I mentioned 123d Catch a while back- it's free software that enables you to get a mesh and texture of an object just by taking 20 or 30 pictures from all different angles. I'm a fan. I just got my first test piece from Shapeways and it came out well. The subject is a Roman bust from the Met in NYC. Not too original but it seemed as good a test as any. I took a bunch of pictures (without flash of course) and uploaded them. Then I got the mesh and messed with it a bit- made it watertight with meshlab, poked a hole in it and thickened it with Blender (thanks Chris Lowe), and transfered over the texture with meshlab. As you can see, the color is a bit off. If there are shadows on the object there will be shadows permanently on your texture. I knew that would happen but wanted to see what it would look like anyway. Of course I could've just printed it with no color at all. In the end it came out much darker than the original but the shape is great. And keep in mind all I needed to make this copy was a digital camera. Check out the results. The whiter bust is a picture of the original obviously.
That's great. I tried 123d Catch a year or so ago, before it was named 123d Catch and wasn't too impressed, but it appears the software has improved dramatically, Thanks for sharing here.
ahh shucks... looks really cool too.i am really impressed with Catch. if the texture isn't to your likeing - lighten it up... but i like the way it came out... do you have it for sale? would love to see a tutorial on how you did this for the magazine... chris
Yeah it would make a good tutorial. I learned a lot in doing it. This was my first time dealing with a scan. For many of us, you design something from the ground up in your CAD program and you never have to worry about issues like watertightness, thickening etc. For this, you get an imperfect mesh and have to tweak it into a printable form. New to me at least. I guess it's for sale. It was a test piece so I hadn't really thought about that. It didn't strike me as something a lot of people would feel the need to have in their home. Ultimately I may try to make it into a ventriloquist dummy with eyes and mouth that move- now THAT's something people need (you know, for their comedy routines set in ancient Rome.) But seriously, the problem I see is cost. This guy was $41 and it's small and, as we all know, price goes up cubically with size. I'm thinking of ways to make things bigger but keep the price down (riddling the thing with holes for example, keeping the shape but minimizing material.) Anyway. Thanks for the interest and I'll work on some screeen shots for a tutorial.
On my next trip to the Louvre in Paris i will definitely pack some extra SD cards and batteries ... great stuff. Driving the printing cost of a model is discusses greatly on the forum - i once suggested shapeways offer a check-box on the upload page saying "Please hollow out my model by X mm wall thickness" Robert liked the idea but it wasn't implemented (yet?) Their software can create the most accurate wall thickness possible thus reducing the printing cost to the absolute minimum.. (but there lies the problem i guess.. Or perhaps this server-side service could be abused by non Shapies) Sample:
I think that's a great suggestion, Dizingof! Could you please add it to the suggestions list on UserVoice? Thanks! Bart
This Shapeways blog post talks about a similar thing <a href=" https://www.shapeways.com/blog/archives/1409-From-Childs-Plas ticine-Sculpture-to-3D-Print-as-Easy-as-123D.html" target="_blank"></a>