The app works by mounting the Structure Sensor to an iPad and then roving the camera eye every which way over the subject you are taking a 3D picture of.

You could theoretically take a 3D picture of yourself but you’ll have to be sure to get every angle, not blink and hold the camera steady. Best to get a friend to help you with this instead. But just think of all the fun you’ll have turning you and your friends into virtual characters for gaming…or bobble head dolls.

It works by uploading captured images into A 3D cloud such as Sketchfab and then implementing the image in a game, mobile app or downloading onto a 3D printer.

This kind of tech used to require an expensive 3D scanning unit that was tied to a game console or a computer. Now anyone with an iPad and the Structure Sensor can create 3D models using objects they see around them. This opens up a world of possibilities for engineers, designers, inventors, architects and manufactures. One example might be an architect creating a 3D tour of what the building will look like inside and out before it’s ever built or an interior designer creating a virtual room to display their work.

Using the app to create objects for Oculus Rift is another possibly cool application here. Occipital spokesman Adam Rodnitzky pointed out that virtual objects can interact precisely with the geometry of the physical world in Oculus, including occlusions. Fans of the Battle Star Galactica prequel Caprica will most likely get a kick out of a game that uses their own precise likeness in a hologram world.

As you can see in the pictures above, the augmented reality technology of Occipital can capture some pretty high quality imaging using the ItSeez3D app as well. Printing exact objects into the real world mainly depends on the quality of the 3D printer. However, objects kept in virtual reality can remain intact.

The Structure Sensor that works with ItSeez3D was launched on a Kickstarter campaign this last fall. That campaign raised over $100k in the first 3 hours and continued on rake in a total of nearly $1.3M from over 3500 backers. That campaign challenged developers to create reality games and mobile apps using the Structure SDK.

“We recognized the immense potential of Structure Sensor early on, and Itseez3D represents our efforts to weave advanced computer vision technology,” says Itseez3D creator Victor Erukhimov.

While the app is designed for iPad, a good hacker will be able to rig it for use on any iOS device, including a smartphone. It can technically hook up with any iOS device that has a Lightning dock connector. Occipital is also considering making a sensor to fit specifically on phone cameras so users can make 3D models of any object on the go and then upload that to the cloud to, say, 3D print it at a later date. While Structure Sensor will be required to scan images, users can still download Itseez3D to view sample models.

While this is the first third party app offering from Occipital, they’ve made it easy for more like it coming down the line. Developers are able to use the Structure SDK to create an app in Xcode and hit deploy. Occipital also bundles a few other in-house apps for gaming and other applications to use with the Structure Sensor. The actual Structure Sensor from Occipital runs for $379, or $499 with the app bundle. ItSeez3D is free in the App Store.

Not sure Alex or I need a 3D bobble head of ourselves on our desks (trust, weirder stuff turns up all the time here), but it is kinda cool to think of playing myself in a virtual game or walking through and seeing what a building will look like in 3D before it’s built.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The company’s mission is to ‘reach and teach’ a wide audience on the use of CAD software and creating ‘fun and meaningful’ things like jewelry, toys, car parts and whatnot, using 3D printers.

Kai Backman, Tinkercad’s co-founder and CEO, explains that one only needs a browser and a couple of minutes to use its browser-based software and have a 3D project ready for printing.

“We use game-like quests to teach what we call ‘design literacy’, understanding the design of physical things. By lowering the barrier of entry, our users have been able to create and print a wide variety of awesome items”, he adds.

Tinkercad is free, and encourages sharing designs under a creative commons license. Once users create designs with the software, which seems pretty easy to use based on my rudimentary testing, they can order designs directly from printing services likeShapeways and i.Materialise or download STL files to use other printing services or personal 3D printers like Makerbot’s Thing-O-Matic.

If you’re into this kind of stuff, check Tinkercad out, and I would also urge you to also visit GrabCAD.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The project is two-pronged. First, Spark will exist as a platform that users can build upon and use to render 3D prints. Based on this platform, Autodesk will produce a simple stereolithographic printer for an estimated $5,000. The plans will be available to anyone who wants to build the unit themselves.

