You’ve probably heard of hand-held 3D scanners before, but CreaForm produces units specifically designed for “body capture”. No, they’re not ensnaring people in nets, but rather they take a 3D digital picture in the form of a 3D model. (Actually any of these formats: .OBJ, .FBX, .DXF, .STL, .VRML, .LWO, .MAYA, .HRC, .3DS). The awkwardly named “MegaCapturor 3D Body Digitizer” has an amazing sub-millimetre resolution even at a distance of over a metre.So other than grabbing head shots of your friends, what could you do with such a device? At the University of Calgary they’re using the scanner to study human genetics and morphology for a variety of scientific and medical benefits. They’ve also been used to “study of the genetics of the human face, cleft lip and palate of thousands of Tanzanian children as well as the study of human morphology on thousands of American children of different ethnic groups”.
We think this is another dimension to the inexorable digitization of everything. And it’s *still* cool.
Via CreaForm (Hat tip to Philipe)
