ZBrushCentral

Experiences 3d Scanners

Community
#1

I imagine 3d printers are a more logical choice for zbrush users, but i’m in a situation where it would be interesting to use 3d scanners.

At work there is a restoration departement that handles art made in stone/wood/metal and so on.

Me(IT) and an IT collegue were wondering if using 3d scanners would be interesting for that department. Partially to have visual representations for the public online (thinking of 360 turntables) and also to be able to try out non destructive restoration procedurs in digital on the scanned model.

Now i’ve seen some scanners in very different price ranges, 2000$ -> 50.000$.
And I was wondering if anyone had experience with any 3d scanners so far.
In terms of price/quality/ease of use/utility…

#2

I don;t have any experience with ‘all-in-one’ commercial scanners but have been playing with the DAVID laser scanner software.

With DAVID you buy the camera and laser separately so quality depends on how much you want to spend. Gaining good scans also requires experimentation but good scans can be had.

One of the members of the forum, Hal, is a student in Italy working on restoration. Note that I think he uses a ~$1000 firewire camera and a green focusable laser worth around 175 euros (most other users on the forum use much cheaper webcams and lasers).

Here is a thread where he comments on his use of DAVID in restoration and presentation.

In this thread he comments on DAVID in comparison with other (bottom of the scale) commercial products.

And in this thread are some results of scans he has done using DAVID.

#3

Thanks for the info.
I skimmed through the info a bit, seems like a really cheap way to do scans, but the extra work involved isn’t so appealing in a work environment where you need to pay people to spend time on it. The more is done automatically the better ofcourse, but I know that comes at a price :wink:

I’m amazed by the results he got though, I’ll be reading it a bit more thoroughly now.

I had already gotten some information (conflicting information) from cgtalk threads about the nextengine scanner , which is also a cheap one, but it’s very limited in use for my company’s need , a portable device would be the optimal choice, but those are the ones in the 50.000$ category.

Thanks again bonecradle.