UC San Diego

We propose a new geometry scanning system that permits the user to obtain detailed triangle models of real-world places with a tracked Microsoft Kinect device. The system generates a texture map for the triangle mesh using video frames from the Kinect's color camera and displays a continually-updated preview of the textured model in real- time, allowing the user to re-scan the scene from any direction to fill holes or increase the texture resolution. We also present filtering methods to maintain a high-quality model of reasonable size by removing overlapping or low-precision range scans. Our approach works well in the presence of degenerate geometry or when closing loops about the scanned subject, making it especially suited for scanning large areas. We demonstrate the ability of our system to acquire 3D models at human scale with a prototype implementation in the StarCAVE, a holographic virtual-reality environment at the University of California, San Diego