Scientists from the Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the University of Zaragoza, Spain have shown a method to capture the real world in 3D using off-the-shelf digital and phone cameras. Rendering the world in 3D. 3D scanning has been an influential aspect of 3D printing technology and has been successfully used in medicine and dentistry. Professor Min H. Kim, the co-author of the paper and an associate professor of computer science at the KAIST, explained, “To faithfully reproduce a real-world object in the VR/AR environment, we need to replicate the 3D geometry and appearance of the object. Traditionally, this has been either done manually by 3D artists, which is a labor-intensive task, or by using specialized, expensive hardware.” “Our method is straightforward, cheaper and efficient, and reproduces realistic 3D objects by just taking photos from a single camera with a built-in flash.” As the authors from KAIST and the University of Zaragoza claim, their work is the first one to show 3D rendering of real-world objects which does not require overly expensive specialist equipment and produces better results compared to the past studies. The ingenuity of the reconstruction algorithm ensured that the quality of the 3D object was not compromised using standard cameras. Featured image shows examples of 3D objects produced in the study.

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