Occipital Releases New Version of Skanect 3D Scanning Software

In addition to the Structure Sensor, startup company Occipital makes Skanect, a 3D scanning software package, and now they’ve just launched the latest version of the tool, Skanect 1.8.

Skanect says capturing a full color 3D model of an object, a person or a room “has never been so easy and affordable.” The Skanect software transforms a Microsoft Kinect or Asus Xtion camera into an ultra-low cost, 3D scanner capable of creating 3D meshes in just a few minutes.

“In addition to the typical bug fixes and cleanup that come with a new release, the most important upgrade is a major enhancement in the color textures of the models that are captured,” says Adam Rodnitzky of Occipital. “This is particularly true when 3D models are captured with a Structure Sensor — as it gets to use the iPad’s superior color camera — but the enhancements are equally impressive with other depth sensors like the Kinect, Xtion and Carmine.”

And should you have been one of the first to begin using Skanect, fear not, your old models are still in play.

“We’ve designed it so that even models captured in the past using older versions of Skanect can be reloaded and reprocessed to benefit from the improvements in texture quality that version 1.8 brings,” Rodnitzky adds.

Skanect acquires dense, 3D information from a scene at up to 30 frames per second as the Kinect or Xtion is moved about to capture a full set of viewpoints to build a 3D mesh in real time, and it offers a set of predefined scenarios which are suitable for most uses.

The Structure Sensor was the first iPad 3D scanner and at one point, it ranked as the sixth-highest funded Kickstarter campaign. At $399 ($499 if you purchased Skanect software in the package) the Structure Sensor uses a pair of infrared LEDs and camera that clips on to the iPad, iPad Air, and iPad Mini with Retina. The device was popular on Kickstarter, blowing past its $100,000 goal to ultimately raise more than $1.2 million.

The Structure Sensor is powered by a tiny infrared sensor made by Isreali startup PrimeSense. That company makes the sensors for Kinect and was snapped up last year by Apple. The sensor uses information in the near-infrared range and uses a complex algorithm to turns that data into a 3D model.

While highly complex geometries aren’t the strength of the software, it does let you make a very detailed rendering of a face or a room, and the latest release is much improved in color rendering and detail.

The improvement in color textures from version 1.7 to version 1.8 is very impressive, and you can download a free version.