can be done with true results. Its a special camera that captures the depth field of each picture. Like an alpha map. Its still new technology and like all new technology it is very expensive. Ill post the website in a bit. Im waiting for the price to come down.

Its called a "Plenoptic 3d Camera" and ive only found them here:
Check out the vid. If anyone finds something as good but priced better please post.

http://www.raytrix.de/index.php/Facial_recognition.html

http://www.raytrix.de/index.php/3d_video_en.html

Interesting!

Yeah, and believe me when I say I searched everywhere and looked into everything out there right now. Its rumored that Apple is coming out with an app that captures Depth, but its been a while now and I havent seen anything yet. There are other less expensive cameras similar to Raytrix but the resolution is low, very very low. When it comes to quality, this is the best one so far, but the price... they dont even post the price, you have to request it. Its a few thousand, not reasonable at all but definitely something to keep an eye on.

The Raytrix cameras are indeed interesting. However, it seems you can only get a depth map of most of a face with a single shot. I would much prefer complete models to little snippets.

I could not find any suggestion of price on their site, but they *look* expensive. It also appears the 3D trick can only be had by post-processing the picture data on a computer. That doesn't seem much different than processing multiple cheap images, assuming you could actually get that to work.

When I looked at Raytrix, I was sure I had seen a description of something similar a couple years ago. The discussion was all about focusing after shooting, as opposed to 3D capture. Sure enough, a search for "focus after shoot" turned up https://www.lytro.com/. An 8GB model goes for U.S.D. 399.00. It seems apparent that the same kind of depth information is captured, so could theoretically be converted to a 3D model. However, I see no discussion of 3D on their site.

I tried adding "3D" to the search term, but found little more. One interesting tidbit - Toshiba is said to be developing a 500K microlens videocam for smartphones that might appear somewhere in 2013.

Yeah, the Lytro cam is the one I mentioned being cheaper in price but the downfall with that one is resolution. I gotta look into that toshiba cam. Not sure if you know anything about Apple getting pattent rights to depth camera technology for an app do you..?