Last month, I spent a couple of days doing research on 3d capture and play around with some ios 3d capture apps: Bellus3D, ScandyPro, and displayland. In this article, I will document what I did and compare the Pros and Cons.
Bellus3D
https://www.bellus3d.com/
Bellus3D can achieve a very accurate result and the whole user experience is very intuitive and easy to use. It has three modes: face, face + neck, and full head. The whole process is very straightforward and kinda like how you setup faceid on ios: point the front camera to your face and rotate to left/right, look up and down, then a 3d mesh will be generated. You can view it from different angles and add light effect to the mesh, but to export the model for editing or sharing purpose, the cost is $1.29 each which is quite affordable.
The file can be exported to obj/stl files and edited in 3d softwares such as c4d, maya or blender. In the exported obj file folder, it includes the mesh as well as the full-color material.
ScandyPro
Scandy pro charges weekly and it can scan almost anything, including things in the surrounding, but the result is not that smooth and solid compared to Bellus3D. When exporting the file, it seems that the material file can not be obtained.
Displayland
Displayland is for physical spaces captures and you can use the location tag under the exploration feature to view 3d captures created all around the world. The capture process takes quite a long time to complete because it requires a certain amount of polygon to work. Users can place anchors/text in the virtual 3d environment. The final result is very accurate and immersive.
*Updates: displayland now discontinued the service and all the features has been disabled :(
Although playing around with 3d capture apps is fun, it is critical to think about protecting our privacy and be cautious about what you are scanning and where the file is sent. 3D capture collects our biometric data. Misuse of these data can lead to privacy leak. I’d recommend closing your eyes or making weird facial expressions when using these facial capture apps ;)