The Image Maker

New Technologies/Methods [and learning them] is perhaps my favorite aspect of Architectural Education. Last week I got in touch with the individual that runs the Arius 3D scanner at UCL. Mainly used for Archaeological and Art History conservation purposes, he sometimes gets the random Bartlett student in for a scan. The last being scans of chicken bones. He informed me that the DAS clay model was perfect because white or off white was the ideal surface for working with. I have a few pictures below of the scanning process, sans flash and on my camera.















It is a rather large machine essentially directing light into a mirror triangulated with light passing through a lens. If both streams to not connect then the scanner reads nothing, as in spots with shadow or pitch black. The end result is a point cloud model. I was hoping to have a 3d model ready in a couple of days however the files are so incredibly heavy due to the data per sq cm that Rhino kept crashing.

Connecting the points to form a surface is proving to be difficult as well. However i have found that with a point reconstruction set, a Delauny Triangulation will work to form a mesh that needs further cleaning.

Will post renders in the future.