Introducing ScanBooth

ScanBooth at Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire 2012

Kids getting 3D scanned at the Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire 2012. © Larry Rippel

At the 2012 Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire, I ran a booth where people could get 3D scanned and take home a small printout of themselves. After an intense 7 hours, we scanned over 90 people and printed out over 40 of them. Going from raw 3D scan to a printable miniature figurine requires a surprising number of steps. Raw 3D scans have holes, extra geometry and artifacts that all need to be dealt with before sending to the printer. In fact, when I first started scanning people back in March, it took me over an hour to manually clean up a scan so that it was able to be printed out. In order to scan and print so many people in such a short time span, I had to automate the process as much as possible. Using a collection of scripts I was able to get the turnaround time down from over an hour to about 8 minutes. To help others with this problem, I’m releasing ScanBooth.

ScanBooth is a collection of software for running a 3D photo booth. It includes tools for automating 3D scan capture, cleanup, printing and sharing.

Here’s what ScanBooth has to offer:

A rails webapp
- Allows users to enter their contact information when they get scanned.
- Stores status of user prints, uploads and emails.
Delayed job framework
- Upload scans to sketchfab.
- Upload scans to an FTP server.
- Email users links to their scans for viewing/downloading.
Scan workflow automation
- Auto launch ReconstructMe and start scan
- Automated scan cleanup with meshlab

We had a fantastic time showing people the power of 3D scanning and printing at Pittsburgh Mini Maker Faire. I hope ScanBooth helps others do the same. Please check out the code on github and let me know what you think!