From: svellek <s.vellekoop@hot.a2000.nl>
To: 3DS Max mailing list <3dsmax@engramdigital.com>
Subject: Re: Modeling objects using 3D 'tracing' hardware
Date: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 11:57 AM

Hi there,
I own a Microscribe 3D and a Cyberware M-15 laserscanner. The laserscanner is a
cool toy to impress clients, but you need very expensive software to convert the
pointcloud-data to a usable model, and even then it takes a very long time and a
lot of skill to make the program do so. Making a single scan takes only 17 seconds
but manipulating the data a couple of days sometimes even over a week. One scan
isn`t enough because the laser can`t reach into holes in the model, so you have to
combine multiple scans under different angles. The object you`re gonna scan can`t
be reflective, black or made from glass, cloth, furry etc. (in short: it has to be
white)
The Microscribe is a very nice piece of equipment. It`s relatively cheap, you can
use it on allmost any surface and the amount of data you digitize is the amount of
data you get, nothing more nothing less. But also for the microscribe you need
software, but it`s a lot cheaper then the laserscan-software.
As far as I know, Rhino, Form-Z and Amapi support the microscribe straight out
from box. For MAX you need a special plugin. There are 2 of them, both from
Ghost3D  (http://www.ghost3D.com/gt_software.htm), MicroscribeMAX and Scribe-it! .
MicroscribeMAX is digitizing only, Scribe-it! comes with Surf-it! , a much better
version of surfacetools. With these plugins you can digitize polygons, meshstrips
and splines. The spline option is the most usefull. After digitizing the object as
a set of splines you apply Surf-it! (or surfacetools) to generate the skin. This
way you only have to digitize a couple of lines to generate  the complete mesh.
This method is very fast and you can add as many datail as you want at the exact
place you want.

Sjors


CATI wrote:

> Aloha!
>
> The MicroScribe 3D is the low end of a series of 3D digitizing products
> available from about a dozen companies.  There's nothing less expensive
> that I know of.
>
> Actually, the most valuable part of this device is the software app that
> converts the "cloud of points" into a usable surface (or series
> thereof)!  The MicroScribe 3D works well, but exceedingly slowly....
>
>

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