Mini-Me, stop humping the 'L-A-S-E-R': New 3D tech can make a Mini-You The way 3D printing enables ideas to move from the drawing board and become actual objects in a matter of hours has certainly inspired designers. To highlight this point, London-based 3D printer supplier iMakr appealed to visitors' egos at the 100% Design trade show in London's Earls Court this week. iMakr 3D printing examples …
Would mean fewer cameras, quicker rendering and easier automatic reconstruction (most heads are approximately spherical.
You don't need to scan the body in the same detail as the face/head and you could even choose a body from a pre-calculated library of stock bodies of varying "assets"
or does the idea of dropping 100 units of currency for a miniature replica of yourself seem just a little narcissistic? I mean at 5 or 10 pounds the novelty might be worth it, but really what's the value of having a tiny plastic statue of yourself beyond that? Am I missing something?
Why not? It's something very unique to have around as a conversation piece.
I spent $150 for colored 3D figures of the 3 main astronauts from Kerbal Space Program from Shapeways. They're about the size of a soda can each. So $50 a figure wouldn't be too bad, and this probably takes a lot of time to fix the dataset for printing, unlike the Kerbals, where they just need to hit the print button again.
They sit in the corner next to my 5ft tall 1/72 scale Saturn V.
I can absolutely guarantee you that as soon as this technology is Kiosk sized there will be one of these in every shopping mall in the Western world. Esp UK and USA.
Portraiture was incredibly popular in the early years of photography and though I can't be bothered to do the calculations I'd be willing to bet that £100-£200 isn't far off the adjusted mark or lower.
People will be getting little family sets of themselves and their kids for the mantle piece / coffee table. The family pet. Esp Dog. This is going to go ballistic. I'll take a £100 bet from anyone who thinks otherwise.
This will make my voodoo-curse business explode! More precise dolls = more precise control...
But the obvious market is new parents... Every few months another slightly larger model of their rugrat = captured market ('we already have one every six months for three years, can't stop now!').
Looks to me like this guy doesn't need to wait for anything except loads of VC funding to make his dreams come true.
The concept of Mini-Me figurines custom made seems like there won't be an iPhoney who will be able to resist the idea. Not a matter of being "Too narcissistic" but exactly on target......
You need the data to get any kind of useful 3D data out of it - it takes way more than one camera pixel to calculate one voxel for the model. I did some structure-from-motion research years ago, and trust me, you want all the overlapping data you can get.
I'm a bit surprised he didn't put a matte white or even green/blue wrap on the inside of the booth rather than leaving those highly-specular aluminum extrusions (which are responsible for the reflected chunks of dude you see in the point cloud pic) but it may be easier to just discount any points that show up in those areas after the fact.
I'd be interested to know how he's doing the 3d conversion. It's somewhat gratifying to see that 15 years after I was pounding on the problem, people have yet to solve the specularity issue... ;)
Here is a link which describes a working open source tool-chain very well:
http://wedidstuff.heavyimage.com/
The core program is visual sfm:
http://www.visual-experiments.com/demos/sfmtoolkit/
I tested it using reduced resolution (as suggested in the article) and the results came out surprisingly well.
Following the article, the whole tool-chain is surprisingly simple to follow. Add a 3d-printer at the end, and you can set up your own business.
However, Note that the software requires a non-transparent surface with texture in order to work well.
A uniform white box tends to end up with only the edges being detected, and with gaps in the sides.
Have fun!
That's nifty - I'm going to have to check it out. My current line of work involves a complex object which basically sits on a servo-controlled rotation table, so it would be quite easy for me to create a big sequence of high resolution, precisely-calibrated images of it... unfortunately the object itself has a lot of specularities and some reflections, but it's probably worth a go anyway. Thanks for the link!
Eh, for a vanity spend, I think going with the 'super high quality' angle raises the ceiling on sale price vs speed.
It's easy to let a customer wait, it's even advantageous when it is something custom and "very high quality". He obviously thinks a lot of himself, and being assured of the highest quality only appeals to that: That's going to cost him.
Besides, the customer doesn't need to know if its overkill or not :)
I created my own 100% organic mini-me and it is far superior to these plastic dolls. Mine is fully articulated, has advanced facial and object recognition capabilities and is currently upgrading its spatial reckoning and object manipulation software using its own high-throughput integrated processor and evolving self developed algorithoms. It also contains a nearly infinitely expandable, liquid cooled, data storage array with high efficiency deduplication and data compression utilities.
I have extremely high hopes.
www.3d-u.com or www.3d-u.es if you prefer. These have been going for at least three years. Admittedly it isn't portable and you need to keep still for a couple of seconds but then it doesn't need 44 DSLRS. Never been tempted myself and neither has my daughter who has never turned down an opportunity to be in front of a camera.
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