The high polygon meshes it produces (along with textures) are good enough to use as a base for highly detailed, realistic models when baked to lower poly game ready meshes as normal maps.
This could speed up asset creation massively!
Devices like the Fuel 3D could be exactly what indies need to create AAA looking games in reasonable time frames.
This type of technology has never been so affordable. (and yes, the quality is over and above what 123d Catch can produce)
You need a real object to scan. Try to model an orc, a dragon, a soldier… long hour to scult it, then scann it and the clean the model.
You need to cfean the capture after (reduce the polygon number, supress un-used vertex)
So no it doesn’t speed up process. You can’t do AAA model easier.
It’s usefull for architecture, archeologie, or for your face in video game. But for everything else, you just model it in 3d on your computer.
Faster and better than the 3d scan.
It is not expensive at all when compared to other high resolution hand held scanners. $15000 +
I have created many models from scratch by sculpting a high res model and retopo-ing for real time use in Unity.
Merging high res objects in 3D Coat is easy for me. I have a lot of experience with the program so combining scans (faces, hands, feet, plants, materials, etc) to create unique models, sculpting a few details and tidying up then baking to a low poly mesh will not be a problem.
This is not spam. I have no links to Fuel 3D other than being a very excited Kickstarter backer trying to help others grab a bargain.
The kinect at least textures it while it generates the mesh and can reduce polygons before saving the mesh right in the software. The new kinect next year will be even better.
Firstly Fuel3D is hand held and wireless, so you can capture data where ever you are without needing the complete rig you would need with the kinect. Secondly this is much higher detail than kinect can manage. Even the kinect 2.0 won’t capture as much fine detail as this would. The only thing is that currently Fuel3D doesn’t support automatically merging multiple captures into a single object but that is a stretch goal if they sell enough units.
The kinect scanning requires you to move the sensor by hand, if you have a laptop you can scan wherever you want. Leap motion is also working opening up point cloud data for scanning with it. Is there a way to test the detail of these systems? When I scan with the kinect it generates meshes 500k+ vertexes and you can use a slider to reduce it down to under 1k while keeping the UV mapping/texture before outputting an OBJ. It also has sick algorithms for filling any holes in the mesh it generates and it auto uvmap/textures those areas relatively well.
Also you can scan an object, then go back and re-scan to fill in any missed areas on the first scan. Again the UV mapping being done in the kinect while scanning is huge, it may be lower res but it gives you a uv template to blend in hi rez details. Kinect also does mocap for recording bhv files.
it’s not expensif for a 3d scanner, it’s just expensif compare on the use a game developper can make with it.
You better use your money by paying a 3D artist.
I am a 3D Artist and Developer looking for a way to speed up my asset creation pipeline. I believe Fuel 3D is it.
I do also have a Kinect and I use it for capturing mocap data with iClone 5.
The Kinect is a pretty versatile tool and I find it very useful, but there is no way it can produce the type of high resolution data that the Fuel 3D can.
I usually create a high res voxel sculpt in 3D Coat, retopo and bake the high res details to a low res mesh. Normal maps are completely missed with the Kinect process (unless I am mistaken) What software do you use with yours Imbarns? I would be interested in getting my hands on it.
I have a Leap Motion too but they keep insisting that it is not a 3D Scanner and that they will not open up the point cloud data.
Where did you find this out? Also very interested…
The Fuel 3D will be awesome IMHO and I can not wait to get my hands on mine.
That’s exactly what I meant by Kinect needing a complete rig to use for 3D scanning. You need a Kinect connected to a computer with a cable and the computer running software to capture and process the colour and depth footage. That is by no means as portable as a device which is effectively an oversized camera which doesn’t need to be plugged into a computer to work. Kinect also, as you mentioned, requires waving the device around to collect the depth data for software on the PC to mangle into a continuous set of point cloud data while the Fuel 3D is a point-and-shoot method just like a normal camera. (note: the Kinect does not have any “sick algorithms” to process it’s data into point clouds or 3D meshes, custom made software on the computer does and they’re not dependent on the kinect as the algorithms would work on any set of depth color data, nor is UV mapping done “in” the Kinect, the Kinect only captures color, depth and audio data, nothing more)
Kinect’s detail is also limited by the low resolution it captures at, 640x480 does not give much detail. Fuel 3D captures at a much higher resolution than even the 1080p which Kinect 2.0 captures at. Obviously you can move the kinect closer to the object to capture finer details but you could do the same with Fuel 3D. The reason Fuel 3D doesn’t support merging multiple captures at the moment is purely down to their software not having algorithms to support it, nothing to do with the hardware. Theoretically the same software which people use to capture 3D data with the Kinect and merge multiple captures could be used with the data Fuel 3D captures.
The only downside to Fuel 3D’s hardware is that it’s not a continuous video stream but still shots, but that is fairly irrelevant for 3D object capturing. Obviously it can’t do motion capture but that is not one of it’s purposes in the first place. For low-cost motion capture Kinect certainly is the best option.
Very excited
