Apps · In development
Scan3D
Walk around an object. Get a 3D model.
Scan3D turns an Android phone or a LiDAR iPhone into a 3D scanner. Put an object on a table, walk around it and, a few seconds after you press Finish, you have a textured, closed model you can rotate and inspect. The long-term goal is a scan that opens in CAD tools such as Autodesk Fusion as an editable solid, not just a mesh.
Four ways to scan
Handheld · AR
Android with ARCore. Walk around the object; the photos measure its shape while ARCore keeps track of where the phone is. Tested on a phone.
Handheld · LiDAR
iPhone Pro with LiDAR. The sensor's mesh gives the shape, cut out from the table, and the photos give it colour.
Turntable · printed mat
Android on a stand. Print the mat, put the object in the middle and turn it: the dots on the mat place every photo exactly, at true scale.
Turntable · TrueDepth
iPhone with its front TrueDepth camera, standing still while the object turns one full revolution in front of it.
The iPhone modes and the printed-mat turntable work on test data and are waiting to be tried on real devices.
Live while you scan
About ten seconds into a scan, the object's surface appears over the camera image and grows as you move around it, so you can see which sides still need photos. If you move too fast, the app tells you to slow down and skips the blurred photos.
Photos for the shape, not just the colour
Most phones have no depth sensor, and the depth ARCore estimates from motion can be centimetres off. So Scan3D uses ARCore only to find the object and as a first guess of each photo's position. The photos then measure the object: their positions are refined against each other during the scan, depth is computed from them, and the result is filled into a closed solid standing on a flat base. Each part of the surface is coloured from the photo that sees it best.
Finishing a scan takes about four seconds on a Galaxy S23 Ultra.
What you get today
- A textured, closed 3D model, previewed in the app: drag to rotate, pinch to zoom.
- Every scan saved on the phone as an OBJ model with its photos, which opens in Blender, MeshLab and other 3D viewers.
What's next
- Exporting and sharing scans from the phone.
- Turning scans into STEP solids made of planes and cylinders. The geometry and STEP libraries exist and are tested, but are not yet part of the app.
Shiny or transparent objects give the photos nothing to match and do not scan well. Objects with print or texture work best.
Try it
Scan3D is not in the app stores yet. It is open source under the MIT licence and built with .NET MAUI; the build guide explains how to install it on your own phone. You will need:
- Android: Android 7.0 or later, on a phone that supports ARCore with the Depth API.
- iPhone: an iPhone 12 Pro or later Pro model with LiDAR, on iOS 15 or later.
Development and feedback
Follow development in the source repository, or report an issue with your phone model and what you scanned.
For other enquiries, write to [email protected].