Originally Posted by tobyaxis
Sorry about that, Toby, I haven't been on in awhile and missed your post. It looks as if zone users are able to sign on and get sample part files now at nextengine, though.
Since I posted, I've really discovered that I am not that great at scanning and would hate to have someone judge the scanner by my inability to use it.
It's been over a year since this thread was active. I recently got a NE Scanner and am finding that the software hasn't seemed to have improved much since this thread got started.
Is anyone out there reasonably happy with their purchase? I've had mine two weeks and I can see potential but the bugs are killing me.
I should get my scanner out of storage and try it again... It's in the box next to my desk, so it isn't stored very far from me.
I've found NE to be a decent scanner, certainly worth the money. Is it awesome? Perfect? Unbelievable? No, it's OK and an OK value, at least for me. It takes a while to get the hang of using it though, figuring out settings and such. It's certainly not hard, but the more you use it, the better you will get at getting decent scans. It's not like everyone imagines or wants, where you plop your piece if front, start it up and get a perfect scan. It's more like a touchy digital camera, it takes a few pics to get the hang of it.
Pros : Small and relatively cheap. $2.5K is a lot better than $25K.
Software is reasonably easy to use and the stitching and trimming features work pretty well. I don't use any of the patching or smoothing features because the CAD software I use kicks it's butt in that department. I just import them in as .stl's and fix anything then. What little I've tried using them, I haven't been greatly impressed.
Cons: Short focal length means that it's hard to scan deep hollows and odd shaped, cubic type forms.
A bit temperamental on surfaces so you can get scans made up of lots of patches, if you do multi pass scans though, they'll usually stitch up OK.
Resolution is not what I need for very small objects. The new scanner has better macro resolution and supposedly this will be available as an upgrade for owners of older scanners like mine. We'll see.
I've attached some pics of my latest scanning project, each kid was cut in half and scanned, so 12 parts total. Imported into Freeform, reassembled and touched up. It was a low detail project, they were small maquettes, to be scaled up and milled in foam for further sculpting.
www.harryhamilldesigns.com
CAD sculpting and services
I've had the NE scanner since release and have never managed to get results like yours. It looks great to me.
Looks like I need to experiment more.
Once you've figured out the distance from lens to object that works, play with the light/dark settings, they can make a difference. I've started thinking of it more as a limited, crappy camera and been trying to get good images. It's basically taking pictures of the lasers so no good pics = no good scans.
Also if you are doing 360 degree rotational scans, start by using quite a few scans per 360, like 10 or 12 then reducing from there. You'll get better coverage, I started out using 6 or so and there's too much missing data. Too many scans is better than too few, I just let it run in the background.
Even on flat scans I'll do multiple scans at slight angles to each other. It's easy to stitch them up and you won't have as many holes.
www.harryhamilldesigns.com
CAD sculpting and services
what bugs are you seeing?It's been over a year since this thread was active. I recently got a NE Scanner and am finding that the software hasn't seemed to have improved much since this thread got started.
Is anyone out there reasonably happy with their purchase? I've had mine two weeks and I can see potential but the bugs are killing me.
we got auto-updated to 1.71 yesterday and its HORRIBLE. all manner of lock ups and display corruption. hole patching is completely broken as well.
the version previous to that we had been using for a few months and it was quite adequate. the version just before that one was a bit crashy. sorry i dont remember the numbers. were going to revert today.
i should note i am running on windows xp 64 bit. it seems ill advised to run under anything else unless your models are just small. scanstudio just eats all the ram and then crashes.
early on i almost wrote off the scanner as useless, but ive learned to prep models with powder (HUGE difference), and plan out scanning "angles" alot better now to the point where im getting only a few holes in areas where the scanner simply cant "see" (im scanning animal skulls). you also want as much overlap as possible between passes because the area of the model that gets hit by all 4 lasers has a much smoother and accurate finish that the fringes which only see 2. the auto-trim feature is also a big time saver to clean up bad faces.
my biggest complain in general about the software is that its very slow and not multithreaded. ive got 8 cpu cores, and its mulling away on 1.
