NEW YORK -- "You must have blinked. That's probably why your eye is missing."
Bill Mongon is right. I did blink, and now there's a gaping hole in my left eye socket.
Fortunately, it's nothing that can't be fixed with a digital touch-up.
Mongon's company, Accurex, specializes in providing high-quality 3-D scans for industrial and archival purposes; if you need to create an accurate 3-D replica of a machine part or an archeological find, he's the man to see.
He's one of several exhibitors showing their wares at the Creative Factor booth dedicated to new product-design and -development technologies at this year's American International Toy Fair. Like the other Creative Factor participants, he's getting into the toy business.
The Breuckmann faceScan III scanners that Mongon brought to the fair were designed to provide fast, full-color scans of the human face -- perfect for capturing images that can then be used to generate figurines.
Brett Klisch, the booth's organizer, has combined Mongon's equipment with CAD software and a couple of rapid prototyping machines to create a kind of 21st-century photo booth that produces 3-D busts rather than 2-D pictures.
He's formed a new company, 3D Portrait, to market his process, and he intends to establish franchises. Ultimately, Klisch envisions a day when 3-D photo booths will be available in stores, amusement parks and "anywhere people gather."
At the toy fair, Klisch pumped out free samples for interested attendees, myself included.
First, I took a seat in front of two scanners -- one for each side of my face.
The faceScan III projected a series of light and dark bands to establish the contours of my face. The scanner's optoScan software used that information to generate a slightly patchy 3-D image of my noble visage.
The resulting image file was then passed along to a row of digital artists who primped and tweaked it before sending it to the rapid prototyping machine that would ultimately generate my miniature bust.
(My data could have been further enhanced using a SensAble Technologies Phantom, a haptic sculpting tool, and its accompanying FreeForm software. Together, these allow you to "mold" 3-D images as if they were made of physical clay, painlessly filling out those thin lips and removing any unsightly boils. Alas, my image was left in its natural, sorry state.)
There were two such machines in operation at the booth: a $45,000 Solidscape T612 Benchtop 3-D modeling system, and a $62,000 Z-Corp Spectrum Z510 Full Color System.
The Solidscape's printing arm deposits layer upon layer of blue thermoplastic compound atop a thin purple base, creating a finely detailed model of whatever CAD data you feed it. When the process is complete, the purple base is dissolved in a special solution, leaving nothing but the blue model behind.
The machine is typically used by jewelers and dentists who require highly accurate molds for their work. It's increasingly used by toy designers, however, to create the casings that are used to manufacture toys.
The Z510, meanwhile, produces full-color models by depositing alternating layers of powdered plaster and colored glue.
You can control the physical properties of the resulting model by changing the material that's used to make it: Fine-grained plaster produces hard, rigid models, while large-grained plaster produces soft, flexible ones. About 95 percent of the plaster is recycled at the end of the process.
While the machine itself costs a bundle, the models it generates do not: A typical model runs $2 to $2.50 per cubic inch. That's perfect for creating prototypes that stand a good chance of winding up in the wastebasket.
The whole process, from scanning to printing, takes less than an hour. Demand for free samples had caused a huge backlog at the toy fair, however, so I opted to have my bust mailed to me.
I'm sure I'll regret having skipped the haptic enhancement, but you get what you pay for.
