Using Lasers And Range Finders To Digitize Objects 50
esoteric0 writes: "Those boys at Stanford are at it again: They created some new algorithms for 'combining multiple range and color images, allow us to reliably and accurately digitize the external shape and surface characteristics of many physical objects.' " It's not just a mouthful -- they've created a cool digitized version of buildings, maps, and Michelangelo's David. Ever wonder what his toe looks like when digitized at .05mm?
Flashback... (Score:3)
If we only could... (Score:4)
Greetings Program (Score:2)
Master Control myself! But really, this technology
has been around since 1977. Disney brings
us one of those excellent "historical documents"
refered to as Tron. There we see digitizing
people has been around for a lot longer then
some stafford punks would like us to believe.
Anyhow, I am off to suit up and get ready for
a cycle race or two and hopefully I can slam
my disc right through the MC. Remember, the
users have all the power!
Pragma: nocache & don't email it (Score:3)
Hmph. Let's email the picutes to HIM.
Where this technology is headed... (Score:1)
Oops, wrong link! (Score:1)
Re:Where this technology is headed... (Score:1)
Re:This is old news (Score:1)
Ars Technica has a feature (Score:3)
Ha, found it! (Score:1)
Re:Pragma: nocache & don't email it (Score:3)
If you want your own reproduction, go and make one. Michelangelo's copyright, if any, has expired. No one is hoarding David. It's here, open for everyone to copy.
OTOH Harry Potter's hasn't, so you can't OCR his books. Sorry.
Re:Pragma: nocache & don't email it (Score:1)
Re:Ars Technica has a feature (Score:3)
tc>
Re:Disney & SGI (Score:1)
Applications in Space Exploration (Score:2)
Commercial Viability (Score:2)
Their CMMs are for a completely different market though...more manufacturing oriented.
recycling bottles... (Score:1)
UMass is too. (Score:2)
Ascender II Project [umass.edu]
How is this new? (Score:2)
The visual effects industry regularly makes models and puts them in a 3D scanner to get a basic mesh to work from. Also, the vfx industry regularly takes full lidar sweeps of outdoor sets to more easily do match-moves, make mattes, and such. For example, see: http://www.vfxpro.com/.getarticle/.772 954741 [vfxpro.com] and http:/ /www.digitalpostproduction.com/Htm/Features/ScanMa ster/ScanMasters.htm [digitalpos...uction.com]
Heck, do a search for 3D scanner, and you come up with tons of hits...here's a couple:
So can someone please tell me what the big news is? Is is the resolution, I take it?...That IS pretty small and pretty cool...
Re:Applications in Space Exploration (Score:2)
Re:How is this new? (Score:2)
Copyright Issues (Score:1)
While the point that this is silly is well taken, I don't quite think this is worthy of knee-jerk copyright paranoia or, say, a Jon Katz writeup, until more information comes to light.
And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
Re:Anna Kournikova (Score:1)
___
automatic Quake maps... (Score:1)
Automatic Quake maps for every place you've ever been!
Not to mention, instant surveillance for the spooks. Forget taking a few pictures and trying to by-hand extrapolate where the secret passages in a building are. Just wander through it with a mapping briefcase, and in the resulting data look for unusually thick walls and stuff.
Re:Anna Kournikova (Score:1)
Re:Applications in Space Exploration (Score:2)
It's been done to the good ol' Earth a number of times (including doing it from space). There are prospecting companies that use exactly this kind of detailed information in their search for natural resources (oil, minerals etc). Geologists use the same approach to search for ancient craters - even below water using sonar.
Since it's just radar and sonar all over again, most of the underlying technology has been around since WWII - it's just been refined to a point few probably imagined possible or worthwhile.
Re:automatic Quake maps... (Score:1)
Re:How is this new? (Score:1)
Re:Anna Kournikova (Score:2)
Why do more and more people insist on using java for a simple link to a picture? To prevent a wget by a happy surfer? To play games? Me thinks a patch to wget for snarfing addresses out of javascript is in order so one could assemble a viewable page for one's own viewing with a simple browser.
"I'm going to have to put you on the game grid!" (Score:1)
Wow! just like in TRON (Score:1)
meshing for fun and meshing for science (Score:3)
This type of work (attempting to detect very small scale irregularities in materials) is far different than modelling an item and creating a 3 dimensional picture of that object, or creating a flashy new quake 3 skin .
Kudos to these guys for using (and creating) some really complex algorithms. Being in the field of 3D visualizations , I can appreciate the amount of time, energy and brainpower which go into a project such as this.
*penguin_nipple stands and applaudes*
"Those boys at Stanford"? (Score:2)
To the article submitter who referred to "Those boys at Stanford", have you ever thought that maybe, just maybe, some of those Stanford researchers might not be boys?
Now the project link [stanford.edu] appears to be slashdotted, so I can't actually confirm that the project doesn't feature all "boys", but I suspect that this is not the case. And even if it is, I think it would be better not to emphasize this in light of some of the recent Slashdot articles about gender issues [slashdot.org].
Maybe I'm overreacting, but I'd like to see the day when more than 5% of my Computer Science class is female, and I don't think girls hearing about "Those boys at Stanford" will help that.
Re:Applications in Space Exploration (Score:1)
The problems with mesh... (Score:2)
Oh, fine you say, thats the same as 3D studio uses, thats swell, right? wrong.
