3D Scanning and Re-Presentation Final Projects

In the past few weeks, I have taken a whirlwind tour through the worlds of 3D scanning & position/orientation sensing. The product of this study is still a work in progress.

Here is my project concept statement:

If Photorealism is only one of many possible styles of painting, then the "realism" of our natural vision must similarly be one of many possible modes of realism. There is no reason to suspect that our natural vision presents the world as it really is. We are abstractly aware of this and yet limited in our ability to experience other modes. It is the goal of this project to enable the user to experience his or her own physical environment in a visual style which differs from the natural mode of vision. This is achieved through the use of a custom-built 3D laser scanner, which images a physical space and provides a software system with a cloud of three-dimensional coordinates. The software uses geometric analysis to interpret these points into an alternate view of the space – a view which may be described as a blocky, Lego-like version of the physical environment. This alternate view is then sent to the user's head-mounted display (HMD). A 3D positioning and orientation tracker is used to locate the user in physical space so that as he or she walks around that space, the perspectival position presented through the HMD will be updated to match the user's position/orientation in the physical space.

Here are the results so far:

And the steps taken to reach these results… (continue on next page)