ProFORMA: Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition

By taking pictures of different angles a point cloud can be generated from the depth data which can be triangulated into a 3D model. I own a 3D printer and hope 3D scanning apps will soon be available. On the other hand, this demo is showing 3D generation by just filming the object: ▶ this video I wonder why this didn't take off.

I was at a local hackerspace and paid about $180 into a building class, but then it didn't work out and other things came up in my personal life and that of the person giving the classes. I think the $200-$300 range is where it's going to have to get to before 3d printers become wildly popular. Most people can overlook the low quality of the prints and the acetone wash if the cost of the printer is less than that of an iPad. Not everyone is going to want to use a 3d printer, but I feel like those of us who do want them but don't have them just don't feel that the price justifies the quality of current printers. The other barrier to ubiquitous 3d printer use is, in my opinion, a lack of cheap 3d scanning technology. Sure, you can use the laser line w/ turntable and camera scanner, but there are a number of issues, concavities and post-scan modeling work being the two largest I see. There are algorithms which can be used to take a webcam video feed and generate a 3d model from that, like proFORMA: ▶ this video ,but the source to that was never released. There are commercial products which can do this, but I think that until there is an open source/free option for this kind of scanning, it's going to be another barrier to people getting 3d printers.

It's rough but still pretty damn cool. Software that does this from footage can easily be in the thousands of dollars. Image the results if you pair a kinect with this: ▶ this video