Feb. 12, 2015
In addition to the Structure Sensor, San Francisco based Occipital makes Skanect, a popular 3D scanning software. Occipital has just announced the release of new version of the software: Skanect 1.8.
Founded in 2008, Occipital is the creator of RedLaser barcode-scanning application (acquired by eBay in 2010) and 360 Panorama, one of the most popular panoroma apps (over 7 million downloads). In 2013, Occipital acquired ManCTL, the company behind Skanect. Skanect 3D scanning software transforms your Microsoft Kinect or Asus Xtion camera into an ultra-low cost scanner able to create full-color 3D models out of real scenes in a few minutes. That means users can easily create a 3D model without expertise in 3D modeling.
The new Skanect 1.8 includes an improved colorizer that greatly enhances the quality of color models.
"In addition to the typical bug fixes and cleanup that come with a new release, the most important upgrade is a major enhancement in the color textures of the models that are captured." says Adam Rodnitzky of Occipital. "This is particularly true when 3D models are captured with a Structure Sensor (as it gets to use the iPad's superior color camera), but the enhancements are equally impressive with other depth sensors like the Kinect, Xtion and Carmine."
It complements the previous colorizer, and offers the following new options:
- "Highest Quality" enables the new colorizer. When off, Skanect will use the previous one.
- "Resolution" selects the density of color points in the model.
- "Face Mode" optimizes the coloring process for people scanning. Make sure to start your scans when the sensor directly faces the subject, for best results.
This new colorizer can also be used to enhance the colors of 3D scans you have already captured. "Even more interesting, however, is that we've designed it so that even models captured in the past using older versions of Skanect can be reloaded and reprocessed to benefit from the improvements in texture quality that version 1.8 brings." Rodnitzky added.
Below are two before/after images that show the improvement in color textures from v1.7 to v1.8.
Skanect 1.8 also includes a number of bug fixes and performance improvements, such as:
- The rendering engine was improved and should no longer cause slowdowns when running on some non-Nvidia graphics adapters.
- Color inpainting can now handle meshes of any size.
- Offline reconstruction can now be forced, even on low-framerate scans.
Version 1.8 is already live and available for download for free here.
Occipital launched the first-ever 3D sensor for mobile devices on Kickstarter in September 2013. With Occipital's Structure Sensor attached to your mobile device, you can walk around the world and instantly capture it in a digital form. You can instantly capture 3D models of objects and people for import into CAD and for 3D printing. The project raised more than $1.29m from 3515 backers.
Occipital team has also designed Skanect Pro to work seamlessly with your Structure Sensor. With Skanect Pro you can wirelessly stream 3D scans from your Structure Sensor in real-time to your Mac or PC for rapid capture, editing, and sharing of high-quality, full-color, 3D scans. Skanect Pro is available separately for $129.
Posted in 3D Scanning
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Owners of 3D Systems Sense 1st gen scanners have been unsupported by 3D Systems because of the change to their hardware. Their software has always performed poorly at best but Skanect software works perfectly and is fast enough to provide a useable solution to the gen 1 Sense. My advice is get v1.8.4 by purchasing the pro software and you will not have an expensive paper weight.
Michael Balzer, slo 3D creators wrote at 2/13/2015 12:54:55 AM:
I have to agree whole heartily Adam, There is a test file done last night of 1.8 rc 2 on Sketchfab https://skfb.ly/CRrw to download or view, as well as Shapeways http://shpws.me/EQt5, showing off the near photo quality you can now obtain without having to resort to cloud based UV color and limited mesh detail. With slo 3D creators 4eyes, and the NEIOiMOUNT cases for the iPhone 5s, 6, and 6+ you can really obtain some fantastic HD scans at a fraction of the costs of an Artec scanner. Look for an announcement soon for the NEODiMOUNT case line.
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