even the builders of the great pyramids used 3d engineering
3D scanning services goes way back, much
farther than you might probably think. Just how far? Well, try the ancient
Egyptians who had worked out a system for it when they desired replicas of the
people who had passed onto the afterlife within their community. And so they
came up with a process in which they made plaster casts of their dead’s
mummified heads. This was very novel for humanity in general as the materials
that this process required in order to accomplish a considerable degree of
accuracy included linen and plaster. Both of these were very hard to come by at
the time and so only the most affluent in society were able to scan people in
such a costly and time consuming manner.So although 3D laser scanning services feels like
the latest technology, it has been an interest of mankind that has been in
development for a very long while. As such one of the best ways to appreciate
and understand its significance and complexity is by looking back and going
through the various steps that have made it possible to reach the extent that
it has achieved. Although science fiction may lead us to assume that its
development was a complete inevitability, the reality is that real experts had
to tackle its challenges head on for a number of years so as to plant the
seeds. It is their efforts that allow us to buy a model from a store, hold a 3d
scanner in our hand and capture to our heart’s content!
One of the key players in the development of
sophisticated 3d laser scanning services, as you may had already assumed, is
the introduction of laser technology. Without it this degree of 3d scanning
services wouldn’t be nearly as accessible as we would have to rely on bulkier 3d
scanning systems such as photogrammetry where you need a series of carefully
positioned high resolution cameras. Many things had to happen up until the lead
up to 3d laser scanning services.
>In the early days of 3D scanners, namely the 1960’s,
the methods put forth with respect to it were much more simplistic than the
wondrous advances that we are seeing today. For instance there was no such
thing as software, there was only hardware to rely on. As a matter of fact,
many people reading this can probably venture a fairly good, rough guess as to
what they might have been based on.
At that time they relied primarily on the
coordinated use of projectors, cameras and lights, and as you probably may also
surmise, they required a lot of effort and patience for operators to produce,
with a considerable degree of precision, results that could be used for a
certain helpful intended purpose. There was a long way to go.
What you have to keep in mind is that this was at
the dawn of computerization. As these operating devices came into the equation,
some truly complex models could be made that were unlike anything that had been
seen before. Without it the best 3D laser scanning services were accomplished
with the implementation of what was to be called a contact probe which worked
by feeling it’s way around and in this manner data was compiled. There was real
progress being made, but as you may figure this approach in turn entailed a very
drawn out process that didn’t lend itself at all to the demands that tend to
come along with both design and production.
A contact probe is far from ideal, in addition to
being as painfully slow as it was it had to touch a thousand times to complete
its jo- It also wasn’t able to work with soft substances as in the process it
could change the shape of the object through the necessary prodding. One thing
it did do was raise the expectations that we would think we could reach.
3D laser scanning services remained rather primitive
for a number of years, up until the mid 80’s when some savvy tech people began
to figure out how to incorporate the use of laser-beams, white light and neat
shadowing tricks to come up with more precise results in considerable less
time. The real obstacle that needed to be overcome in order for it to make the
leap into the modern age lied not only in the 3d scanning service procedure per se but rather the software that
would make it possible to organize the pertinent data into an useful image, or
data map.
In this period three types of optical technologies
were available, namely area, stripe and point sensor, with stripe being the
leading contender wherein a series of 3d scans would be made from different
positions that in turn would help it ascertain what would be the dimensions of
the object being analyzed. As you can imagine reconciling the data from three
scans isn’t the easiest thing to do as you have to eliminate duplicated data
and sift through all unnecessary data points so that you end up with only the
millions of data points that define the object it question.
Although it may seem as though this would have been
a tall order, there were interested parties that invested heavily in its
development during the 80’s. The ones that stepped up to the plate were
animation companies that wanted to achieve powerful enough 3d laser scanning service
capabilities so as to be able to take real people and scan them for the sake of
applying their likeness for entertainment purposes.
They were able to develop head 3d scanning but not
full body 3d scanning services until the 90’s as there was a major problem that
3D laser scanning services was faced with, storage. While there were computers
that could process images, they were very slow and couldn’t manage very much
data as they didn’t have the storage capacity necessary to sift through the
information with true efficacy. As computers really hit the mainstream in this
decade there were dramatic increases in the storage spaces that computers could
have. This allowed for the development of greater and better 3d scanners that
could scan a much wider variety of objects and even capture the colors that
they displayed.
In the twentieth century 3D laser scanning services didn’t
receive much of any consideration, but if it would have, today it might of been
commonplace to walk into an electronics store pick up a 3D scanner as a gift
for a loved one. Regardless, it’s just a matter of time before 3d laser scanning services really picks up steam as a worthwhile hobby that anyone can
jump into and we have to thank the hard work of the engineers of the past who
make it all possible.