Create a 3D ‘Mini Me’ Sculpture of – Yourself – With Shapify.Me
While taking a selfie, a photograph of yourself, was interesting for a little while, thanks to Shapify.Me, it’s quite passe! Why take a boring photo, when you can get a 3D-printed miniature sculpture that captures you in all your glory! Did you think that applying a nice filter on Instagram was cool? Shapify.Me’s 3D-printed sculptures are far more compelling and truly stand out from the hundreds of thousands of ordinary selfies published every day on the web!
Shapify.Me is a concept developed by Palo Alto-based Artec Group, that manufactures professional-quality handheld 3D scanners that are used in archaeology, plastic surgery as well as 3D printing in order to capture an accurate 3D model of the subject – or object! These devices are, however, out of reach to most consumers with a price tag of upward of $10,000, which is why Artec Group decided to develop a concept of 3D-capture booths they call Shapify.Me booths, which can be found in larger cities across the world, including New York and Rome.
The idea is to set these booths in places with lots of foot traffic and let everyone and anyone get a 3D Shapify.Me sculpture. The team behind the product showcased it at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, where they explained that the booth consists of a platform that is surrounded by sensors that take that ‘3D selfie’ of the person by rotating around them. Basically, Artec Group’s sensors turn a 360-degree photo of you into a 3D model that can then be printed. While it sounds quite complicated and as we’ve seen, isn’t inexpensive, the process doesn’t take too long: A 3D selfie of a single person takes just 12 seconds.
Why Would Anyone Want a 3D Model of Themselves?
You’re kidding, right? While 3D models can seem a bit tacky, I’m sure most people will react in the same way I did: With utter amazement browsing Shapify.Me’s world map to find the nearest Shapify.Me scanned that I can visit to make a 3D model of myself at this time of my life.
When thinking about why – or to be more precise when – to take a 3D ‘selfie’, just think of all the important moments that we mostly took photos at before everyone had smartphones. It can be your graduation, pregnancy or even wedding. A special moment you want to capture not only on Instagram or a Facebook album, but also something completely different.
Get into the Business od 3D ‘Shapies’
On the business side: Shapify.Me works like a franchise where Artec Group franchises their scanners out to interested business, who have 2 plans to choose from: The cheaper one costs $99,000 while the more expensive one is $180,000. Both include a number of 3D models (unlimited for the more expensive Acquisition model), software, a one-year guarantee and the actual Shapify.Me Booth.
While you might not get into the business of 3D scans and models just yet, Shapify.Me is an important way of making 3D printing popular to the masses, introducing a lot of our friends and family to this increasingly interesting trend of the future. First we take a Shapify.Me model of ourselves – and then we get a 3D printer for the house, right?
