When calculated by revenue, the Fuel3D Kickstarter campaign for the SCANIFY 3D scanner ranks in the top 0.5% of Kickstarter campaigns of 2013. The technology was developed by Professor Ron Daniel, a Lecturer in Engineering Science at Oxford University, whose tech is now used to capture photorealistic 3D models in under a tenth of a second. And, today, Fuel3D has announced that their technology will be exported to Hong Kong, where local toy manufacturer TOYZEROPLUS will be using the SCANIFY 3D scanner to produce a new line of customizable toys.
TOYZEROPLUS prides itself on being able to manufacture figures that have realistic details. The head of their figures are created using a variety of techniques, including collecting image data from customers. Their approach encompasses the best of traditional manufacturing practices, including hand-painting the final product to capture an amazingly realistic aesthetic, with heads ranging in size from a 1:6 scale, (the most common size for action figures), up to huge replicas with a 1:1 scale. It makes sense, then, that the company would turn to a technology like Fuel3D’s for their craft.
Wilson Tam, the founder of TOYZEROPLUS, said, “We are always looking for new ways to capture the details of our customers’ features so that we can create end-products that fulfill their desire to have an action figure that looks just like them. We are pleased to say that we are now able to use SCANIFY data in our processes – it is very appropriate for our business as it captures much more detail than other low-cost 3D scanners.”
“Using SCANIFY saves us huge amounts of time in the creation of every head – taking out the guesswork of building each model,” according to Tam. “Previously, we had to try and recreate a person’s facial structure from the images, but this always involved a lot of estimation and time-consuming manual processes, as well as several exchanges back and forth with the customer to get their comments and approval.”
Stuart Mead, the CEO of Fuel3D provided some commentary on TOYZEROPLUS’s activities, saying, “It’s a delight to hear from customers like TOYZEROPLUS, who are not only using SCANIFY in an interesting and creative way, but can also see the potential of the product to help scale up their business. We look forward to supporting TOYZEROPLUS as they expand internationally.”
