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SoftKinetic's 3D scanning solution aims to popularize MakerBot's printers
SoftKinetic, the 3D gesture middleware provider for Intel and Ubisoft's Just Dance 2014 for the PS4, is once again catching our attention by announcing its strategic partnership with MakerBot at CES. These two companies will work on optimizing the former's time-of-flight depth camera technology for 3D scanning, which will hopefully help popularize MakerBot's 3D printers. While we didn't get to see objects being printed live at the show, SoftKinetic's CMO Eric Krzeslo surprised us by how quickly he could scan a person's face using his depth camera. The data was then sent to Volumental's impressive cloud service, which returned a printer-ready render in a matter of minutes. See for yourself in our video after the break. SoftKinetic also announced that NVIDIA's Tegra Note 7 platform comes with the former's gesture recognition middleware, as well as support for its DepthSense 3D Time-of-Flight USB camera. This means OEMs or developers will be able to quickly implement short-range ("as close as 6 inches away") gesture control on NVIDIA's tablet reference design. At this rate, it shouldn't be long before we can control our tablets from afar -- it's just too much effort to reach over one's bowl of noodles to poke the screen.
Volumental's browser-based 3D scanning project brings your work to the cloud
These days, it seems like everyone and their dog is running a Kickstarter campaign to fund their very own 3D printer, and the market's quickly become saturated with a plethora of models to choose from. Not quite as popular are crowd-funded 3D scanning solutions. Volumental, a Stockholm-based startup, is looking to bridge that gap with a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 for its browser-based 3D scanning project. What sets Volumental's endeavor apart is that it requires such a bare bones setup: all you need are the necessary drivers, a browser and any OpenNI compliant depth camera, like Kinect or PrimeSense. Once the scan has been made, the process moves to the cloud, where users can share models and access the most up-to-date software available. To find out more, head on over to Volumental's Kickstarter page (linked below) or check out the video after the break.
