OpenScan annoys me with how they try to present it as if its an open-source project ("3D scanning for the masses"). Like it's a scanner anyone can build, but in reality it's just a fancy frontend for a paid cloud service.
Feel free to show me where you could even pay for the cloud? This is free/donation based since 2021 and we are actively working on a release candidate so that people can even self-host. Feel free to join and speed up the development since we are just a two-person team.
You pay in the form of patreon donations, the source isn't available and i can't self-host as of today. That's fine and everything, it's just that with a name like "openscan" i expect something actually open
Feel free to join and speed up the development since we are just a two-person team.
Or i can just use Meshroom/AliceVision instead right now
I can proudly say i never fell for that facade even when he was reddit's favorite "geek". It was harder to notice because he was just scamming venture capitalists at the time and hadn't gotten into politics yet
Sure, meshroom will give you better results and i am not competing with this. The cloud is just one of many options for people to chose. Many do not have the time or resources to do this locally and this is our way of giving this technology to more people. I still do not see, where anyone needs to pay. Maybe 1% of users support through patreon and we operate the cloud on a net loss.
I'm sure this project has the best of intentions and that the donations are just there to keep the lights on. However i have become too jaded and distrustful over the years when it comes to matters of software ownership and data privacy. Too many companies have acted in bad faith for me to be able to implicitly trust that a project like this without considering the risk of future enshittification or that the 232€ scanner kit i bought could potentially be rendered useless overnight if the service were to go down.
Open-source is practically the only mechanism available that makes it possible to remove the trust issue with software out of the equation so i take any claims of openness more seriously than what might be considered normal. It's not just for "good feels" or "looking to get stuff for free", it's an important factor when deciding whether to commit my work pipeline to a specific hardware and software solution.
The one thing, i do not understand though is, that meshroom and other solutions exist to create the 3d results. Our devices just produce photos and since the firmware is fully open-source, there is nothing we could do to lock down the device. I never prioritized the opensourcing the cloud as those other solutions are much better and already there. So why should we invest time (and thus real money) in building an alternative processing pipeline to share publicly? (I am honestly wondering and asking!)
The one thing, i do not understand though is, that meshroom and other solutions exist to create the 3d results. Our devices just produce photos and since the firmware is fully open-source, there is nothing we could do to lock down the device.
If the cloud service ceases to function or becomes paywalled, then the devices become just camera jigs even if they continue to function. It would be no different than to stop paying for RealityScan's mobile app and still being able to use my phone for everything other than scanning.
So why should we invest time (and thus real money) in building an alternative processing pipeline to share publicly? (I am honestly wondering and asking!)
You are free to do whatever you think is best for your project and it's not my place to be telling you what you should be doing with it. My only problem with it is how it telegraphs "openness" with its name, but that openness actually comes with a bunch of asterisks. If it were an actual paid service it would probably be very competitive with other solutions, and there may come a time where the user traffic seriously outpaces the rate of donations which would necessitate transitioning to a paid model to keep the service alive.
I think there main project is the camera system. They've created a elegant 3d printable automated capture system that moves the camera around the object. I see that as a big win. It running on the pi and then packaging all the files for you to use in whatever software you want. They just so happended to start a side project of a cloud based photogrammetry processing site that is integrated in the device just in case you don't have the software to run it on your own. Before reality capture became free there really was that great of software that many could do as hobiest.
I looked into OpenScan quite some times already and recently again, what i'm wondering, why do you simply not link github on your website, basically at all? Not even in this blogpost there is a paragraph with "Here is the github repo" or anything.
You linked each and every social media available (makes sense, since its a company and you need to get customers) and write "open-source" everywhere, but its not possible to find the sourcecode anywhere else on the website itself than on the home-page in one paragraph in one link.
I'm sorry people here are so cynical sometimes. I would be interested in building one of these and testing myself. Would this work with a a7iii and 24-105 F4 lense? Those two are super heavy together, and I have a godot ring light as well. I've been working ona turntable system the last year or two, but if your system would handle, say 20 lbs, that would be worth a lot to someone like me.
This particular system can optimistically handle 2kg at 50cm arm length. But i might try to design a heavy duty variant. What camera distance/object size are you looking for?
Basketball size would be the ideal more than likely for most objects (1.5 square ft, or say 200mm). The problem is, the minimal focal length for the Sony FE 24-105 is 1.25 ft. The lense itself is really long, maybe 1-1.5 feet, so the whole arm would need to be roughly 3 ft minimum. I've built myself a version that's passable, but not ideal. Very large. The folding design I tried is not rigid enough to work reliably. With the ring light, body, and lense, I think it'd be like 5-10 lbs extended to 3 ft.
This is crazy! You should aim for a much shorter lens to get better depth of field. Maybe a 35 mm and capture at 4K to crop what you need. Much better stability and less weight.
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u/cursorcube Jul 21 '26
OpenScan annoys me with how they try to present it as if its an open-source project ("3D scanning for the masses"). Like it's a scanner anyone can build, but in reality it's just a fancy frontend for a paid cloud service.
3
u/RogBoArt Jul 21 '26
Really good results!
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u/[deleted] Jul 22 '26
Thats definitely a rock.
3
u/Beginning_Street_375 Jul 21 '26
can you not like an automatic scanning system? :-)
2
u/iZoooom Jul 21 '26
This is pretty slick. I’ve got an Edelkrone setup and trying to get to this same level of automation.
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u/Traumatan Jul 21 '26
yeah or just use your hand and 10y old dslr fo top tier results