[Philip Lelyveld comment: 3D image is constructed that feeds into a 3D printer!]

[by Max Eddy, www.geekosystem.com]

Georgia Tech researcher Grant Schindler has come up with a pretty clever use for the iPhone 4: Use it to create 3D models. It’s a simple process that proves that while there are over 350,000 apps, there’s still plenty of new ideas for the iPhone platform.

Schindler’s app, called Trimensional, works by shining light on a person’s face from four directions, and recording the results. These are compiled into a single image that users of the advanced version of the software can export to a 3D printer and create a model of their face, or whatever they scanned. Cleverly, Trimensional does not require any additional equipment to perform the scan, such as a light kit. Instead, it uses the iPhone’s screen as a light source, and records the images with the front-facing camera.

Schindler describes the scanning process as answering a series of questions. From the Georgia Tech Digital Lounge:

If I take a scan of my face, the app asks ‘what does the image look like if I shine the light from the left side, what does it look like from the right side,’ and so on. There’s one three-dimensional answer per pixel, and combining all those answers results in the full 3-D model[.]

See the original post here: http://www.geekosystem.com/trimensional-scanner-iphone/