Mobile 3D Data Capture For Movies & Video Games

Anybody who keeps an eye on the world of digital art will be aware of the fast rate of progress. As more and more 3D CGI work is being produced by professional 3D Scanning Services for films, video games and other such purposes, there is an ever-increasing demand for the process to be sped up in whatever ways possible. As a result there is a constant stream of new software for the digital artists responsible for these virtual worlds, and year after year new tricks and techniques are developed to make life easier for CG artists. One of the latest and most remarkable such technique is mobile 3D data capture.

What Is Mobile 3D Data Capture?

In the past, it was necessary for CG artists to manually draw every single digital object which they were to use in their projects. This is not the case anymore. With mobile 3D data capture, it is possible for an actual physical object to be scanned in and replicated by a digital model. Until recently this technology was limited to small-scale objects, but now the process can be combined with Extended Reality to produce 3D digital versions of entire film sets or background landscapes.

Meanwhile, information from still photographs can be implemented to provide textures for the resulting 3D models. More information on the specifics of the technology can be found here.

Usage Of 3D Data Capture and extended reality (XR) In The Media

This technology spawned several trends in 2012 and has tremendous implications in any form of CG-heavy media, from films to video games. In its most basic form it can serve as a time-saving process, allowing objects to be scanned in rather than drawn. At a higher level, it represents a marriage of digital art and traditional physical modelmaking.

Movies such as The Four Temperaments by Marco Brambilla and Steven Spielberg’s Adventures of Tintin made heavy use of CGI backdrops and extended reality (XR): with 3D data capture & extended reality (XR), it is now possible for sets to be designed and built in the traditional manner, and then scanned in to computers to provide digital backdrops for the wholly virtual landscapes of the films. The technique has already crept into at least one music video, so who knows where it will end?

Artistic Implications

3D data capture is not merely a tool for the entertainment industry, of course: it has many uses in engineering, primarily as a means of storing measurements of objects. However, it is certainly set to have a large impact on the entertainment media, and with it will come much discussion about the aesthetic implications of the technology. Many people involved with animation regret the encroachment of mechanized digital imagery into an area once dominated by old-fashioned hand-drawn work.

If real backgrounds can be quickly scanned in, then, will this lead to a situation in which traditional methods of creating backgrounds for animation die out? Such concerns tend to be unfounded, as there will always be enthusiasts who prefer the traditional methods, but it does look as though captured 3D backdrops will dominate the cheaper regions of CG animation and video games.