Over the years I have tried every budget 3d scanning option out there.
Even going so far as to being suckered into buying a £100 so called 3d scanner.
I'm a diehard optimist, when commercial scanners start at around £4000, for a 'hobby' machine.
I'm not sure why I expected anything functional for 100.
And I did not get a functional machine lol.
So when I watched a short video about a bit of software called qlone yesterday.
It looked somewhat miraculous.
Now the video is the only one linked to from the qlone site, so it's clearly a put up job.
But, what the hell it was only £16.
The whole thing hinges on a printed mat that acts to focus the phone's camera on the object being scanned.
After a few complete failures I thought I was probably trying too large an object. So I grabbed the coral slingstone from Guam and had a go with that.
It actually worked quite well.
Colour me impressed.
So it looks like you need to make a bunch of different sized 'mats' accept that the app is not miraculous, and work within its limits.
Now I can't print colours, but for the basic shape, this works well.
Gif of scan attached.
I think with a smaller mat i can get a lot more detail.
Here's the original:
https://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1489147271/2#2And gif of initial scan attached.
I think I'll try and print one out.
Without the colour it looks quite different, but the size and basic shape looks accurate.
So on the whole, I think for £16 it's actually quite a good bit of kit.
It helps that modern smart 'phones' are just mini miracles of technology and pack all the power of a decent desktop computer into a pocket sized bit of technical wizardry.
I've got a couple of actual stones I've picked up over the years, I'll have a go at making moulds of.
But for a first success, with something so cheap and relatively simple, quite impressed.