3D Scanning Newsletter - November

November's newsletter has been sent out and is also posted on our website.

Case studies this month include:

Reproducing a Rare Darwin Bust - In honor of the 150th anniversary of On the Origin of Species and 200th anniverary of his birth, the National Academy of Sciences commissioned a replication of a one-of-a-kind bronze Darwin bust.

3D Imaging Brings Robots to Life - 3D laser imaging technology helps rapidly create a digital CAD model of hand-sculpted robotic components for Hanson Robotics.

Monkey Skull Sculptures - 3D scanning of primate skulls helps artist create sculpture series

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Thankful in 2009

Despite the economic challenges of this past year, Direct Dimensions has been fortunate to have had a very successful 2009 – our 15th year in business! In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, we would like to express our thanks to:

Our great customers - thank you for entrusting us with your ships, your sculptures, and your airplanes and everything else you send to us, or send our team out to scan for you, including Northrop Grumman, Jeff Koons Studios, Carlson & Co, Lockheed Martin, FBI, Clark Construction, Harley Davidson, Nurad, International Truck, John Milner Associates, National Gallery of Art, Praxair, U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, and all of our other new and returning customers!

Our great vendors - thank you for providing us with top-notch 3D products and for all of your support including Basis Software, Dimensional Imaging, FARO Technologies, Geomagic, Innovmetric, Konica Minolta, Kreon, Laser Design, Pointools, Rapidform, Verisurf, and Vialux.

Our great employees - thank you for all of your creativity, initiative, dedicated long hours, last minute travel, and all of your hard work everyday. It is very much appreciated.

Our employee’s families - thank you for sharing your loved ones with us, probably more than you’d prefer.

Our friends and partners at SME, CMSC, SPAR, GBTC, ARC, Trilumen, and especially Mimic Studios, practically our L.A. office.

And a special thank you to Gene Roe for supporting us so often in his blog. Gene puts out a fantastic blog about the 3D scanning industry called Lidar News at http://lidarnews.com which everyone should check out.

And thank you all for reading our monthly newsletters and regular blog postings, and please have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Digitally Preserved and Reconstructed Coffeehouse Now Complete!

This Friday, November 20th is the grand opening celebration for the newly reconstructed Charlton's Coffee House in Colonial Williamsburg. It is the only structure of its kind, an authentic 18th-century coffeehouse, in the United States.



You can read about the events planned for opening day here.

Direct Dimensions was lucky to be involved as part of the pre-construction team, utilizing our 3D technologies to help document the coffeehouse's 18th century foundation.

To learn more about how, keep reading.

Case Study: Digital Preservation of Revolutionary Coffeehouse
In the summer of 2008, Direct Dimensions visited Williamsburg, Virginia to document the condition of the existing remains of an original ‘coffee house’ that George Washington was known to frequent.

This particular coffee house, owned by Richard Charlton during the 1760's, was one of several that had flourished in the area due to their popularity in London and abroad. Coffee houses of that time were known for more than their coffee, tea, and chocolate served to the colonials - they also hosted informal and spirited intellectual conversation. This activity made Charlton's coffee house one of Williamsburg's political and business ‘hotspots’ of the time.

DDI worked with the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation to laser capture what remains of the coffee house’s stone foundation. Of the original structure, only part of the brick foundation and some wooden fragments are still intact. We scanned the exposed foundation and the earthen floor with our Surphaser HSX spherical scanner.

This unique scanner captures extremely accurate and high resolution data over a medium-range (2-10 meters). The Surphaser is a non-contact laser scanner so none of the delicate centuries-old foundation was harmed during the data capture process.

The raw 3D ‘point cloud’ data gathered in Williamsburg was then digitally modeled back at the Direct Dimensions facility in Baltimore, Maryland. The final surface mesh model can be used to analyze the archaeological features found at the site.

Additional digital preservation projects:
Historic Site Scanning
Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers

Software Overview and Tips for Dense Point Cloud Processing

Last month we posted a presentation that Michael gave at SME's Aerospace Measurement, Inspection & Analysis Conference on Reverse Engineering Airplane OMLs. One of the issues that often comes with large scan jobs, such as airplane scans, is how to handle massive amounts of 3D scan data.

At that same conference Michael and Peter Kennedy, our production manager and a specialist in processing data from large jobs, also gave a presentation on tips and software for dealing with dense point cloud data sets. You can view the presentation below.

DDI Dense Point Cloud Processing Presentation Oct2009

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If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. We're happy to help!

TEDx MidAtlantic 2009

We had a wonderful experience at TEDx MidAtlantic, meeting and talking to new people, exchanging ideas with them, and of course, imaging them in 3D with our new face imaging concept.

All of the speakers were thought-provoking, but we really connected with the presentation by the first ever CTO for the Federal government - Aneesh Chopra. Mr. Chopra spoke primarily about utilizing technology to improve peoples lives, particularly through medical technology and innovation. He even briefly talked about facial prosthetics which is a topic that has always been very important to us at Direct Dimensions.



Also, if you had a ShapeShotTM 3D face image taken at the event, you will be receiving an email shortly with a link to your very own personal website with your 3D face.

It was really a special day. Thanks to Dave Troy and all the TEDx MidAtlantic volunteers for making it all happen.

