3D Photography: A Catalyst for Billion-Dollar Industries
By Peter Marks
Renaissance artists discovered a remarkable set of tricks to create realistic images. One wonders if they eventually sold paintings like solid modeling today - “the same 3-point perspective, chiaroscuro, and features of Michelangelo at half the price!”?
Photography turned out to be the easy way of getting realistic images. Kodak nicely tracks the hundred-year anniversary of George Eastman’s Brownie camera in its 1999 annual report. For the past hundred years we haven’t had to paint a picture to get a realistic image. We take a photo. Two-dimensional photography has transformed our world. James Burke (of Connec - tions fame) could write the sequel connecting photography to color printing, publishing, motion pictures, stroboscopy, high speed machinery, television, medical imaging, semiconductor fabrication (masks), and more. This amazing chronology continues as digital photography replaces photochemical imaging.
Centuries later, solid modeling has a lot in common with photo-realistic painting. Like Renaissance artists, we’re still discovering tricks to create realistic models, especially when complex surfaces, blends, and lighting models are involved. Like painting, solid modeling is the hard way to capture 3D images.
3D digital photography would be the easy way to capture model data for existing objects. The real excitement is what we can do with the coming generation of 3D cameras and transformation software.
Less than one percent of our built world is represented as solid models. For the remaining ninety-nine percent we can take 3D photographs and merge this captured data with CAD-designed data. Applications range from e-commerce to rapid manufacturing. If we want to capture a “retro” look or deal with legacy data, 3D photography makes it possible. If we want to design products (headphones, medical prostheses, clothes, etc.) to fit one-to-one, the technology is becoming affordable. The Web will accelerate all these applications, allowing customers to shop in virtual 3D worlds and then have customized products built to order.
While mechanical devices are still used to gather 3D point data, the future belongs to non-contact scanners. A good source on 3D cameras is Mark Van Buren’s 3D link web site. While most of today’s 3D cameras are built by niche suppliers like GOM , it’s promising that mainstream vendors like Minolta are entering the fray with lower cost, portable, color cameras. There are also services like Arius3D to consider as 3D scanners/cameras continue to improve.
Traditional photography requires film and processing. 3D photography requires software to capture and transform point and color data into useful formats. Two interesting startups are Paraform and Raindrop Geomagic . Geomagic software claims to have the most automated process to take point data and automatically transform it into “lightweight” models for the Web; polygonal (STL) models for rapid prototyping; and accurate, watertight surface models for CAD. To put this in perspective, photography has advanced from Brownie cameras to medical imaging, movies, and semiconductor fabrication in less than a century. Given Moore’s Law and Web time, it’s time to start thinking about what 3D digital photography will do during in the balance of our own careers. Solid modeling captures <1% of the built world. What about the other 99%?
Peter Marks is Managing Director of Design Insight. His passions are helping companies design products that customers want to buy and finding better tools and processes to build these winning products. Marks wrote the first book on Managing Computer-Aided Engineering and was lead author of Aligning Technology for Best Business Results. Contact him at edesign@penton.com or visit www.caenet.com/edesign for live links and more.
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CAE/Computer-Aided Engineering- September 2000