companynews3D technologyproductstrainingcase studieslinkscontacts
 
 

 

HP 3D - Software to Create a Low Cost 3D Scanner

The HP-laserscanner is a very low-cost system for contact-free scanning of 3d objects. The only hardware requirements are a data projector and a vision camera. Starter kits are available to help get you scanning in a short amount of time.

davidscanner cherub

 

HP S3

davidscanner kit

Try the HP S3 scanner kits for plug and scan.

If you don't want to start searching and tinkering, the HP Starter-Kit contains all necessary hardware and software to set up your own 3d scanner!

Resolution up to 0.05mm

davidscanner scanning

How does scanning with HP work?

1. Set up background and camera
2. Calibrate your camera with one click
3. Start scanning by aiming the camera at your object and pressing a button.
4. Gaze at the 3D window and export your result to .OBJ
5. Optional: Automatically stitch several scans/meshes
     with HP-Shapefusion and export .OBJ, .STL, or .PLY

Features of HP Laserscanner

Compatible to most cameras with Microsoft Windows drivers (WDM):
You can use nearly every MS-Windows compatible camera with WDM support, like your web-cam or fire-wire camera. You can even use your camcorder if you can connect it to your PC (and if you have suitable WDM drivers).

Precise and automatic camera calibration:
It is not possible to get accurate 3d data with an uncalibrated camera. Fortunately HP provides a well-integrated and easy to use calibration for automatic computation of the camera's pose and focal length, as well as for compensation of radial lens distortions. Therefore you can accurately scan your objects with absolute scale.

Data smoothing and interpolation:
By moving the laser like a paintbrush, you can sweep over the object until the scan results are smooth and all gaps are filled. Beside that, you can use the gap interpolation and smoothing filters of HP to refine your scans.

Texture support:
You can grab a camera shot that will be used as texture. The texturized 3d model can be inspected in the 3d window. Furthermore HP exports texture coordinates, which allows you to import the textured object in third-party software.

Integrated 3d viewer:
Inspect your 3d model right after scanning with the integrated OpenGL-based 3D viewer of HP.

File export:
Save your scanned object as Alias Wavefront OBJ file. The OBJ-format is an well-established plain text format for triangle meshes and is supported by many 3d applications. (Further file formats can be exported with HP-Shapefusion.)

Features of HP-Shapefusion

With HP-Shapefusion you can merge multiple scans that were made from different sensor directions in order to get a complete textured 360 degree model. This allows you to move the object freely between different scans.

Outlier removal:
By moving a simple slider you can choose which surface segments will be removed and which will be retained. Also you can delete surface parts easily with your mouse. A preview of the result is shown in a 3D window.

Automatic and user-driven alignment:
A precise alignment of your scans is very easy. Just choose one of six different registration modes and a few seconds and mouse clicks later, you get the aligned result.

Robust surface fusion:
You can fuse/merge the aligned scans with a single mouse click. The result is a connected regular triangle mesh. Our fusion method is more than just an ordinary mesh stitching, since it calculates the average of overlapping surface parts and reduces noise and outliers.

Texture support:
In all alignment and fusion steps, textures are processed along with the 3d data. The result is a fused triangle mesh with a fused texture.

User-defined mesh resolution and mesh smoothness:
You can define the mesh resolution and smoothness value to optimize the fusion result for your intended application.

OBJ, PLY, and STL file export:
Choose between the OBJ, PLY, and STL file format to save your fusion result or your aligned and filtered 3d scans.

Advantages over other systems:

The flexible scanning technique of HP has several advantages over other systems.

User-friendly handling:
The user interface of HP is easy to use and the scanning process is very simple.

No need of a rotation table, no expensive actuators:
You need no actuators for rotating/translating the laser plane or for rotating/translating the object. Therefore it is also possible to scan e.g. heads and fixed statues.
You can scan the objects from all sides, even from the top and the bottom.

Scalable setup:
Our approach is very scalable. You can simply scale the whole setup up or down to scan small or big object sizes.
Hardware can be reused for other applications:
Since HP is a pure software solution that does not rely on specific hardware, you can save money and re-use your own hardware (especially your camera) for other applications.