FreeFormFab

Prototyping Roots Manuva

Here’s an intriguing use of prototyping and laser scanning technology. Those UK Hip Hop afficionados out there will no doubt have got hold of Roots Manuva’s Slime and Reason late last year - I know I did. When I looked at the cover, I wondered how that freaky image has been made and the liner notes give it away with extra images from a white light laser scanner running across the Artist formerly known as Rodney Smith’s face and a small note thanking Metropolitan Works for its help on its creation.

Designed by graphic design duo Oscar & Ewan, the cover features a head and shoulders image showing the top of his head missing and the contents filled with green slime - as you can see. Apparently Roots came into Metro Work’s facility, had his head scanned and the scan was printed using Z-Corp’s Spectrum Z510 to create a master that was cast by a sculptor to create a ceramic vessel filled with slime.

Source: Develop 3D

Radiohead: Video for House of Cards

Radiohead released a new video for its song House of Cards from the album In Rainbows. No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies were used to capture 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Also Watch the making-of video to learn about how the video was made and the various technologies that were used to capture and render 3D data. And see Google Code for more issues and downloads. The video was made by the Director of Technology Aaron Koblin.

Source: Google Code
Source: Blogspot

DIY 3D Laser Scanner

DAVID-Laserscanner 2.1 is an Incredibly Low-Cost (or free) 3D Scanner. All you need is a camera (e.g. web cam), a hand-held line laser (around U$25), Two plain boards in the background, a Windows PC and the software. You will need to use their fusing software if you want to rotate a model and get a fully textured 3D scan, which could then be printed in a 3D printer.

What is really exciting here is that it puts some relatively advanced reverse engineering capabilities into the hands of the consumer. Let’s say that the housing for your mobile phone has cracked, theoretically you could scan the object, repair the crack, and print out a new shell. Or perhaps it could be used to scan and modify an existing product allowing you to 3D print your customized design, or maybe you could make a clay/whatever model to scan and then print?

The site has simple instructions on how to make your scanning booth, along with other forums and a wiki. This really is an amazing free software, I would love to see images of any experiments produced.

Source: DAVID-Laserscanner

3D, Science and Cultural Heritage

The simultaneous progress of computing, also of physics and chemistry have modified since about three decades the study and the restoration or the reconstitution of the artistic heritage. Archeology, applied to objects, to architecture and to the techniques of the past, has particularly benefited from new refinements in the analysis of materials, their use and workmanship since prehistory up to the 20th century (industrial archeology).

The most spectacular aspect of the use of computing for this sort of cultural heritage is, without doubt, the creation of 3D images and animations which open a dynamic window on the past. This is very attractive for the public, but also very useful for the specialist in view of the validation, reconstitution, restoration, replication, etc. In our event, open to everybody, we would like to present the main technologies, at present in use for the analysis, the reconstitution and the archiving of the cultural heritage, especially in the domain of the materials and the 3D.

Concrete examples will be presented in the exhibition: images, videos, computer animations, digital and physical models, stereoscopic displays. And specialists - archaeologists, historians, computer scientists, physicists, chemists, engineers - will present their works through lectures. The exhibition and the conference will be also displayed on the Internet, and a little bilingual (French-English) DVD catalogue will be edited.

• Place: Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Métiers, Metz, Lorraine, France.
• Exhibition: Wednesday 19 to Sunday 23 of October, 2008.
• Conference: Saturday 22 and Sunday 23, November, 2008.

Source: Arsmathematica

DAVID Laserscanner

DAVID-Laserscanner is a very low-cost system for contact-free scanning of 3d objects. The only hardware requirements are a simple commercial hand-held laser and a standard camera. The scanner is developed by Simon Winkelbach en Sven Molkenstruck.