Designed after I 3D scanned a wooden cat model. Made in ABS.
Step 1 Obtain materials
Obtain wooden cat model
Retrieve Projector
Get noise pattern picture
Procure camera
Download VisualSFM
Download Meshlab
Download Meshmixer
Step 2 Take a million pictures
Project Noise pattern from projector onto wooden cat. Take 30-50 pictures of the cat in one orientation by using different angles of the camera. Turn cat, take another set of pictures and repeat until all sides are collected.
Step 3 VisualSFM Magic
Run each set of pictures through VisualSFM until all sets return a good 3D point cloud. This is some extreme math magic, do not attempt to understand.
Step 4 Meshlab Magic
Dump all of the 3D point clouds into Meshlab, repeat until meshlab stops crashing. Arrange all point clouds into a mostly aligned single cat. This will be difficult because picture scans always return different orientations and scales, and meshlab will constantly crash. Once all files are properly scaled and aligned, run a poisson surface reconstruction.
Step 5 Meshmixer Smoothing
Import model into meshmixer to reduce the amount of polygons as well as repairing any misses from the previous processes.
Step 6 Print
Forget to turn on supports, print cat, regret not using supports, make note in thingiverse comment section.
