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FastSCAN has been used for various Television shows/Movie sets, either for preparation purposes or as a high-tech prop!
Shows and Movies include:
CSI:NY - 3 episodes:
April 9, 2008
April 19, 2006
May 10, 2006
FastSCAN was used by the Forensic team to scan a skull for facial restruction.
The History Channel
2008, Ancient Discoveries - Ancient Super Ballistics
Lord of the Rings - FastSCAN was used to scan the cave troll, a 6 foot tall maquette.
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"That 3D scanner became
invaluable in capturing data off
the scale creature maquettes." |
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Image courtesy of Cinefex
Extracted with permission from "Ring Masters", by Jody Duncan.
Cinefex #89 - January 2002 - pp 64-131.
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The template for all of the show's computer generated characters was a detailed clay maquette sculptured by workshop artists. In a traditional approach, the digital modelers would have modeled the creature by eye, referencing the sculpture, or loaded photographs of the maquette into the computer, resulting in rough CG approximation of the detailed maquette. But at the start of The Lord of the Rings, Weta Digital became involved with Applied Research Associates, a New Zealand company that had developed a groundbreaking 3D scanner, later picked up in the United States by Polhemus and marketed as FastSCAN. That 3D scanner became invaluable in capturing data off the scale creature maquettes. "Its strength was that it was not only incredibly accurate," said [digital models supervisor] Matt Aitken, "it was free-form. It was free to rotate at any angle in relation to the object being scanned, so there weren't areas in shadow to the scanner. The wand could get into every nook and cranny."
"The scanner was extremely successful in capturing minute detail," [creature creator Richard] Taylor elaborated. "To facilitate this highend scanning, we created very large-scale scannable maquettes for some of the creatures - five to six feet tall, in some cases - with no metal in them, because that negatively affected the scanning process. As the scan progressed, we could literally see the creature growing in real time in the computer. It was fantastic. One of the problems with visual effects is that it is too easy to change things, and to alter the designs. With this technology, we could very tightly control the art direction of the creatures - what we designed and built was recreated in the computer very accurately."
In the course of several passes, the scanning laser would be moved over every surface of the maquette. Software attendant to the scanner would then stitch those passes together, creating a single surface with no overlapping data due to its ability to recognize when the laser was passing over a point already scanned. What resulted from the scan was a highly detailed, single polygonal mesh model.
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"What resulted from the scan
was a highly detailed,
single polygonal mesh model." |
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Image courtesy of Weta Digital - New Line Cinema all rights reserved |
Hanes® Jackie Goes Tagless commercial - The FastSCAN Cobra was used to generate the computer graphic stunt double the group digitized the actor using a Polhemus FastSCAN scanner to acquire 3D information for Chan's face and upper torso. CGW September 2003 pg. 62.
Day after Tomorrow - FastSCAN was used to scan the glacier props shown in the beginning scene of the movie
Law and Order: Special Victims Unit - May 3, 2002
Spiderman - FastSCAN was used to scan the mini building props
Men in Black 2 - FastSCAN was used to scan Will Smith's face for the video
(photo courtesy of Gentle Giant Studios http://www.gentlegiantstudios.com/)
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