3D scanning objects for AR
On behalf of a retail client, I’ve been exploring techniques for 3d scanning real-world objects for the purposes of displaying them in AR. In this blog post I am going to go over the full asset creation process from start to finish – outlining how to take an existing physical object and process that into a high-quality and performant 3d asset. While the output of this is easily adaptable to any platform, I’m going to focus on preparing a model specifically targeted for mobile AR by creating a .usdz file compatible with Apple’s recently announced AR Quick Look feature released with ios 12.
To demo this process I captured a very sacred object – ‘Edie’ a ceramic statue of a pig that once belonged to my late grandmother. The main technique I used to capture this object is called photogrammetry. By taking many overlapping pictures of the same object from varying angles, and knowing the characteristics of the camera lens, it’s possible for software to solve how those photos must fit together through detection of similar details in multiple images. From there it can then recreate the geometry and texture of the captured object in 3D.
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