I started scanning again the other night.
My PC config:
EVGA 680i Sli MoBo
2- 8800GTX vid cards
150Gig Raptor HDD
500Gig WD HDD for storing scans
2.93 Ghz Core Duo CPU
4Gigs DDR2 800 G*Skill
Vista 64 Bit OS
Scan Studio 1.7.2
2 families in this scan, 12 passes on back half of car, 13 passes on front half of car. manually aligned. fused.
settings were macro, fine scan, 85% light, shiny, .005, 1
model is 1/24 or 1/23? Normal car model size. The box isn't around anymore, just the car shell is.
Here is the scan
I agree about the single thread complaint. I wish this were a multi threaded application also. Even though I only have a dual core CPU in this machine, it would be nice to utilize both of them, or even make it worthwhile to go quad core for scanning. It seems quad core CPUs have become rather ubiquitous, most applications should take advantage of this.
Scan studio seems to be written as a conglomerate of Flash applications; are flash apps able to be written as multi-threaded applications?
I immediately tired to click on the car and rotate it. LOL Habit....
Looks pretty good.
I'm running 4G ram and XP64 too, I agree it isn't happy with 32bit and 1.5G.
www.harryhamilldesigns.com
CAD sculpting and services
thats not bad. was this just a white plastic model?
one thing ive noticed is that what YOU think is light or shiny, is not what nextengine things. ive been scanning alot of object that i would have thought were shiny on the matte setting with better results. likewise anything remotely whitish (bone in this case) is at the fulll bright setting. ive also found that taking 2 passes at 2 different settings can patch alot of holes.
ok, i checked the software versions.
1.71 is the old one which was good. 1.72 is the new one.
whatever you do, do not let it auto update to 1.72. were trying to phone them and figure out how to get the old one back, it keeps re-updating every time we try to revert. at first it was silly, now its costing us money.
The scan that I posted was done in version 1.7.2. It works fine for me.
The model is painted orange, with glossy paint. When I get ready to put color to my models I will do texture maps on my own in software other than scanstudio.
I've noticed similar things, about nextengine having slightly different opinion on shiny/matte and dark/light.
Thanks for the tip on 2 passes at different settings, I'll have to give that a try on another project that has been giving me varying results.
Good ideaive also found that taking 2 passes at 2 different settings can patch alot of holes.
Ver 1.7.1 for me, I think I might just leave it well enough alone....
www.harryhamilldesigns.com
CAD sculpting and services
Am I the only one getting good results with 1.7.2?
I just went through the exercise of removing 1.7.2 (POS). The key to not having it automatically update is to load it via the Nextengine site, when you do it that way it will ask before updating. Of coarse uninstall SanStudio first.
Interesting to note that most are using 64bit windoze I'm running a 32 bit version and am having a lot of trouble.
I'm glad this thread came back to life because finding any info on the web was very sketchy. Is anyone using Rabidwerks? It has some nice capability but also some limitations. I found getting the datums set up properly is important to being able to get a reasonably correct model but it can be difficult getting them exactly where they make good design sense
Each time I upgrade I download the install file of the newest version, then I uninstall ScanStudio completely and run the new install file after a reboot.
my problem is that i dont seem to have a choice in upgrading. it just does it without permission. i unplugged the ethernet cable on the scanning machine to get work done today.
I just have the basic NE software package, so I'll just trim, stitch and fuse, then export as an stl, import into Freeform (CAD) where I can easily fix and modify anything. I don't bother fixing holes or polishing in NE, it's much easier in FF. From there I can export as pretty much anything; .stl, obj, step, iges etc. If you get stuck trying to fix a less than perfect scan, give me a call, I can help you out.Is anyone using Rabidwerks?
www.harryhamilldesigns.com
CAD sculpting and services
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