According to a blog post on the site:

Spark is an open 3D printing platform that will make it easier for hardware manufacturers, software developers, materials scientists, product designers, and more to participate in and benefit from this technology. Spark connects digital information to 3D printers in a new and streamlined way, making it easier to visualize prints and optimize them without trial and error, while also broadening the range of materials that can be used for printing. And because the Spark platform is open, everyone can use its building blocks to further push the limits of 3D printing and drive fresh innovation.

Autodesk needs to enter the desktop printer space. Stratasys announced solid revenue thanks to their acquisition of MakerBot and 3D Systems, another industrial maker, is busy trying to grab the home user. Why? Because industrial printers are prohibitively costly and are sold with a lot of overhead. Home 3D printers are basically commodity devices, like any HP inkjet.

Here’s hoping that the Spark will help grow the stereolithography market considerably and that it becomes the Android of 3D printing. Printers need standards and given the massive changes going on in the community, a bit of stability will be quite welcome.

Source: Techcrunch.com

The Structure isn’t just any 3D sensor though. It’s an incredibly small one – so small, in fact, that it can onto the back of your iPad (note: it’s compatible with any iOS device with a Lightning port) and connect without completely killing your battery life. While run-of-the-mill users can use the Structure and its early batch of companion apps to scan objects for printing at Shapeways or to fling balls for virtual kittens to chase around the 3D representation of a room, Occipital was really gunning to pick up developer support this time.

It’s certainly a nice little show of financial validation for the team, especially considering this is their first big foray into consumer-facing hardware and the fact that they didn’t exactly need the cash in the first place. At the time, CEO Jeff Powers remarked to me that since the company still had money left over from its previous funding round, the Kickstarter was meant in large part to be a marketing tool that would help gauge the demand for its curious gadget. The team originally set out to raise $100,000 when the campaign officially kicked off in mid-September, and early momentum put the project over the top in just three hours.

But could the project’s popularity ultimately prove to be detrimental? After all, I can think of a few projects that ultimately took flak because overwhelming demand outweighed the producers’ ability to deliver on what they promised. For now though, the team remains positive about its chances at delivering the Structure to 3D-hungry developers and tinkerers – to hear Occipital marketing director Adam Rodnitsky tell it, this current level of demand won’t affect shipping schedules “at all”.

“We put a lot of effort into setting up our supply chain well in advance to make sure we could deliver on what we promised to backers,” he said in an email. “We’re ready to meet this demand… and hopefully much more.”

In case you haven’t been keeping tabs on the Structure’s voyage from curious concept to crowdfunding darling, you can check out our interview with CEO Powers and demo of the Structure in action below.

Source: Techcrunch.com

A few years later I got a dot-matrix printer and Print Shop. Up went the long, flowery banners (“Welcome home, Mom!”) and birthday cards. Fast-forward further and I was using a primitive desk top publishing app to make flyers for my “Acoustic Folk Poetry” band that I started with my buddy Rick. Then I mastered CDs, made DVDs of my wedding, and fired up a 3D printer that could churn out copies of my head. All of those were like making love outside Hogwarts – surprisingly close to magic. That changed over the past decade – I was probably most excited by the iPhone – but almost everything we see these days is an iteration of the old CPU/screen/input system paradigm. Nothing since has truly amazed me. Until now.

Now we have real magic. It’s here. It’s not always perfect nor is it quite consumer-ready but the $1,400 Makerbot Digitizer is one of the coolest things I’ve seen this decade.

The Digitizer is essentially a turntable, a webcam, and some lasers. It uses Makerbot’s conveyor app to control the motion of objects on the turntable and then scans the points generated by the laser during the rotation. It works best with light, matte objects like ceramics, clays, and non-glossy plastics but with a little glare-reducing baby powder you can scan just about everything as long as its taller than two inches and small enough to fit on the platform.

