One of my favourite technologies from sci-fi is the transporter room. Scanning and converting yourself into ones and zeros and reconstructing you seemingly from nothing. Sounds eerily similar to a certain technology that we’ve become accustomed to?
Step into Hamburg based Twinkind’s pop-up studio and you can get your own custom mini-you, or your friend, or your beloved pet!
By utilising what appears to be a circular camera rig, similar to the system used to create the ‘bullet-time’ effects in the Matrix films, the tech-heads at Twinkind have developed a lightening fast photogrammetry system in-house, which can scan a subject in 3D as quickly and simply as taking a photo. So fast, in fact, that you can scan your family dog or cat with ease.
Once scanned, the resultant data set is cleaned up and tweaked to make sure that the scan looks as realistic as possible. The final phase is the full colour, 3D printed sculpture, which can be produced in any one of 7 sizes ranging from approximately 15cm to around 35cm tall.
The 3D printing process can take from two to five weeks for the model to be ready for shipment or pick-up. But it seems to be worth the wait, the results are beautiful and wonderfully detailed, retaining facial features, expressions and colouring, perfectly mirroring the very moment the subject was scanned.
Of course this tech is all very new, very bespoke and fairly expensive topping out at an eye-squinting €1290 for a 35cm model! Not forgetting that you also have to get yourself to Hamburg – there’s no “beaming down” option available yet!
Still, the 3D sculptures are real ‘head turners’, easily making it on my and my family’s wish lists, if only I had a transporter!
Check out the Twinkind site in English and German here.
I’m not convinced about replacement of 2D photos: with a growing human community and ground space shrink, where will you place your (takin place) prints ?