New user....some of my scans

[JRdezigns]

Hey all. I've been lurking around here for about 9 months or so trying to figure this out between school and internship and I finally had some time to sit down and get this to work really well.. My name is James I'm from NY but go to the University of Cincinnati in Ohio for industrial design. I can see this software being invaluable to someone like me... I original started to mess with this to scan in my 1/5 scale clay model I made last quarter for school. Lets say it didn't turn out to well with the equipment I had...
This was my first attempt about 6 months ago with a web cam I had laying around and a laser level from home depot total cost $10 US...
I realized immediately I would need some refined equipment to get the results I wanted so this would have to wait until I had some free cash and time.
I wanted to scan my clay model to build over it so I would have an accurate 3D alias model as well. Here are images of the scan the clay model, the model in primer,this was the stage I scanned it at. Also a a pic of the finished and painted physical model and a digital render of the Alias model.... I ended up using images and blue prints I made in Illustrator to build the 3D model... The final model is about 30 inches in length. I don't have any pictures of how I set it up but I used the table as one panel and placed a piece of MDF board 90 degrees to that as the other wall to form the calibration corner, then I just mounted my camera accordingly and scanned by hand..

more images and some of my other work can be seen on my blog here http://sketchbowl.blogspot.com/

My first scans

The clay and primed model

Painted 1/5 scale model

[JRdezigns]

Looks like I'll have to break this post up.. added the 3D model here..

Digital rendered model..

So my next attempt was with a logitech 9000 camera and a $4 laser line I found at harbor freight. I needed to get the line thinner so I glued some razors over the line and got a pretty thin line. The only problem now was the line wasn't as powerful as I would have liked... I scanned in an iron man Slur pee cup I found at 7-11. The results where promising.

Scan

setup

-James-

[JRdezigns]

So for the last week I have been messing with my setup on and off after work and I got these results with the same logitech 9000 camera and one of the focusable laser lines from deals extreme...I also mounted the laser to a egg timer i got for $10 locally. Here are some pics of my setup and the piece I scanned. It is from the Moebius Iron Man model kit. My plans are to scan the entire thing and rebuild it using alias/ solidworks so I can prototype some pieces using the mill at school and various 3D printing technologies available to me... We'll see how far that goes...It will be a lot of work and time intensive but it will be cool when its done....I hope If I don't get tied up with school work when I get back..

my setup, its crude but works

My setup

the chest piece. primered white

The full model.

-James-

[JRdezigns]

And what you have been waiting for the final scans. I really like this software and have been seriously contemplating buying the license. ( Any chance of a student Discount.
I did export the low res meshes and messed around with them in Meshlab but there just isn't enough detail in the low res scan for what I need.

A few views of the scans. I left one of the scans un smoothed. the one on the left.. the rest had settings 2,2,2. The un smoothed definitely has more detail but a little bumpy...

Alignment with shapefusion. This was just using the automatic alignment. It works really well..

And the final merged mesh....

-James-

[BJ64]

Hi James,

You got those results with a Logitech Pro 9000 and a DealExtreme focusable (4 dollar) laser? Ouch... I've been trying to get the same results for a couple of weeks now. I've posted some scan results etc over on viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1139&start=45. As you can see, I get a lot of corrugation in my scans.

I'm impressed at the clarity of your scans, even though you are only using an egg-timer as a motor-drive. I tried the same thing with a 1 hour kitchen timer, but I found the mechanism was a bit clunky and jerky. So, I've been playing around with a small battery-operated motor and gearbox, but I still haven't got a good smooth motion going yet.

If you get the chance, would you mind posting the Logitech Pro 9000 settings that you're using while scanning? I think I'm still doing something wrong, or my Laser line is just too darn thick. It's supposed to be one of the DealExtreme focusable ones, but all 3 that I bought from them seem to be 'prefocused' - I can't focus them myself, and the Laser line looks rather thick...

BJ

[Khalid Khattak]

The Best results i have seen (After hal, Greg and Gunter)... I am also curious what you did before/during and after scanning...

[JRdezigns]

BJ from what I can tell your laser is to big. I had similar results when I had my thicker laser.

As for what I did pre, during and post scans is as follows.

