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PROCESS: SCANNING: RESOLUTION
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PROCESS RESOLUTION SHADOWS HOLES MAQUETTES |
 There are many ways to evaluate the resolution of a 3D scan. The Cyberware 3030/HIREZ scanner records 75 points points per inch, but that raw resolution only serves as a good baseline for comparing hardware. Scanning is very much a craft and in addition to resolution, the overall quality of a scan is a function of things such as shadowing, hole filling, and water tightness.  The first thing to realize about a 3D scan is that we almost always use the resulting cloud of points to generate a triangular mesh. From afar the model looks smooth and detailed, but up close, like pixels in a digital image, you can see that the model is comprised of tiny triangles. The size of these triangles is another way to consider the resolution of a scan. The scanner resolution generally determines the minimum size of these triangles, therefore there is a threshold to the level of detail we can capture. For example, if the smallest triangle has edges that are half a millimeter long, you can imagine it would be difficult to represent an eyelash, or a small wrinkle, or the edge of a fingernail. Very tiny details will get smoothed out and sometimes lost all together.    Images courtesey of Pangolin Editions |