Trimensional app. 

Trimensional is a novel new app for Apples iphone4, iPad 2 or the lateset
iPod Touch.

It’s a front-facing camera app, costing around $1, that turns your face (hand as
per our example) or an object into a 3D image, then you can export and email 
in various files. 

If you have a 3D printer you can export an STL file but note
that you will need to pay an additional $5 upgrade that will allow you to do this. 

Who’s it good for?

If you are into 3D technology or like experimenting with new technology.  Perhaps
you would like a model of your own, child or pets face.  However, a word of warning
be careful taking a picture of your pet or child in the dark it may scare them.

3D image of a hand taken on iphone 4 using Trimensional app.  Then converted and emailed (imediate) as an STL file.

How does it work?

You need to go to a dark room, make sure you turn your iphone 4 screen to the
highest brightness setting and then snap a close up of your face or in our
demonstration a hand.  The app instantly maps the picture it took into a 3D model
and you can move the model left and right to see how big your nose is, how far your
brow juts out and so on.  You can then email the 3D picture either a .mov movie, gif
or STL file (if you have upgrade).
 
There are different rendering options on how to see your image, such as textured, meaning like a picture, or grey, like those pre-rendered faceless human bodies you
see in video games. Additionally, points, which uses tiny pixels to serve as 3D points, polygons, which connects those dots together and wireframe, which puts the depth of
your features on a wire.

Then you can share your 3D model by emailing the 3D picture in either a .mov movie
or gif file or if you have the upgrade option you can email an STL file.

Printing a model

To testing the 3D printing model we took a few face and hand pictures and sent
them as an STL file  to our CAD expert.  This seems to be were the difficulties lie  
.. the face images were not clear enough to use so we tried the hand which still
required some additional CAD work to create thickness etc.   We then printed the
CAD data on our Objet 3D Ink-jet printer to produce the final model.

CAD data required additional work to create the right thickness ready for Objet 3D printing.

Verdict

If you just want to have novelty 3D pictures it’s a bit of fun, however it only works by capturing the image up-close and in a really dark area.  This tends
to limit what type of picture you can take and print into a model. 

We tried a few facial images, however our CAD expert was unable to work with them as the surface was too thin to create a solid model.  The best image we could use was the hand and even that required a some re-work. Not an easy task!

Having said that, we later realised that when you email the STL file make sure you have the 'closed back' option on as this will rectify the re-work problem.  It's really a matter of testing, however not easy to do if you don't have your own 3D printer. 

 For more information on the Trimensional app, click here to visit apple store.

 The final Objet printed model.