Get ready to turn all the junk in your house into 3D models with Epic’s upcoming app
Epic Games has been around for over 30 years now, and it’s grown from a bedroom in Maryland to abillion-dollar companycreating some of the most popular titles around. Lately it’s been making a bunch of acquisitions, and not just game developers like Psyonix, Mediatonic, and Harmonix, but also smaller studios that build software centered around development tools. Sometimes those kinds of acquisitions can remain in-house and might never be seen by the public, but it looks like one recent Epic purchase will soon result in a pretty cool-sounding app we’ll all get to try for ourselves.
A little over a year ago Epic acquired a small German company called Capturing Reality. Its flagship application is RealityCapture, high-end photogrammetry software — that’s where you take multiple images of an object and convert it into a 3D model. Epic has released a version of that software, calledRealityScan, as a mobile app, and it’s available right now in a limited beta for iPhone users (viaEngadget). Better still, it’s due to land on Android later this year.
Using the app appears to be straightforward: Take at least 20 photos of an object from different angles, and the app converts the data from the photos into a 3D model (with a little help server-side). RealityScan can even hold your hand if you’re new to photogrammetry by giving you guidance on how to get better photos or showing you which parts of your object need more coverage. Once the 3D model is created, it seems like the only way to access it is by exporting it to Sketchfab, a 3D model marketplace and recent Epic acquisition.
As of right now the app is free to use for beta testers on iPhone, and it will likely remain that way. But even though the app itself is free, any models made have to go through Sketchfab, which has a limit on how many models can be uploaded based on which subscription tier you belong to — it’s sort of a free-to-play model similar to Fortnight or Rocket League (both Epic properties).
RealityScan should get a wider release for the iPhone in the next couple of months, but Android users will have to wait until later in the year to get our hands on it.
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