Painted the object with krylon matte white paint...
Set the camera to 1600x1200 resolution. and kept it at the default 5fps. can't go any higher at this resolution.
Calibrated the camera..
Next with the lights on went in and focused the camera manually to the object I was scanning. in this case the chest piece.
Next turned off the lights,
these are the settings I used. I found these out through about an hour of messing them.
Brightness 448
Contrast 672
Saturation 0
Sharpness 4478
Wht Balance 7322
Focus- manually done, might vary depending on camera position.
On the next tab.
Exposure 1/32 (s)
Gain 9961
60 mhz

I scanned from the bottom up this is the motion my timer moved in, so I'm stuck with it..
I made 4-6 passes on each view without changing the angle or side of the laser. I didn't touch anything except to reset the timer.
each pass probably took 30-45 seconds? I'm not sure on this amount. i'll time it when i get home..
each pass was between 4.6-5.4 fps according to the display in david.

The intersection angle started at 13 degrees and ended at 35 degrees. from bottom to top.
the laser line was 4 px. everything else was green. not sure what the numbers where.
this is in the latest release of david

hope this helps.If you have any more question let me know.

-James-

[hal]

Hello JRdezigns,

We can clearly see your improvement in these scans, across the time and the experimentation with David.
Compliments for your great scan result This is the best use of a kitchen timer and a Logitech WebCam. Cool stuff
I'm impatient to see finished your Iron Man scan project (time ago I've planned the same scan-project, but never finished )

Compliments and Best Regards,
Mattia

EDIT: my mistake, forget this sentence.
p.s.: I suggest to you to upload the images as Attachments into the posts, so your images can be visible into the Gallery of David Forum. Thanks.

[JRdezigns]

Thanks Mattia. Hopefully I will finish this iron man project. Depending on my work load next quarter at school I may not have much time. 15 hrs a day in studio cuts into my personal project time.. But I have motivation now after getting such awesome results..

As for the attachments I saw one of them up in the gallery. They where uploaded as attachments so hopefully they will get shared. Thanks

-James-

[BJ64]

Hi James,

Thanks for your reply re the camera settings. Your settings and proceudure are basically what I use and do.

I think I still have to fiddle a bit with the relative heights of the Object , Camera, and Laser above the ground plane as some of my values show as yellow during the scan. I also notice that the 'a' (angle) readout goes red towards the end of the scan once it drops under about 23 degrees or so. Now that I think of it, that's where the deepest corrugations seem to occur in the mesh.

I'm still thinking that my Laser line is way too thick and that's whats causing the heavy corrugations in my scans, particularly when the Laser angle starts going out of range. This has just given me an idea - I should probably increase my Calibration sheets from 60 to around 70-80 so that the angle values at the start and end of the scan stay within acceptable limits.

More experimentation required here me thinks

Just a thought - you should be able to get your scan to go the other way (from top to bottom) if you mount your egg-timer on the left-hand side of your pole as shown in your pic. That way, the Laser unit will go up when you start advancing the minutes dial

BJ

PS - I'm not sure what Mattia meant regarding uploading your images as attachments (?) - I can see them perfectly.

[hal]

Hello BJ64,
my mistake: I've suppose that the images were placed into the text, not uploaded as attachments.
But I done a mistake. Sorry.

Bye, Mattia

[BJ64]

No sweat Mattia - we all make boo-boo's sometimes LoL

I was just wondering if I had done something different to see them

BJ

[Sven]

Hi James,
Obviously your results are great! But I see some problems:

Calibrated the camera..
Next with the lights on went in and focused the camera manually to the object I was scanning. in this case the chest piece.

You should find the perfect focus, then calibrate!

Sharpness 4478

That is an artificial sharpness. Value 0 should be right.

My question is, do you get even better results when you follow "my" recommendation about Sharpness, or is your way the best way? Have you tried with "Sharpness=0"?
Anyone else using the Sharpness?

Thanks!
Sven

[JRdezigns]

Sven,
I will be scanning later tonight. I'll give the sharpness a try and see if it changes.
The reason I refocus after calibration is because the camera is focused to the corners during calibration and not the object. When I place the object in the view after calibration it is out of focus a bit.
I figured you would want the laser line on the object in focus to get as clear a line as possible. I haven't tried it your way but I will give it a try and see how it works.. Thanks

-James-

[joecnc2006]

Sometimes the focus change could actually change the relationship of the calibration panel and the scans, you can place the object in front and focus on it, then remove to calibrate this way it does not change, and the correct scale retained for the object.