hand held 3D scanner

Hi. Been reading your forums and blogs religiously since I heard about Reprap through sciencedaily.com. I haven't begain building my own yet but I have managed to build a workshop inspired by the Reprap project(I built it for free).

Anyway, after checking out the DAVID 3D scanner I started thinking how cool it would be to have that software on a palm pilot, reprap a custom case to hold a laser, camera and the palm pilot and take that baby to walmart! No, just kidding. But it would be nice to use in my new reprapin' workshop.

I'm sure the software is to much for a palm pilot but who knows in five, ten years from now.

So are you planning to build a David? I've meant to for two years now, but just haven't had the time what with all the work on the Reprap printer itself.

I 'built' a david laser scanner - downloaded the software, printed the backdrop, found a bit of perspex bar to turn my laser pointer into a laser fan.

I had a quick try and it seemed to work, but I used the smaller backdrop print and the laser is a bit wide (but I dont know if that matters) and my cam is very low rez so the resulting scan was a bit rough.

But it worked.

Hmmmm. I could hook up my 5 m-pix canon and try. or get on assembling my repstrap. or get a chinese takeout. hmmm. I can hear that soldering iron thermostat clicking away . . . . .

hey guys check this out [www.bestsoftware4download.com]

From the screen shots it does look like Vi3dim could work at least as well as the David software and doesn't require structured lighting (a laser line or sharp contrast line). The screenshots show an object sitting on a black and white checkerboard grid. The grid and object are apparently rotated by hand. and the software uses the image of the grid to get scale and position information about the surface of the object. It's a Windows Only solution, like David.

vi3dim has very portable source code. I had developed it on linux (64 bit slackware distribution) with gcc compiler. So I can build it for Linux too,with less restrictions - it is significantly faster under linux...
Unfortunately Linux is not so popular OS...

I'd prefer a Mac OS X solution but the fact that it was developed for Linux first bodes well. Perhaps I'll drag out the Windows laptop and give it a try.

I downloaded the program to my Windows XP laptop (Dell Inspiron 600m) and it said that I did not have enough GPU capability to run.

I guess this program is not for me.

viktor Wrote:
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> hey guys check this out
> [www.bestsoftware4download.com]
> ee-vi3dim-demo-download-dwnhmlch.html

@JohnWasser,

a very brief visit to the vi3dim-demo page on www.bestofsoftware, is very revealing. From your mail and from various clues scattered on the download page, it seems very likely that the vi3dim software is based on CUDA (Compute Unified Device Architecture) technology.
[www.nvidia.com]
[en.wikipedia.org]
You may, at the very least, need a CUDA-enabled (NVIDIA) graphics card, or there is also an emulator (or way to compile source-code, such that GPU h/w is not required)
[www.google.com]

I hope this helps.
Regards
Marius Botha
Pretoria, South Africa
[mariushermanbotha.wordpress.com]

It is not CUDA.
Processing written on glsl (shader language)

Its not free and can only work with certain subjects but photosculp is worth a look.

I noticed something interesting whilst looking at some orange plexiglas offcuts, if I look at the reflection of an object
it appears as an anaglyph, the light must be reflecting of the front and back surface and the angle gives an offset,
maybe a way to make cheap 3d images or even models, there must be something wrong with this theory or it would have
been done by now?.

The cheapest 3D pictures I ever saw involved using a regular camera, and a mirror.

Position the camera and the subject such that about half the camera's field consists of the subject, and the other half the subjects reflection. (For the real tightwads, this would be "stand next to your bathroom mirror, and have your buddy take the picture from the other side of the bathroom.)

Reflect the reflection in software. Gimp is free, so are lots of other things, or you may already have photoshop or some equivalent.

Notice that you now have two images of the same subject, taken at the same moment from slightly different angles. So...

Insert into your favorite stereo viewing device. (For the real tightwads, this would be "cross your eyes and focus them funny while looking at your computer monitor.)

I don't know how this helps a 3D scanner though. The processing to get a printable STL from something like that would be insane.

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I'm building it with Baling Wire

The author of following blog site offers free 3d laser scanning service
www.free3dscans.blogspot.com

I think it can be done putting together a Kinect and the program rgbd-object from excellent RGBdemo-0.6.0 software by Nicolas Burrus.

It detects the various objects you have on the table and it creates a mesh of each one of them as you move around the kinect to help the software fill-in the mesh details.

The catch is that compiling from source might be a bit challenging for some users (but you may get help from their google users group).

misan

has anyone developed this code for a mac???

would it work with macbook?