Idea - Open Crowd Project

[Brian Harper]

Hi everyone -

I'm a newbie at the LVL1 space - I've attended a few meetings over the last couple of months, but I'm interested in spending more time there in the upcoming months.  Anyway, I have a collaborative project in mind and I'm wondering if any of you would be interested in working on it, have ideas for it, etc. 

The idea, in a nutshell, is to use 3D scanning and printing technology to create a “crowd” of people printed with 3D printers.  The aim of this project is to collaborate with people who may be in different geographic areas, but are willing collaborate in an online space.  By sharing 3D scans of ourselves, we can work to pull together a crowd of people that exists through the action of sharing the three dimensional “information” contained by each body.  The grouping of people built through this project would be an amalgam of individuals that have never seen each other, but their representations (the prints of their bodies) exist together in one group.  I'm also thinking the project would be open for others to add to it by submitting their own scans and that they would also be able to print their own "crowds" (if they had access to a 3D printer).

Personally, I also think it would be really cool to see yourself standing with a group of people that has never before been assembled in physical space. 

Right now, I'm working with software called 123D Catch to create scans of people, then fixing them up in Blender, Sculpturis, Netfabb, etc, then printing on a Makerbot Replicator - I'm hoping to open this up to lots of people, so being able to use only a regular camera would allow the highest number of people to participate.  However, I would also like to try using Reonstructme with a Kinect.  My computer doesn't have the right graphics card to run Reconstructme, but maybe others at LVL1 might?

Alright, sorry for the long e-mail.  I'll be at the meeting tonight if anyone is interested in chatting about it.

Talk to you soon,

Brian Harper

 

[Brian Wagner]

I like the idea.  You could extend it by having scans of famous people...

[Brian Harper]

Yes, that would be really cool.  I've actually been trying to do that with images of famous people from Google images, but haven't had any success yet.

Brian

[Brian Harper]

Thanks for letting me introduce this idea to everyone at the meeting last night.  I'm still all ears, so if anyone has any ideas or wants to help out, I'm game - just let me know.

Brian

[Christopher Cprek]

Sorry I didn't get a chance to talk with you last night.

Question: Will these be full-size 3D scanned crowds? Also, contact me
off list about the IdeaFestival booth.

Chris

On Wed, Sep 5, 2012 at 8:30 AM, Brian Harper

[Brian Harper]

Hey Chris -

That would certainly be very cool to print them larger, but the ones I've printed so far are small - around 4" high.  Right now, I'm interested in making artwork with it .. maybe some platforms sticking out of the walls with the crowds of people on them, so the small size is actually better for that idea. 

Also, I'm mostly thinking about these first prints being from the waist up.  The tests I've done on the full body scans haven't worked very well - partly because of the narrowness of the feet compared to the rest of the body on the print. 

One of the problems right now is that my computer can't run the Reconstructme software.  I'm willing to buy the Kinnect, but right now I don't have a computer to try the real time scanning option.

gotta run right now, but I'll message you about Idea Festival.
Brian

[Brian Harper]

Hey everyone,

Just thought I'd let everyone know that I have a website up and running for this project now, so check it out if you have a minute.  Still a work in progress, but here it is: http://www.theopencrowdproject.com/

Spread the word if you know of others that might be interested.  I'd like to get as many people participating from as many different geographic areas as possible.

Thanks!

brian  

[Christopher Cprek]

Is it possible to take the photos from a fixed position and a swivel
chair? If so, we could set something up at the LVL1 Tuesday meeting
and Oculus (our documentation camera) to get a bunch of people 3D
scanned.

Chris

[Brian Wagner]

Have you seen this 3d scanner using a Kinect.  I think there might be a Kinect at the space and it looks like the software is downloadable for free. Check it out here  http://reconstructme.net/ 

[#]

http://www.instructables.com/id/How-to-Teleport-Free-3D-Scaning-and-Cheap-3D-Prin/

 

[Brian Harper]

yeah, I've been doing a bunch of research on using the Kinect.  I tried to get the Reconstructme software running on my PC, but my graphics card is too old/not supported.  I've installed Windows on a MAC at school, so I'm headed that way later today to try it.  

Chris, it would be really awesome to do scans of people at Idea Festival if you're up for it .. I don't want it to get in the way of what you're doing there, but I'd be all for trying it.

Kinect scanning would be WAY faster, too.  Right now, the turnaround time is a couple of hours per scan for the photo technique.  So, I'm all for learning a new method that speeds that process up.

For trying to get the highest number of people participating in the project, I'm hoping that the relative ease of only needing a camera, some tape, a marker, and sending your images in, will encourage people to get involved.  We'll see, the jury is still out on that, though!

Brian 

[Chris Kimmer]

I'm interested in the Kinect side and could bring my laptop + Kinect for a little bit Tuesday. Would it be before or after the regular meeting? I don't really want to deal with ReconstructMe and the Windows-only requirement. It is pretty easy to get a point cloud for different rotations of an office chair or a turntable (which should be accurately measured) and merge them together into a single dataset. After that, MeshLab + Blender is an open source way to deal with the data. Rather than trying to scan a bunch of people, the goal would be to work on getting a good data set from the Kinect and then automating it so more people could be scanned at LVL1 or anywhere else in the future.

[Brian Harper]

I'd be happy to come to LVL1 earlier than the meeting on Tuesday.  I could probably get there about 5:30 or so.  I have a Kinect now as well, but I couldn't get it working on the computer I was trying it on .. said the opencl.dll is missing, so I'm not sure what to do about that.

Anyway, I'll bring what I have early and meet whoever is there to see what we can come up with.

Brian