Epic’s new RealityScan app can make 3D models from smartphone photos

Epic Video games has introduced a brand new smartphone app that may assemble 3D fashions of objects from a collection of smartphone photographs. The thought is that you just’ll be capable to use the app, called RealityScan, to scan an object in the true world — say, a chair — after which carry the scan of that object into your recreation or undertaking.

You possibly can see the way it works in the video on the prime of this publish, which options any individual scanning a brown chair, the results of which seems like a handcrafted 3D mannequin. The app is at the moment accessible in a first-come, first-served beta by way of Apple’s TestFlight platform that will likely be open to 10,000 customers.

I received into the RealityScan beta, and utilizing the app is fairly easy. To take a collection of photographs, you’ll be able to maintain the seize button down or take the pictures individually, and as you do, you’ll wish to slowly transfer across the object to take numerous pictures. The app asks that you just take at the least 20 pictures. When you’re achieved scanning, you’ll be able to ship the mannequin to be uploaded to Sketchfab, a 3D-modeling platform, and after a couple of minutes, you’ll be capable to see the scan you’ve taken on the location.

Sadly, the 2 separate scans I took of my desk chair weren’t fairly as handsome because the chair Epic is that includes in its advertising:

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

A scan of my water bottle on a desk didn’t end up significantly better:

Screenshot by Jay Peters / The Verge

Whereas my RealityScan fashions may look extra like summary artwork than plausible 3D fashions, there may very well be any variety of explanation why they weren’t as much as par. Maybe my iPhone 12 mini’s cameras aren’t adequate. Possibly I wasn’t in a well-lit room. I could not have taken sufficient scans or didn’t get the right angles. And the app is launching in a restricted beta, so Epic will presumably proceed to iterate as much as the app’s official launch.

I nonetheless suppose the app has loads of promise, because it may very well be a very great tool to shortly create 3D fashions utilizing simply your smartphone. An early entry launch on iOS is about for spring, and an Android model of the app is about to be launched later this 12 months.

And this isn’t the one developer software information we’ll get from Epic this week; the corporate is internet hosting a “State of Unreal” event on Tuesday, April fifth, at 11AM ET.