3d Scanning With Kinect V2

[Jon Levatte]

Thexbox one kinect requires a very specific Intel chipset driving your USB 3.0 port. Something Microsoft fail to mention clearly in the adaptor requirements. Also 64 bit win 8.1 or higher. There is a very hard to find app from microsoft that will check your PC for compatibility but its well hidden. A lot of the very expensive software for the original kinect work poorly if at all and have terrible support.

Well that sure sounds like a bit of bad luck, yes you do need a 64 bit processor to run the Kinect SDK v2.0 and the 3D Scan and Design App. USB 3.0 port is necessary as well. The results are very fluid so far for me, much better than the alternative DIY scanners out there. The Microsoft 3D scan app looks to be brand new, in the last month or so.

Actually, if you get a kinect v1, the previous model, its work as well with pretty much the same quality even if the scanning time is longer. Otherwise, it work with USB 2.0, windows 7 and 32/64bits computer. The kinect v1 is also quite cheap if you succeed to get one on second hand. So it a worth to try. Keep in mind than photogrammetry is also a good alternative. In both case, keep in mind that the model should stay still during the scanning process.

I am not quite sure about the Kinect v2 but the Kinect v1 work with infrared light so you could scan even in the dark. Of course, you will get only the surface not the texture. But in 3D printing, except in you have color 3D printer, the texture of the model doesnt matter.

3D scanning technology has always been out of reach to the consumer because of expense, complexity, and time. These scanning technologies often use expensive laser range sensors and scanning tables that require the user to be motionless for upwards of four minutes. Some pieces of software use photos from all around the subject to create the model. They use computer vision to detect the edges of objects and photo stitching techniques to make the 3d model. I have not had much success with photogrammetry as it often produced models that were not 3d printable. This 3d scanning technique uses an off-the-shelf Xbox Kinect and free software to create 3d models easily.

Plug in the Kinect to your computer and launch the Skanect software. The first menu will determine the area that the Kinect will 3d scan. after you hit "scan", you will see a preview of what the Kinect sees. Try to get the subject entirely in the bounding box. After you hit the play button in the top corner, you can begin spinning the subject. Remember to keep your hands outside of the scanning area when spinning the subject. If the subject remains perfectly still, you should see a green model begin to form on-screen. When you are done you can hit the square button in the top corner to finish the scan.

You can export your model in almost any format, but the free version limits the model to a 5000 triangle count max, so if you have a very large object, expect a lower quality result. After you have exported the model you can 3d print it easily. You can see a time lapse of my friend's head being 3d printed.

Dear Felipe,

unfortunately I am still stuck and unable to convert Kinect point cloud to mesh inside Grasshopper environment.

I did find tutorials in Houdini converting point cloud to mesh but how do I do the same for grasshopper.

the point cloud generated using Kinect contains ID, color, point, position. I believe converting it to mesh should not be hard with nearest point logic but how???

thanks alot Dear Martin, I agree that Firefly kinect is good at importing the point cloud to grasshopper env. but then converting these point cloud to mesh is where i am stuck. I will follow the recommendations suggested by you, Felipe and Riccardo and post the results here. thanks alot for taking time reading my thread

thank you martin for your recommendation.

it looks really powerful managing point cloud data compared to gh. I will get more in deep in it. thank you again for the suggestion

by the way could you give me your feedback on trimble x7 scanner? are they better than Artec scanners?

I would post news about the progress of the development here to keep you informed. So, what do you think? Are you interested in supporting me on this? You can also post questions and suggestions, of course.

The Kinect also has an accelerometer used for inclination and tilt sensing. This could be used for full 360 panorama scanning. I could even think of walking around and scanning the full environment like this. There are lots of possibilities for further development.

My questions are not addressed specifically to you, I can raise the same questions in every thread where a donation is requested to get a particular feature finished. These kind of proposals run into some grey areas in many regards IMO. Good luck with your project anyway. Best regards.

@Alvaro:

Thank you for clearing that up, I already thought I did something majorly wrong. In a free software environment like ours, I can perfectly understand your scepticism. Unfortunately when it comes to money, grey areas are hardly to terminate completely. Everywhere.