During the past year I have painstakingly reverse-engineering the childrens toy the bumble ball. This was done all in Mechanical Desktop 4 and Inventor 2 [autodesk.com].
Because of the details involved with the interior mechanics, I, along with my partner, when we turned to 3d studio to produce an animation, we found that mesh is nooo substitute for extrutions and constraints. Since the entire bumble ball is round, and all its features as well, the triangle constructions were autrotious. When we made a 3d model out of it using Stereo Lithography (SLA) it wasn't at all as nice as we had expected.
And then I looked over to all the other groups who were also reverse engineering things, and saw they're troubled 3d studio projects, and i simply refused to use it. I was happily rewarded when I was given the oportunity to use inventor 2, which, in accordance with autodesks file formats, is built on extrutions and constraints. Mmmmm...
Later into the year, when we were nearing completion, i saw what some students had '3d scanned', and it was a mess. What happens is that the scanner doesnt pick up a chamfer or a c' sink hole or an array, the object imports as a mesh. Mesh's might be swell to look at, but they're worthless to work with.
Ok, i'm done ranting. Oh, and by the way, I'm a sophmore in high school.
---
And please dont comment on my spelling..
And it never will. (Score:2)
Take the USA for example. The Constitution says that authors' exclusive rights must be "for limited times"; it doesn't say how limited. Limited to 999,999 years? Still limited.
The Walt Disney Company has been taking advantage of this loophole for years. Every time the copyright on early Mickey Mouse cartoons gets close to expiring, Disney just buys a 20-year retroactive extension.
Re:How is this new? (Score:1)
Re:"Those boys at Stanford"? (Score:1)
Good for VR, finally! (Score:1)
Re:Greetings Program (OT) (Score:1)
Public domain (Score:2)
That's what public domain means.
Marc LeVoy (Score:2)
Re:Public domain (Score:1)
Re:The problems with mesh... (Score:1)
You have problems with 3D studio? Perhaps they have nothing to do with meshes. 3D Studio is not the best program for mesh-modeling anyway.
mesh is nooo substitute for extrutions and constraints.
You can do extrusions with meshes, they are one operation of many that you can do on meshes.
i saw what some students had '3d scanned', and it was a mess
They didnt tweak it manually? Then of course its a mess. There is no 100% automatic way to 3D-scan things. The stanford article mentions the places that are hard to get to. This has got nothing to do with meshes. BTW, we (Hammes software) model everything manually and dont scan things, thats faster for us, since we dont need high resolution.
Oh, I am not the only one liking polygons:
Just last weekend I was at LinuxTag, the largest european Linux exhibition. There was someone from blender giving demonstrations. All the demonstrations invloved polys. He himself said that for most of the jobs he prefered them to other modeling methods.
In the newest edition of the German magazine "3D Live" there is a long, excellent article how to model a high-quality seagull for use in a cinema film in softimage, including of course exact texture coordinates. The author uses a polygon mesh.
Re:"I'm going to have to put you on the game grid! (Score:1)
Re:Public domain (Score:1)
Derivative works is an ambiguous definition and is open for abuse. GPL leverages copyright law to keep people honest.
Re:The problems with mesh... (Score:1)
Polygons are just that - polygons. Theyre a bad approximation of any object, just like pixels won't support arbitary scaling up of an object with no quality loss. They are simply the easiest form of geometry to render.
Perhaps you should take a look at products like GeoMagic Wrap, which can semi-automatically create spline models from point-clouds of triangulated meshes. You will, of course, pay big bucks for this (though if youve already shelled out for MD and 3DS Max, you can obviously afford it.
A set of discrete points, joined up with straight lines, unless the points are closer together than the size of the smallest possible feature on your model, (probably in the order of a few molecules wide) or the smallest detail your cutting head can make, will never give you an accurate 'copy' of a physical object. The amount of data generated is formidable anyway.
Even in Hollywood, you generally can't just scan in a model, throw some bones in it and call it jar jar binks. Polygons don't make for good animation fodder, mainly because of the sheer amount of data to manipulate.
I have seen some interesting papers on creating subdivision surfaces to fit point-cloud or dense-mesh data, but the results weren't all that impressive to me.
You would be best to use your mesh scans for reference, and create models probably using NURBS for manufacturability.
Re:How is this new? (Score:1)
Re:The problems with mesh... (Score:2)
This is really nothing new, in fact a lot of the old B-Rep (Boundary Representation, defining the containing surface of a shape) vs. CSG (Constructive Solid Geometry, defining how a shape is built up from geometric primitives) battle centered around the fact that the models have different strengths.
In fact, this argument predates 3-D modelling - if you've ever dealt with early "stupid" CAD translators (AutoCAD's being a prime example), you know that there's a *huge* difference between defining a 3-D surface with IGES entity type 102 (IIRC) - the "copious data" type, defining a gazillion points along a path, and a conic equation for that path. The latter is more accurate, infinitely scalable, and takes up a lot less space, unfortunately, the former is easier. (Try building an NC program to cut a surface from a gazillion points and you'll soon realize two things: 1) It's a great way to take a very expensive high speed machine tool and make it *very* slow, and 2) you will have to jump through all kinds of izarre hoops to handle streaming the data, since the poor controller does NOT have enought memory for this kind of abuse.
Of course data formats matter here.
Don't forget the 3D Printer (Score:1)
They make solid-object printers... they have a couple of competitors, but I can't remember their names off-hand.