
3D scanning with a plain webcam - nreece
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/11/20/3d-scanning-with-a-p.html
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jacquesm
Very impressive, it won't be long or people will be using their webcams to
scan 3D avatars of themselves. "The Street" isn't that far off.

the original article:

[http://www.fabbaloo.com/2009/11/real-time-3d-scanning-
with-w...](http://www.fabbaloo.com/2009/11/real-time-3d-scanning-with-
webcam.html)

Homepage of the guy that made it:

<http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/~qp202/>

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liuliu
Well, hard to say. He uses FAST pointer detector for point tracking which may
not be this accurate for other "smoothing" surface object e.g. your mobile
phone or "sharp-vertices" object e.g. the doll. It seems only can get
impressive result for objects with simple 3d structure and detailed texture
surface (has good point cloud prediction).

~~~
jacquesm
In the presentation there is a good bit of data about feature tracking, not
point tracking, I'm not sure how well it would work but this is the best demo
I've seen so far of a program making a 3D model without stereoscopic vision
and preparation of the subject.

What you could add is contour detection (the contours could be added as a
constraint on the outer limit of the volume bounded by the surface being
scanned). That way you could make a pretty good stab at what the surface must
have been like. Contours will always be 90 degrees from the 'normal' of the
object being scanned.

That trick will _not_ work for concave surfaces though.

------
RevRal
I tried to create something like this a long time ago, but I really wanted it
to work by using pictures from only three equidistant angles. Probably why I
never finished it....

