Single Shot 3D Body Scanning
This week I got the chance to work with the very talented Model/Dancer, Joceline Brooke-Hamilton. I was able to finally test the new studio space and the Single Shot 3D Body Capture System. Which worked really well. Together we took 100′s of poses! Joceline is very versatile and super creative, also a wonderful Ballet Dancer, so ideal to push the system to it’s limits.
IR’s solution is extremely reliable, comprising of 42 Canon DSLR’s networked over 5 PC’s, using Breeze Software to trigger and download with Agisoft Photoscan Pro to build.
The scanning system is able to capture a single moment in time, within a bounding box volume of about 1.5m x 1.5m x 2m Heigh. Allowing for lots of dynamic poses! The Cameras are synchronized so you can capture very quickly and at super high resolution.
Video showing the Models inside ZBrush4R3, retopologized and with Unwrapped UV’s, displaying 8K Colour Texture Maps
[vimeo width="600" height="400"]http://vimeo.com/40602544[/vimeo]
IR’s Single Shot 3D Body Scanning Solution is ideal for Game Development Studios and Visual Effects Companies who need to clone humans into Digital Form.
Various angles viewed in ZBrush 4R3:
…more poses, costumes and beauty shots to come.
33 Comments
Simply Amazing!
Thanks Jaco!
Looks great. What type of DSLR are you using?
Also, what do you think is the minimum quality camera needed for this type of scan?
Thanks Vince. I’m using Canon 550D Cameras. I think you can get good results with a minimum of 12, as long as you have a turntable and good lighting.
hi
what kind of software are you using to convert the pictures into a 3d model? Is it Agisoft, or something else?
Your stuff looks great.
Thanks! Yes it is Agisoft Photoscan with some ZBrush clean up and re-sculpting.
Hi Lee, impresive stuff.
Will you be using this method to create models for sale on your site, or as a service for the film and game industry
Hi Garry! many thanks. Both but the system is more geared to providing public content. The system isn’t quite ready yet as more Cameras are being added but will be ready very soon!
Awesome!
Does your new setup stop you from having to line up a bunch of slices?
How do you line up all the captures to make 1 model? I bought one of your old scans but am having a hard time orienting all the pieces together.
Thank you
Yes the new setup is instant capture from multiple angles to cover 360 degrees, no re-aligning. The old scans used just 3 Cameras. The new system uses 56 but will have more Cameras. The new scans are a 1000 times better than the old but wont be ready for a few months.
Hi, Lee, what’s your old setup with only 3 cameras? Did you post on the blog?
Hi Ming, I did ever post much about the 3 Camera setup. I will do soon to show the difference between 3 and more cameras. I hope that helps?
Thanks, Lee! look forward to your new article on the comparison!
The Canon 550D seems like a good choice, however if I was on limited budget, is there a cheaper camera (non DSLR perhaps) that might suffice. Is there a minimum number of megapixels needed?
Also, are you using strobes for the lighting?
Thanks, for chronicling all of this on a blog, it’s very informative!
Thanks Vince. I’m not aware of any other Cameras that are cheap that you can easily control via Software. Breeze is the only Software I know of to control multiple Cameras easily. I’m using strobes yes.
There is a piece of software called Stereo Data Maker that is a firmware hack of certain Canon powershot cameras that lets you trigger them simultaneously . It is an outgrowth of the CHDK- Canon Hack Development Kit- and is completely free, search it on the web. It is not perfect, but works with cameras as cheap as $150. I currently have 24 synched cameras. Synch is good to about 1/200, unless you are trying to synch flash as well, then 1/60 seems to be about as fast as you can go and get full flash overlap. It also lets you dump 12 bit DNG files straight from the ccd – effectively giving you camera raw.
Really interesting thanks for sharing.
What an impressive results!!
Did you use infrared speckle to provide more feature points?
If so, I wonder that how did you generate the speckle, with kinect or other else? and which kind of filter was used to equip on cameras?
Hi, no a pattern was not needed, although I did experiment with altered IR DSLR cameras and multiple Kinects but the fixed hard etched IR pattern was not designed for 3D scanning, as it needs to be a more pix-elated blocky pattern and not so much random dots, which is what the IR laser in the Kinect when projected produces. Also IR is not really good for photogrammetry as the skin absorbs that spectrum of light and scatters it.
Have you printed any of these models out with a 3D printer. Just hollow it out and send it off to a print shop . They can print metal too. It would be the future of all statues world wide! Win a prize get printed and mounted.
http://www.shapeways.com/
I got some printed with PDModels (great company for 3D printing in the UK), you can see them here http://tinyurl.com/6qt8w9g
Amazing! I have some questions, how far is it from the camera to the dancer? what type of lens are you using? how big is the focal lenght? Thank you very much!
Thanks! About 2 meters (roughly) Canon 50mm Primes. 50mm. 1/4, 11, 100 ISO (always)
Thank you very much! I did a calculation, the capture scene of one camera is about 0.9m width and 0.6m height, then how could you arrange the cameras to capture a 1.5×1.5×2 space, it really makes me confused. And another question is which resolution did you use to capture the dancer?
I’m doing something that is very similar with your amazing work, and I do encounter some difficulties. Thank you very much!
No problem. Allot of studios think it’s just a simple task of arranging Cameras and processing but it is allot more involved and very difficult. The main problem is making a 99.99% reliable solution that doesn’t fail. I use tiers of Cameras around the subject. Think of it like a giant mosaic 360 picture. Agisoft can stitch together just fine. I use 18MP Cameras. I would love to see how you get on with your results.
Thank you! My work is still in the very beginning, once I have an acceptable result, I would love to let you know as soon as possible.
I could probably guess the situation of the cameras, thank you very much! And there are still some boring questions.
Do you use auto focus or manual focus? One of my problems is depth of field, it becomes very very small when the camera gets close to the subject (roughly 1.5m), although I have increased the aperture. Canon 600D, 28mm, MF, 11, 1/50, ISO400, this is my situation.
All my lights are placed on the ceiling, which results shadows on the leg, neck, etc. I see no shadow in your images, even for the skin under the chin, the medial side of the thigh. It’s perfect, how can you do that?
Thank you!
I use manual focus. You can use a value like f/11 or up to f/20 but diffraction will start to ruin the images at anything over f/15. f/11 is pretty good. Also never go above ISO 100, noise is no good. I use an all white room and lots of lights to simulate flat GI lighting, good for character work and re-lighting digitally afterwards.
im new to this sector (Photogrammetry/3D rendering) but me and my friend have an awesome idea, an idea that utilizes a 360 camera array, and automatic post processing. this idea is so unique and extensive that im sure we’ll have to develop our own software for capturing, post processing, stitching, and uploading for consumer use. Obviously i have alot of question now but most recently puzzling:
awesome stuff!
why is it necessary to network 5 laptops to process(or capture) the images? could you not chain USB hubs? please explain in detail as im very unseasoned in this sector.
Thanks! and i just spent a good 1hour on your facebook page
Thanks for your post Ola. You can only have about 16 peripherals per PC as I understand, that is a general hardware limitation. Similar to only being able to use 1-2 kinects per PC. All you need is a good image viewer to view the captured images and a good naming convention using Breeze labels for file name prefix’s.
Is very good
WoW , thanks for sharing !!
Hi,
Where can I buy this setup? How much does it cost?
Regards,
Mike
Send me an email.