Single Camera Head Scanning Tips

Adam Spring is a 3d artist, who works in visual effects and animation. He worked with a bunch of big companies, including BBC, Warner Brothers, Microsoft, Time-Slice Films, FBFX, Creative Skillset, and Efficacy 4D.

Most recently he started working with photogrammetry, figuring out the most efficient way to scan 3d content. He is using a single camera and keeps his expenses really low. For the 3d reconstruction, e used Agisoft Photoscan and ZBrush.

For my own set-up, the studio was located in our garden (image above), and my girlfriend Luizee kindly offered to stand in as the model. I shot the image set on my Canon 5D mk IV and a 35mm Canon L Series lens. Usually I would aim to use a 50mm lens, however I was shooting at a fast aperture (F5.6) and using a wider lens would give me a larger depth-of-field and therefore help keep Luizee’s face in focus.

During the shoot we did two sets of images; the first in direct sunlight which allowed for a faster shutter speed and higher aperture, but meant we were battling with hard shadows across the face, which is not good for texturing purposes. The second image set was shot in the shade which removed the harsh shadows, but meant I had to compensate for the lower levels of light by bumping the ISO up to 500. I chose to process the second set of images as the lighting was more even across the face. Even lighting makes for cleaner results when processing images into 3D models.

Adam Spring, 3d artist

You can find the full post over at Adam’s blog. It’s pretty short and sweet, so don’t expect any big reveals, but it’s useful to read if you want to try some human scanning. If you’re interested in this topic, don’t forget to watch the stream we’ve arranged with Jeffrey Ian Wilson. He did a very detailed talk about it and showed the whole process on camera.