Ian George is an experienced 3D creator and developer with over 25 years of experience in virtual reality 360 storytelling using photography, videography and even Google Maps! For the last five years, he has been using emerging 3D smartphone-based scanning technologies such as LiDAR and photogrammetry to add 3D models to his 360-degree environments. He is an active beta tester of NeRF-creation sma
rtphone Apps and a prolific creator of NeRFs under the handle
Copying objects in 3D has become really easy thanks to improved technologies in our mobile phones. One uses a specialised depth sensor and another a laser called LiDAR that - so far - are only available in Apple devices after the iPhone 10. The other technique is called photogrammetry and uses photography from any phone or camera. When I started this adventure into mobile scanning I used a Samsung S10 a few years ago and at that time there was an app called Display Land. It used photogrammetry. The app was awesome but for reasons known only to the makers of it it stopped and disappointed a few nerds like me who enjoyed being able to take a historic monument home to put in our games or 3D software for building worlds. I looked at alternatives to make scans but found them to be to complex in coding and installing them. At about this time (Spring 2020) Apple released their iPad pro with a built in LiDAR. The word LiDAR itself breaks down into either Light and raDAR or Light Distancing And Range. Simplified its a laser that sprays hundreds of light beams at an object and they reflect back from the surfaces they're pointed at. These pulses of light are then interpreted into the 3D shapes they are hitting, unless they are shiny or reflective. There is a way to get around this by using a chalk spray on a shiny surface but then you need to be able to replace the surface later inside a 3D editor like Blender (Free) or Cinema 4D/Maya (Expensive) and that will require time and assertion to learn the parameters. Photogrammetry on the other hand uses an overlap of 10-20% between each photograph you take of an object and compiles these on a powerful computer to extrapolate the central 3D object. This can be done on your computer if it's beefy enough, or online using someone else's powerful computer. For the most part of what I am doing with mobile scanning I will focus on the online apps that allow for terrific results with this technique. Also, I'm a beta and alpha tester for a few software developers of these mobile apps because I wrote to them and asked to help develop. It's that easy to be an app tester so never be afraid to contact the people behind the software, they're always happy for our input. Be realistic though and prepare yourself for bugs and long upload times and waits to see results that will rock you and others worlds. The pro of app testing is getting your hands on apps that when released will cost a fee to own or just for the scanned results of each individual scan that you are happy with. You will probably get these app reduced or gratis when they are released to and I know personally over the time I have been helping this is a significant sum not only for the free renders, but the worth of those objects as NFT's and/or stock for the forthcoming 3D internet called the Metaverse. Most people getting into this fun are nervous and excited but once you become familiar with the ease in which scans can be made and later used to build your own scenes that you have visions for and on scales you never thought possible. As an example I can scan a large building, pop it in a 3D editor and add an animated character, various lights, cinematic cameras and effects. Sure, it looked really complicated when I was learning but it took hours not days or weeks to achieve, mostly by following tutorial videos. This is the beauty of mobile scanning and the mostly free resources such as Mixamo, Godot Games Tools, GIS, Unreal Engine, Unity and of course the utterly amazing Blender. Join me on this journey to building the Metaverse, or at least your real estate within it. If you get really good the rewards are outstanding fiscally, but if you're just a hobbyist then you're going to be having a ton of fun and playing a God like role in making things you never thought possible. Feel free to hit me up with questions. Cheers!
