The past 10 years have seen remarkable improvements in the capture of 3-dimesional data. Both scanning speeds and accuracy have increased by a magnitude. Software and increasingly more powerful computers allow larger data bases and faster post processing. CT, laser and optical scanners are finding increased use in the medical, manufacturing, scientific and entertainment industries.
CT (Computerized Tomography) is generally used to capture internal as well as external surfaces. Medical (hospital) scanners are the most common and can be of service in industrial applications. But true industrial scanners service a much wider range of sizes and materials.
Laser and optical scanners are line-of-sight, and are available in portable and permanent CMM mounting arrangements. Scanners are available to capture a wide range of objects; from entire buildings to fingernail sized parts. Solid objects requiring multiple scans, must register each scan to another for part completion. The collected data is exported as a “point cloud.” The data can be used to digitally inspect complex parts, surface them for tooling and reverse engineering, or export surfaces to animation software.
Technology provides an important means for studying the biology of extinct animals. Skeletons of these species must be constructed virtually by scanning in data for individual bones and building virtual models for each. These then are used to produce prototypes of each of the bones at varying scales, allowing the construction of a starter skeleton configuration and the analysis of movement along each joint. The individual virtual bones are then assembled into a starter virtual skeleton using digitized landmark points on the starter physical skeleton to help place them in three-dimensional space. This virtual skeleton is then modified and improved by analyzing the movement at each joint, using the prototype bones. Once this is done, the movement is constrained further by doing animations of the whole skeleton and noting areas of impossible overlap between bones and unreasonable movement. The problems are corrected and new animations attempted until the movement is perfected. This provides a means for understanding locomotion and mastication in these extinct animals.
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