02560 Web Graphics and Scientific Visualization

Week 8 - structured light scan and surface reconstruction

The purpose of this worksheet is to get all course participants started on Project Initiator 1 from Week 6. This should be fun and highly relevant even if you choose a different project. We do a scanning session in the following steps:

• Prepare for the scanning session by reading the manual which is now available on CampusNet (see reference below).
• Find an object that you would like to scan. Remember that the scanner is better at scanning diffuse objects than it is at scanning specular objects. This means that glass and metal will probably result in a noisy scan with few accurate data points. Choose your object according to the degree to which you would like to challenge the scanner.
• Join our small excursion to the ImageLab, where you can scan your object and get your own point cloud data set.
• Use the point cloud to reconstruct the surface as a triangle mesh. This can be done immediately after performing the scan by using MeshLab.
• Visualize the triangle mesh on your webpage using WebGL. One challenge here is that the scanned point cloud includes a colour attribute for the points, but the surface reconstruction does not. You should solve this problem if you choose to work with this area in your final project. One way to solve it is to visualize the point cloud using splatting (inspiration).

Reading Material