Skanect 3D Scanning Quickstart Guide
Note: Skanect is only available at the Skanect Workstation in the Digital Output Lab
in A+D 235A
Instructions
1 Open Skanect. You should start at the Prepare tab
in the upper-left.
2* Select License. Fill in the registration information
with:
email:
[email protected] key: SKN100-MMYMFNNA-C4QKN54T
* Registration only needs to be done the first time you
log in to Skanect. The information will be saved for
your login after that.
3 Select New. Set the size of your scan area by using
the Scene and the Bounding box. If you would like Fig 1 - Prepare tab - Start a new scan
your scan area to be longer instead of a cube, you
can select the Aspect ratio of Height x 2.
Click Start.
4 You are now in the Record tab. Adjust the position
of the Kinect scanner and/or your object to place the
object roughly in the center of the scan area.
Click the red Record button.
Fig 2 - Record tab - Align object within scan area
5 Complete the scan of your object. You may do
this either by leaving the Kinect stationary and slowly
rotating your object (manually or by slowly spinning
in your chair, etc.) or by leaving the object stationary
and slowing moving around it with the Kinect.
During this process, be sure not to move too fast,
or you may receive a “Not Enough Geometry” or
“Camera Moved to Fast” error and need to restart
your scan.
Green surfaces on your scan mean that the
information is in focus and being properly gathered.
Fig 3 - Record tab - Complete scan
Instructions
When you have obtained full coverage of your
object, click the red Stop button.
6 In the Reconstruct tab select Fusion. Select GPU for
the Processor and High for Fidelity for the best quality.
Click Run. Skanect will reconstruct your scan at full
quality now (the live scan renders at less than full
qualify for speed reasons).
Note: To navigate around your model: left click and
drag to rotate, right click and drag to zoom, and
center click and drag to reposition.
Fig 4 - Reconstruct tab
7 Now proceed to the Process tab to edit/refine your
model.
Note: Skanect provides some basic editing tools.
Enough to often get your model to a watertight,
printable STL file. If you are familiar with other 3D
modeling software or need more advanced editing
capabilities, skip ahead to exporting your model as
an STL file and continue editing in a program of your
choice.
Fig 5 - Process tab - Move & Crop
Move & Crop Allows you to rotate your model on
X, Y, or Z axis. Also allows you to adjust the base
plane and crop to it. This is useful if you are trying to
make a flat base for your model for 3D printing.
Fill Holes Will attempt to close any gaps in your
model. Adjusting Smoothing settings will make the
modifications more or less detailed. Adjusting Limit
settings will tell the software to ignore holes over
a certain size and only fill smaller holes. The best
Strategy for 3D printing models is Watertight.
Note: If you still end up with holes in your model after
running Fill Holes. Try editing in another piece of
Fig 6 - Process tab - Fill Holes
software to manually fill the holes, or rescan to get
greater coverage.
Instructions
Colorize Will paint in recorded color from your
scan. This does not have any effect on the 3D printed
model, but can be interesting and helpful to look at on
screen.
For more details regarding other editing options, see
Skanect’s video tutorials at
http://skanect.manctl.com/support
Note: For my demo model, I first cropped off the Fig 7 - Process tab - Colorize
ragged excess data along the bottom of my model.
Then I used the Fill Holes function set to Watertight,
and Smoothing of Medium. Then I cropped up a
second time until I had a flat base suitable for printing.
To get a perfectly flat base, crop up until you cannot
see any of the purple cropping plane from underneath
your model. Finally, I colorized my model.
Fig 8 - Process tab - Cropping to a flat base
8 The final step is to move to the Share tab to save
and/or export your model.
The Save function allows you to reopen your project in
Skanect later for futher editing.
The Export Model function allows you to save your
model out for 3D printing or editing in another piece
of 3D modeling software. Saving as an STL file will
allow you to open your model in most 3D modeling
software including Makerware or Catalyst (used for
3D printing). Fig 9 - Share tab - Export model
