How to create 3D scans with Reality Capture

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Reality Capture is a great way of making your own 3D scans. All you need is your camera and you can scan a range of objects to make your own assets – in this case, to use in game or animation backgrounds. This saves you creating your own models.

In this tutorial we’ll be doing some 3D scanning out in nature using any digital camera – see our best camera phones if you're in need of an upgrade – and the Reality Capture software. You can quickly build up a large collection of models to use in various projects or for one big job. 

We’ll start with techniques for taking the pictures, then move on to Reality Capture where the pictures are loaded in, then aligned and turned into a point cloud in 3D space. Next we’ll look at merging the point cloud into a polygonal model with different levels of detail. See our roundup of 3D art for some modelling inspiration.

When you’re satisfied with the model, we’ll look at a couple of different ways to add colour texture (get your free textures here). Finally, we’ll export the model and load it into 3D-Coat, where you can do some quick retopology and bake the textures and normal maps to a lower-resolution model so it can be used in your animation or game.

Download the files you need here

This article originally appeared in issue 133 of 3D Artist. Buy issue 133 or subscribe here.

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• The best VR headsets
• Character sheets for 3D modellers: 15 top tips
• The best digital art software right now

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