I have been blown away recently by 123D Catch by Autodesk - and it’s free! I first came across it on the iPad. You take a series of photos from different angles of an object - it can be anything from a small toy to a complete building, including images of people if they keep still long enough - and those then get sent to “the Cloud”. Sent back in a few minutes is a complete textured 3D model which you can display and view from all angles on the iPad.
Better yet, you can download the desktop version of 123D Catch where you can re-download your model and edit it, removing unwanted pieces and then save out as an OBJ file, so that you can use it in your favourite 3D software. Or you can upload your photos from a higher res camera and create the 3D model from those. And all free! The results will obviously depend on your original images (garbage in, garbage out…) but I have already produced some interesting and useful results.
If you ever wanted a desktop digitizer and couldn’t afford one, this may well be the next best thing!
Thanks for the link, Phil. Looks like a great tool.
Be sure to read the Terms of Service. For content placed in “public areas” ...
“... you automatically grant to us and our sub-licensees [edit] and our Users [/edit] the worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid-up, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right and license to have Access to, store, display, reproduce, use, disclose, transmit, view, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, broadcast, perform and display (whether publicly or otherwise), distribute, re-distribute, transmit, save and use Your Content (in whole or in part) for any reason and/or purpose (whether commercial or non-commercial) by any and all means in any and all media, forms, formats, platforms and technologies now known or hereafter devised, invented, developed or improved in connection with the Service, Autodesk Materials or our business generally.”
I hear what you say but you don’t have to put your projects into the public area, so if you want to keep control, simply don’t post to the public area. Unless I’m missing something?
And actually, the public area is a good source of some interesting models…
Thanks for the link, Phil. Looks like a great tool.
Be sure to read the Terms of Service. For content placed in “public areas” ...
“... you automatically grant to us and our sub-licensees [edit] and our Users [/edit] the worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, fully paid-up, irrevocable, non-exclusive, sublicensable (through multiple tiers) right and license to have Access to, store, display, reproduce, use, disclose, transmit, view, reproduce, modify, adapt, translate, publish, broadcast, perform and display (whether publicly or otherwise), distribute, re-distribute, transmit, save and use Your Content (in whole or in part) for any reason and/or purpose (whether commercial or non-commercial) by any and all means in any and all media, forms, formats, platforms and technologies now known or hereafter devised, invented, developed or improved in connection with the Service, Autodesk Materials or our business generally.”
I hear what you say but you don’t have to put your projects into the public area, so if you want to keep control, simply don’t post to the public area. Unless I’m missing something?
And actually, the public area is a good source of some interesting models…
Nope you’re not missing anything, but until I’ve registered and had a look I don’t know what constitutes public vs. private areas, nor do I know how “optional” optional is. Just be aware, that’s all I’m saying.
With the issues they had at sharecg a few months ago I tend to (mostly) avoid freebies and public areas now, because you never know who’s ripped a model off, and unfortunately me as the innocent user is also liable for inadvertent copyright infirngement. I had to trawl through my runtime removing everything which *could* be a ripoff. When did life get so complicated?
yeah, as I said on their video last month, Android version pleeeeeeeeeeeeease!!
Take the pics with your phone, upload to your PC, use PC version.
Won’t that work?
Yes that would work and it would probably give higher resolution results than using the built-in iPad camera, although that is very convenient to work with.
Yup, that was my intent on trying it out. Though I might get out my tripod and my point and click 10mp camera just for stability. I haven’t had a chance to play yet.
I think that their processing is limited to images of around 3 MP and it will downsize larger formats. Also as you want images from many angles, setting and resetting a tripod increases your work ten-fold for probably a limited gain. Seems to work OK with the iPad camera which I think is only around 1 MP. I am sure that you will get better results going up to 3 MP but after that, not so much.
Interesting. My assumption was that the tripod would give me a near-uniform angle as I rotated the object (rather than the camera/tripod) and that would make for a better result.
This looks like it would work well with reference photos from 3DSK… but not sure about the nudity or the usage would be covered from your 3DSK membership or not.
Interesting. My assumption was that the tripod would give me a near-uniform angle as I rotated the object (rather than the camera/tripod) and that would make for a better result.
I think it needs a static scene to work with so you need to move the camera and not the object - it uses surroundings to help place everything in 3D space. You don’t need uniform angles, you need lots of different angles. It can be used for things like buildings too (I’ve even seen a 3D cloudscape that was done with it!) where you couldn’t move the object!