To scan you simply load up the Digitizer software – an excellent, intuitive system that should be a model for all 3D printer and scanner makers – and, once you calibrate the system using an included, laser-cut object, you press Digitize. Nine minutes later you have a scan. The system interpolates missing information which can be good or bad, depending on the lighting, and then asks if you want to take a photo of your object. You then slide away a filter over the camera to reveal the bare webcam, shoot your, photo, and then share or print your object.

The process is addicting. When you put one object on you want to put another and another. Sharing these objects is an amazing feeling – it’s essentially the equivalent of dot-matrix teleportation. It will be amazing, then, when we get to the laser printed version of object teleportation.
Are the scans perfect? No. Because of vagaries of materials, reflections, and ambient light a perfect scan is impossible. This scan, for example is far from a perfect replica of the original statute. The statue itself has tarnished to an even, matte finish but even with some effort I couldn’t get all of the detail. The Digitizer is like a mimeograph machine rather than a true scanner. It grabs only the important parts of an image and reproduces the rest the best it can. For example, the scanner couldn’t tell what to do with the lens on this OMO camera, below, and so essentially gave up, filling it in. I was able to scan the lens by turning the camera on its side.

Take a look at this statue scan. I printed it fairly small just as a test but it grabbed a certain amount of detail on the statue but elided quite a bit more. In the end I created an approximate, not an exact, copy of the statue. Or take this beer stein for example. The handle sort of disintegrated but I suspect I could have gotten a far better scan if I dusted it down in baby powder. Scanning requires work and trade-offs but, in the end, you get approximately what you’re looking for.

Is the system perfect? Yes and no. When it works it works wonderfully. However, I’ve had some minor hang-ups in OS X that the Makerbot team as seen and is working on fixing. That said, I got a good scan 95% of the time and most of the errors were my own fault caused by excitement or ignorance of good scanning technique. You can see more of my scans on Thingiverse.

At $1,400 the system is also expensive. While I didn’t take apart the case it’s clear that the R&D and engineering that went into this – plus the fact that it was made entirely in Brooklyn – add a premium price to what is essentially a solid webcam and some Class 1 lasers. The hardcore among you will scoff at the price but when you want your scanner to work the first time, right out of the box, this product can’t be beat. There are better, far more expensive scanners out there but this hits the sweet spot at the intersections affordability, usability, and utility.

Can you do this all yourself? Absolutely. A Kinect, a webcam, some lasers, and even your iPhone can create passable 3D models. But nothing I’ve seen can consistently produce quality results in a package that is nearly foolproof and surprisingly robust. I could imagine an archeologist taking this device to digs, an artist setting this up in a studio, or an engineer using this to model aerodynamics. It’s tough enough to withstand rough treatment by kids and adults and the quality, while in no way perfect, is close enough for the vast majority of uses.

What the Digitizer gets right is that it hides away all of the vagaries of 3D scanning and just leaves the magic. The system itself looks like something Jeff Bridges would use in Tron and the lasers, the ticking turntable, and the black case make it clear that this object is from the near future. This product leaves almost every other home computing advance in the dust and I feel like a kid again, amazed at hard drives, printers, and the ability to create things out of thin air.

Source: Techcrunch.com

Personne ne veut rater le train de l’impression 3D. Microsoft non plus. L’éditeur annonce le lancement de sa première application d’impression 3D pour Windows 8.1. Et si l’OS supporte en natif les systèmes d’impression 3D, il lui manquait encore une interface de création. C’est désormais chose faite avec 3D Builder. 

3D Builder propose à l’utilisateur de piocher dans un catalogue varié d’objets et de pièces en 3D (boutons, briques, clip…), de régler l’échelle, faire tourner et ajuster les mesures de l’objet à imprimer. La prise en charge de la création de plusieurs objets en une seule session d’impression est également au programme.

Disponible gratuitement sur le Windows Store, 3D Builder n’a cependant pas pour vocation à se substituer aux logiciels de création d’impression 3D du marché comme ceux proposés par Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes ou Stratasys, Materialise et netfabb. A noter que le support des logiciels 3D spécialisés 3D Systems, MakerBot et TierTime sont prévus fin décembre.

Source: Www.journaldunet.com