i have been researching alot lately on 3d scanning entry level solutions.
Im having the best resulta so far with a kinect camera and the cheap software named Recfusion. Rock solid, but i lack detail in my scans.
Have got a qoute on a goscan from creaform… Lets not even go there.
So looking into structured light scanning and so far the only software that seems like a complete solution, without too much compiling ipen source scripts and halfdone solutions, is so far Russion3DScanner.
So, im trying with my 550d, and my problem for the time being is that whenever i push the self calibration button (lower button, upper which takea the pictures work fine), the program crashes with a visual c++ error.
Any tips om how to get it working? Running W764bit and did a clean intall of all the utils and did a rapir of .Net . No luck
Try to calibrate with chessboard, not self calibration. If chess board calibration will be work, after that I can give recomendation about self calibration. But for solve you problem for self calibration, i should see you photos which you use for self calibration, may be they too light or too dark.
Now i tried with the calibration board. I can take the picture, and the software reports “image stored”, but nothing shows up in the left pane where i suppose all the pictures should be listed, so you can select them and click calibrate?
I tried taking 15 pictures in a row and nothing showed up, button is just greyed out/disabled.
Tried self-calibration once more, it computes about 80% of the pictures and then comes the error / crash. Load is only about 1,5 Gb RAM at that point, so possibly not the issue.
Try to open project directory (and looked save or not saved calibration images). check options of you Canon should be set images as jpg (not raw). Size of images should be 5 Mpx. And try to don’t use non english words in path to you project directory.
Thanks a little bit of progress, after repathing and resizing images to 2000 (was ~5000 pixels on the long side) it now runs through the calibration data. It says BAD CALIBRATION. Thats is properly just my setup. I will post the next i issue i face (or result ;))
So, next question…
The output of the software is empty files. doesn’t matter what format, the file only contains a header, no data.
The textures output is just a black image.
In the “Processing”-tab i only see a black screen. I can paint with a circular white brush - guess it’s supposed to be a mask of some sort.
Anyway - All the calibration gets done, and i see nice and well lit pictures in the scanning-tab, but nothing in processing.
I says after a few attempts i have “5 saves left” - what happens after that? Can it be reset, i need to see some output data 
As I understand camera and projector calibration - OK.
What’s about gamma calibration? And you need look parameters in the program. But I can’ t now say what’ s the parameters you should look because I am in travel and will be at home only in end of September 
All calibrations went well. Also it takes less than 10 seconds to compute the processing - which seems “too fast”. But also result is this.
Try dark trashold to set 0,0 or 0,1.
At 0,0 i does output a mesh, about 100 mbyte.
But it is only the plane - a very detailed flat plane.
So i’m out of saves…
How many calibration sets are you supposed to make? And should you move the camera around between each set?
I mean you can only scan from 1 angle at a time.
If you have a background as 3d model then you may be have to dark real object, try to scan any white object. For dark objects you should set other parameters on you canon 550d, some times color and type of surface scanning model are not good (too dark, glass, and etc). You should rotate real object not camera. If you move camera, you should recalibrate all system again.
Yes i get it, those where beginners questions.
I did in fact manage to scan 3 stripes on the side of an Adidas shoe now - so there is hope!
I have one big issue though, it looses contact with the 550D all the time - and i cannot get windows to stop popping up with the windows that allows you to copy pictures from SD card - Not EOS utility, but “windows”-driver that opens, even if windows is set to “Take no action”.
So it takes a little battle every time the camera has been shut down. Sometimes Windows also states “unregcognized usb unit”.
… Anyway, i will try to rig better with tripods for projector and camera, instead of based on eyesight.
Thanks so far