Direct Dimensions' President Michael Raphael poses two attendees for their ShapeShot

3D Model of Lincoln's face included in "Lincoln, Life-Size"

Last summer we had the opportunity to scan an amazing piece of history: an original life mask of Abraham Lincoln cast in 1860 by Leonard Volk. The life mask is owned by the Kunhardt family, who are 5th generation Lincoln scholars, and was scanned for research purposes for a documentary they were making. You can read about the original Lincoln lifemask project here.

High quality renderings of the digital model made for the documentary have subsequently been used by Philip B. Kunhardt and Peter W. Kunhardt in their book Lincoln, Life-Size.



The book examines images of Lincoln's face, each page containing various portraits at life size. As the owners of one of the largest 19th century photo collections, the authors have a specific interest in comparing how Lincoln’s actual appearance fares against artistic renderings of the man, as well as the often-distorted daguerreotypes and photographic media of the mid-1800s.

Lincoln, Life-Size is being released today and can be purchased online or at a bookseller near you. If you want to see some incredible images, photographic and digital renderings, make sure to check out this book.

Additional 3D Lincoln reading:

Lincoln Memorial: Digitally Preserving America's National Monuments
Bringing Lincoln To Life in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

3D Scanning Newsletter - October

October's newsletter has been sent out and is also posted on our website. This month we have some great case studies about scanning for documentation and visualization as well as some Halloween treats.

Case studies this month include:

Documenting Ancient Sculptures - Direct Dimensions traveled to University of Pennsylvania's Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to document sculptures from their Ancient Egyptian Collection.

Archival Scan of Meteorite - The digital modeling team at Direct Dimensions 3D laser scanned the largest "oriented pallasite" meteorite ever found for archival and visualization purposes.

High-Res Human Skeleton - 3D imaging of a human skeleton helps a renowned medical illustrator create more accurate medical illustrations.

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Trick or Treat! Free 3D Model for Halloween

To provide our customers with a better understanding of our various model outputs, we have made sample downloadable models available on our website for a while. This year we decided it would be a fun treat to offer a Halloween model for your enjoyment.

Visit our Model Example Page to download our Skull Mask Model in various formats. Feel free to download the other example models too.



If you feel like showing us, we would love to know what you did with your model.

We're also planning on making more free sample models available in the future, so let us know what sort of models you would like to see.
Happy Halloween!

3D Scanning Methods & Equipment for Reverse Engineering Airplane OMLs

In case you weren't able to make it to SME's Aerospace Measurement, Inspection & Analysis Conference in Baltimore last month to hear Michael Raphael's presentation "3D Scanning Methods and Equipment for Reverse Engineering Airplane OMLS," we've posted it below for you to view:

DDI Aircraft OML Scanning and Modeling Presentation Oct 2009

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Michael and Pete Kennedy, our production manager, also co-presented on software and tips for Dense Point Cloud processing at the same conference. We'll post that soon, so stay tuned!

Facility Tour with the Upper Falls Retired Activities Club

If you've talked to anyone at Direct Dimensions then you know that we are very excited about what we do and love to share stories about our latest technologies, capabilities, or projects with anyone that is interested in hearing about them. Over the years that has led to some wonderful guests and facility tours with everyone from artists associations to historic preservation groups to mechanical engineering groups, and many tours for college and high school classes.

A few weeks ago we had a wonderful tour group in to visit with us and we want to share that experience with you now.



The Upper Falls Retired Activities Club (UFRAC) started in the 1980’s when a group of recently retired gentlemen would get together periodically to hike or canoe. Eventually some women joined the club and the activities became more varied, including lunches and tours. The club is a diverse group from different backgrounds and different Maryland towns.

On selected Thursdays of the year they all get together to enjoy each others company and learn about a variety of things. UFRAC has toured Under Armour's headquarters in downtown Baltimore, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and most recently a prosthetics limb fabrication lab.

Back in 2006, Peg Walters, a UFRAC member, read a newspaper article that mentioned Direct Dimensions’ 3D scan of the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. She clipped it out thinking it might be an interesting tour. Unfortunately daily life and scheduling got in the way for a while, but she finally contact us and scheduled the tour date.

Last month on September 24th, a group of about 25 UFRAC retirees visited Direct Dimensions and quickly became quite excited to hear about our many interesting projects and see our various 3D scanning and imaging technologies. Our founder and president Michael Raphael provided a thorough overview of the ways in which 3D imaging can be utilized for capturing real world objects into 3D digital forms for medical applications, museum art & sculpture, architecture, and various industrial applications.

While most of the retirees only casually use computers, it was surprisingly refreshing to hear their comments suggesting a good understanding of how these technologies work and why we perform these projects. As members of a demographic who are supposedly reluctant to embrace cutting edge technologies, we were really interested in how they would react to what we showed them.

We are happy to say that they loved the tour. In fact many even said it was the best tour they’d been on. And since many of us here at DDI are familiar with how amazing NASA Goddard is – that means a lot to us! More than enjoying the tour, the UFRAC group seemed to really “get” what we do and how it can be so beneficial in everything from scanning the famous Liberty Bell to measuring some greasy industrial gear.



The tour concluded with the attendees each getting their faces imaged in 3D with our fantastic new camera-based imaging system. We were particularly interested in seeing their reactions to this new and very exciting technology for reasons we’ll discuss in future postings – so stay tuned.



It was a great morning and we loved hosting them!

If you know of any groups that might be interested in touring Direct Dimensions, feel free to contact us at info@dirdim.com.