Body scan at home. Get your 3D avatar using a smartphone. Get 100+ measurements!

fig: body measurements using phone camera

The pandemic has forced everyone to remain indoors. While we still need to buy things for a living. Most of us are now used to re-ordering almost everything viz. Grocery, Meals, Kitchenware, and most importantly apparel. The biggest pain with apparel though is the hit and miss game that we have to play with the fitting. We end up returning more than half of the clothes, shoes, and other fashion items that we buy online. Why so? Most of it because it is not the right fit. And we know – returns are not pleasant at all.

But finally, here’s some help from the technology. Handheld hardware scanners are on the rise and getting into the hands of more and more people – New generation Apple devices such as iPad Pro 12 already have a LiDAR sensor which does a decent job of capturing the world in 3D. 

On the software side, there is extensive research and development done on converting 2D photos to 3D scans. The application of computer vision, image processing, and machine learning has greatly enhanced the fidelity of this conversion.

In this blog, we demonstrate how to use the iPhone 12 Lidar scanner to get a 3D scan of a person and use it to extract human body measurements using ProtoTech’s 3D Measure Up.

We used the 3D Scanner App and iPhone applications to get the scan of the person.

It can be downloaded from this link: 3D Scanner App: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/3d-scanner-app/id1419913995

Configuring the app before taking the scan

We set the following parameters in 3D Scanner App before starting the scanning process:

1. Resolution:- 9mm 

2. Masking:- Person

3. Range:- 0.5 m

4. Confidence:- High

Steps or recommendation for scanning a human body:

Two persons are involved in the scanning process. One who is getting scanned and another person to do the scan.

Instructions for the person being scanned:

1. Stand in an A posture ie. with feet about 30 cm apart and the arms are way from the body.

See the image below:

2. Stands still during the scanning. It takes about 3 to 4 minutes at maximum to generate the scan.

Instructions for the person generating the scan:

1. Holds the iPhone firmly such that the phone is vertical ie. at a 90-degree angle with the ground at all the time. This is necessary for accurate mapping of the body.

2. Keep the iPhone at a fixed height and move around the person to be scanned in a circle and the person being scanned is standing at the center.

3. It is recommended to perform the scanning more than once at the same height.

4. Start scanning at a level of height of the person and gradually decrease the height of the scan after completing one or two circular rounds at the same height.

5. Repeat this till you reach the ground and the entire body is covered.

6. Once the scan is completed. Smoothen the scan from available options in-app.

Export the OBJ/STL file

There are multiple options available to share the scan. We exported the OBJ file through Email. There is also an option to store the scan in the device storage. 

Using 3D Measure Up to extract measurements from the scan

Transfer the scan obj file to your desktop.  Load it in 3D Measure Up to extract the measurements.