It’s not every day that we take the time out to talk about an app, but sometimes you run into something that just captures your attention and says “please, you need to talk about this”. We found one of those apps at CES 2019 earlier in the month when we spoke with a company based in Israel called EyeCue Vision Technologies. Their app: Qlone.
3D scanning is nothing new and we have covered a number of times in the past, including scanning beds like the one we ran a full review on from Matter and Form. Some of these solutions are feature rich or offer a fancy turntable to take care of the job without you having to lift a finger. However, in the past they have been slow to complete the task, including the Matter and Form scanner which took an average of 30-90 minutes to scan an item.
Qlone changes the game by allowing you to scan an item in a matter of seconds. You do have to lift a finger, but there is no doubt about how worth it (the small bit of work from you) it is. They have consolidated the process into a few short steps. Download their app, print a pattern from their website that acts as a matt to set your item on, and scan it with the app.
It is quite similar to Microsoft’s Photosynth app they released for a limited time under Microsoft Live Labs program (which featured beta software and apps to try out). Photosynth allowed you to stitch together a 3D image of your environment by taking a 360 degree panoramic shot of everything (left to right, up and down). Qlone is similar to this, only you are taking a shot of an item from outside of a bubble vs within it (if that makes sense).
When you place an item on the printed sheet and point your camera (within the app) at it, a bubble will form around it. You simply move the camera around and allow it to snap pieces of it until the bubble shows you have gotten it all and it can stitch it all together.
From there, you can use the object you scanned as an interactive VR object using your camera. If the app recognizes the item, it will even animate it (at the show, they used a small plastic horse, which then walked around once scanned). You of course can export the scanned item so you can print it using a 3D printer and software.
The app is free to use (available for both iOS and Android) and you can scan as much as you want and play with the AR features. However, they do require your to use “credits” to “unlock” the exports (one export = one credit). So there will be some in-app purchasing required to full use the app. Honestly, it sounds like it would be best to just offer a free vs pro version of the app and call it a one-time purchase, but for now it at least offers an amazing and quick way of capturing something in 3D. Also, it doesn’t always come out the way you want it as you can see in the image here, but with the right lighting and patience, you will probably have a lot of fun with this.
