3D Scan Clean-Up

After having their scans made, Tom and Tracy Hazzard finished cleaning them up and improving them for the best 3D print output possible. On today’s show, discover the multiple areas that might need clean-up and repair as they look into any blank or missing areas of data, any misinterpretations of shadows or textures, and any aesthetic improvements, such as making Tracy taller or giving Tom more hair!

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Our topic is scanning. We went and had ourselves scanned. That’s the subject of our episode.

The whole process was, “Let’s see how this scanning process works. Let’s see what happens when you get scanned and how it looks.” That’s what we want to talk about. How those scans looked when we got them in email.

After we were scanned, we got an email with some files of the scan of Tracy and me in two different file formats; an OBJ file and a PLY file. Some people might be interested in what is the file format.

The thing about it is how those looked. The process was interesting because as we were being scanned, you could see it building on the screen of the iPad. It looked like there was a lot of information there and it was a good scan. The reality is when we got it, there were a lot of holes.

There were two different kinds of scans. One was a bust from our head to mid-torso, including our shoulders and stuff. The quality of that is we could recognize that yours was you and mine was me. The quality of those was a little better. It also saves a JPEG file that puts the color information on it. If you’re going to print with a full-color 3D printer, you can print it in color. Once you lay that color on it, it looks a lot more like us.

We’re not scanning experts here, but it may have had more to do with how close and the better lighting on the upper part of your body. When you step back to do enough distance to do the full body scan, there is more shadow than you expect.

That does play a role, but they also used a different program to do the bust portion that was meant to only do a bust. That resolution was a little bit better. We went in there saying and we paid $100 for each of us to have a medium-resolution scan done of ourselves. We didn’t know what that was going to be but we said, “Let’s go and do that.” We want to learn more from it.

It is typical. You see a lot of these places advertise that do it for wedding toppers and things like that. That’s what this is. It’s the same level of scan.

I’m sure in serious industry, there are all kinds of serious scanners used in the gaming industry and stuff like that. It is much finer but also expensive. The bust scan was better quality for sure and there were no holes. Let’s be clear about that.

We’ll call Miles and we’ll ask him for the name of the program.

The full-body scan was a lot rougher and lower-res than we expected. We were hoping we could print ourselves at a service bureau and have these mini-mes that we could promote. I’m not sure if we can do that.

I’m not so sure if I want to print it. It looks that bad. They are so rough and there’s so much work that needs to be done on them.

We haven’t done that work yet but we’ll have the results of that in another episode. You might want to tune into that. What we found is the scanner had a hard time getting a reading in between our legs to our feet. There are missing parts and there are holes. You can see right through each of our legs. We’ve got to repair that. I don’t know how easy that is going to be.

3D Scan Clean-Up: Choose your clothes and things in terms of what you wear, but also choose your pose wisely.

It’s not only that you have to repair the physical model underneath, that color information is missing too. Even if you fix the model, how do you do that with the color? That’s the question. We’re going to have to figure out how to do that. We were talking about how the scanning worked and about choosing your clothes and things wisely in terms of what you wear, but it’s also choosing your pose wisely. They had us spread our arms slightly apart and our legs slightly apart. I don’t think you should do that. You should close them up because they’re going to fill in the information. The scan makes it look like I’ve got web under my arms. It’s ridiculous. Because of the shadow, it adds flab in places. I didn’t think I had it. It can be unflattering.

It isn’t as near as bad as she’s making it seem. I would’ve rather had my feet together. While there wouldn’t have been any space between my legs, that overall model would have been better with lighting on all the outsides of your legs. It would have been more complete. I wish I had stood with either my arms folded or my hands on my hips.

Putting them out was a weird pose in the end and also when you print it. I keep thinking the only way you can handle it is with SLS because you can’t do 3D printing without having a huge amount of support for those hands that are sitting out there.

The color information will be lost in any other process.

That’s the other thing, if you thought you’re going to print them on FFF, there’s not enough detail. The bust is a borderline. It could have it. It could be okay.

You can look at the photos and judge for yourself.

We’ll load them up. Normally we don’t load up a full post for these short episodes. Look to episode 71 and you’ll see the full photos on that one.

For somebody considering getting into scanning, this could be helpful. We also have information as to what scanner was used and things like that. If you’re going to do a significant amount of scanning work and you need quality, you need to spend a little more money and look at a higher quality scanner or software that interprets that scan.

You will have more work for yourself later, that’s the point of it. You’re going to have to clean it up. Either someone’s going to get it and then they’re going to try to print it. They’re going to be extremely dissatisfied when they find out their legs aren’t even completely formed or you’re going to have to do all this work to clean it up. I’m not sure you can charge for that.

Tune in to the long episode and check out episode 71. There will be some more information and some more results than what we’re talking about here. We’re only talking about the raw files and our initial impressions here.

If you have any tips or anything about scanning and you’ve been doing this much longer than us, please let us know. You can tweet us everywhere. You can find us on Facebook, Instagram, wherever. Send us pictures. We’d love to see what your scans look like. It’s @HazzDesign. It’s also HazzDesign.com.

You can either send us an email or a voicemail on our website. If you want to send us a voice message if you ask a question, we can include that in a future Ask Us episode.

Thanks for reading.

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3D Scan Clean-Up

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