01-22-2021, 02:11 PM
Quick update on progress: cockpit interior detail is still moving along at a snail's pace. I've taken a little break on that to work on some of the wingstar details. Pic of the wing star "cap" is below. I have to admit that tracking down the kit parts in the scan library and creating a 3d model is very cathartic - I really groove on this. While the kit scans offer a good starting point for the 3d geometry, I find that I usually need a couple more views of the part to properly capture the depth and raised details. This typically results in googling for folks who have posted a build up of the actual kit to their website or youtube. I can usually find a pic or a still frame that shows me the part of interest. Sometimes, you just get lucky with finding detail photos of the actual part - for example, I stumbled upon an eBay listing for the 1/25 AMT Corvette Stingray carburetor parts that provided great closeup shots of these pieces that frame the Matra wheel on the wingstar cap.
While this method of modeling is fine and dandy, it does make me think about other ways to digitally capture the model kit pieces accurately. I'm sure that other folks have tossed around the idea of actually having their kits 3d scanned. Likely some of the custom SS commercial builders are acquiring this resource and doing this already. But alas, I don't see that anyone is sharing their scan database...yet. Consumer level scanners are finally coming down to the price range that we might be able to start doing this ourselves. At work we have a FaroArm with the laser scanner attachment. I've watched the technicians very eagerly to see if it could be used for this purpose. Apparently the one we have "only" has a resolution of +/-0.003". Not sure if this would be sufficient to capture the very fine details of kit parts. Maybe I'll have them give it a try the next time we get it out. The other factor here is that these scanners typically produce a "point cloud" that is essentially an unstructured array of points in 3d space that define the shape of the part based on where the laser took a measurement. This usually requires some clean-up work to make it usable for anything like solid modeling or 3d printing. In some cases the engineers draft a solid model "under" this point cloud to re-generate an editable model and then delete the point cloud.
Sooooo.....maybe we could convince someone(s) who are sitting on a pile of authentic original kits to let someone with a high-res scanner start archiving these kits.... It would be a super asset for folks like me who don't have the $$ to drop on the original kits - we could still have access to accurate replicas for being able to 3d print or incorporate in 3d models. However, I know that what I'm proposing here is a non-trivial amount of work, especially considering the effort that it would take to ensure that each part on a sprue was scanned completely, and the fact that we may not care about a lot of the parts on the sprue that aren't used in SS models. As well, the aforementioned cleaning up of the point clouds takes some time.
Does anyone have experience with 3d scanning model kits? Feel free to chime in if you do - I'd love to hear about the challenges vs rewards for such an endeavor.
Stay safe!
While this method of modeling is fine and dandy, it does make me think about other ways to digitally capture the model kit pieces accurately. I'm sure that other folks have tossed around the idea of actually having their kits 3d scanned. Likely some of the custom SS commercial builders are acquiring this resource and doing this already. But alas, I don't see that anyone is sharing their scan database...yet. Consumer level scanners are finally coming down to the price range that we might be able to start doing this ourselves. At work we have a FaroArm with the laser scanner attachment. I've watched the technicians very eagerly to see if it could be used for this purpose. Apparently the one we have "only" has a resolution of +/-0.003". Not sure if this would be sufficient to capture the very fine details of kit parts. Maybe I'll have them give it a try the next time we get it out. The other factor here is that these scanners typically produce a "point cloud" that is essentially an unstructured array of points in 3d space that define the shape of the part based on where the laser took a measurement. This usually requires some clean-up work to make it usable for anything like solid modeling or 3d printing. In some cases the engineers draft a solid model "under" this point cloud to re-generate an editable model and then delete the point cloud.
Sooooo.....maybe we could convince someone(s) who are sitting on a pile of authentic original kits to let someone with a high-res scanner start archiving these kits.... It would be a super asset for folks like me who don't have the $$ to drop on the original kits - we could still have access to accurate replicas for being able to 3d print or incorporate in 3d models. However, I know that what I'm proposing here is a non-trivial amount of work, especially considering the effort that it would take to ensure that each part on a sprue was scanned completely, and the fact that we may not care about a lot of the parts on the sprue that aren't used in SS models. As well, the aforementioned cleaning up of the point clouds takes some time.
Does anyone have experience with 3d scanning model kits? Feel free to chime in if you do - I'd love to hear about the challenges vs rewards for such an endeavor.
Stay safe!