@kakapo:

Good question. I can try to explain how I would do it. The device can detect its rotation in space but not its location, right? So if we are scanning the room, we have also an 2D image and the geometry which can be seen from this particular point of view. Now if we follow the structures on the RGB image by using regular 2D motion tracking, while we are scanning further the depth of the tracking points and detecting the rotation of the device, then we are able to tell how the location and the rotation of the camera is changing in 3D space relative to those points. I think it all boils down to the accuracy of the accelerometer if this would work out good or bad.

I was curious if any one out there has tried 3d scanning? I have an xbox 360 kinect sensor that i hooked up to the pc using the trial Skanect software. With the free version i have made a few cool scans which you can import into Fusion 360. Just down loaded mesh mixer and will see if i can figure out something cool. If anyone has any experience of ideas for work flows would love to hear about them.

I do a lot of 3d scanning, been working on a custom rig for about a year now for facial scans. Photogrammetry is the way to go for good scans, the kinect is very low resolution. here is a raw scan before touch up Raw untouched - 3D model by Cre8tive 3D (@brian33433) [5c9ac35] - Sketchfab

Build a DIY Desktop 3d Scanner With Infinite Resolution.: If you already have a camera then this project will cost less than $50 to complete. If you like to shop on AliExpress you can probably build it for around $30. If you like to support your...

I love it thanks!!! I new someone here would be doing it!! I went with the kinect as i had it on hand. I was thinking the scans could be starting points for solid models in fusion. I will post once i get something worth showing. And by the way x carved is definitely a legit verb!

: Great Photogrammetry software, highly recommended, can do amazing stuff with it, runs $179 for a standalone license. Or if you want to get your feet wet for free (but low-quality), check out Autodesk 123D Catch, runs on your phone.

do you have the limited or the payed version?

I am interested in the detail you can get.

I have some specific applications I would like to try as the photo based scanners I have tried do not fair as well.

I bought the Kinect solely to do 3D scanning. I spent a lot of time researching how this could be done before ending up with the Kinect. There are several Youtube videos explaining how to 3D scan with various types of technologies.

Photogrammetry, reconstructing 3D models from photos of objects, seemed the most easy way forward. 3DF Zephyr offers a free photogrammetry software (3DF Zephyr Free), with some limitations. To get photogrammetry to work you need to take good pictures of the model in good lighting conditions, preferably using a SLR camera with lots of megapixels. As an amateur wanting to try it out I downloaded a package of demo images from 3DF Zephyr and also went forward using my old iPhone 5s.

Even with my phone I managed to create 3D models. The free version is limited to only 50 photos, and this really takes away detail. There was no easy way to convert the resulting 3D model to an .stl file and print it. Furthermore, the whole process of cleaning up pictures and stitching them together was tedious and not very intuitive or simple.

I quickly found out that the connector was not the typical USB connector I could connect into my PC. I found that a specific Kinect adapter was needed, but this product was discontinued from Microsoft. Another option was to order a Chinese clone on Ebay, but this would set the project on hold for a month.

I asked my girlfriend to come into the room where I had the Kinect on a table on top of a small stack of books. She turned around clockwise while the Kinect scanned multiple positions. Cleaning up the various point clouds were fairly easy as you could select multiple scans and delete unwanted points in groups, next converting the clouds to a mesh and then finally export to .stl format for 3D printing.

When I got to the point where I actually had the scanned model and could 3D print it I wanted to do more. In Meshmixer there are a lot of possibilities to be creative with .stl files, meshes and polygons.

I wanted to create an artistic representation of the model and aimed for a voronoi tessellation type of pattern. The scanned mesh model had a lot of detail and small polygons so I needed to reduce the polygon size in certain areas, and play around with various brushes and tweaking settings as I went on.

This was my first time using Meshmixer and I was blown away with what I created. The figure now had a beautiful pattern while maintaining the human form and shape of the belly. What I found fascinating was the simplicity of the form and the complexity in the pattern surrounding it. The mesh was detailed and at the same time smooth.

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