When people are evaluating full body 3D scanners for starting 3D figurine businesses they often overlook the time cost for setting up their full body 3D scanner, managing 3D scan files and keeping track of which scans belong to which customers.  This is not a problem when you only scan a few people but, for successful scanning  businesses that scan hundreds to thousands of people, you better have a scan solution that takes this into consideration.

Below is a table comparing the upfront, monthly and time costs for operating a 3D avatar business: 

For any 3D printing business looking to adopt full-color 3D printing, now is definitely a time to pay attention to all of the new 3D printing technologies on the horizon. The 2 main companies to watch in the full-color printing space right now are Mimaki and HP. For this particular post, we are going to focus on everything you need to know about the Mimaki 3DUJ-553 full-color 3D printer. We'll go into more detail about the HP Jet Fusion 500/300 full-color 3D printer in another post. Here is a quick outline of what we will be covering:

In this post we are going to give an overview on what needs to happen to a raw 3D scan before it becomes a full color 3D printed figurine.

One of the most overlooked items when people set up their 3D figurine business is how much time and effort it takes to turn a raw 3D scan into a product their end customer is happy with.  All of the steps outlined in this article are automatically done for you if you are using Twindom's fulfillment services and worldwide network of 3D print partners. If you are not using Twindom's fulfillment services, then you should expect it to take multiple hours of manual digital post-processing to turn the raw data produced by your full body 3D scanner into something that will turn out well when printed on a full color 3D printer. This is almost the complete opposite of regular photography where we are used to being able to instantly print beautiful looking photographs when only spending a few minutes in Adobe Photoshop to touch them up.

Here is the list of everything you need to do for making 3D figurines from raw 3D scans:

The Consumer Electronics Show is the world's largest technology show each year and this year we joined forces with Kodak year to bring a full body 3D scanner to the show to 3D scan people for 3D printed figurines.  We received a spectacular response at the event as you can see in the pictures and case study below.

When people put together their business plans for setting up a 3D portrait business they will usually decide to either locate in a studio, setup in a mall, or take their full body 3D scanner to events. In this post we are going to focus on setting up in a mall and what you can do to give yourself the highest chance of success.

Hybrid 3D scanning systems work by combining photogrammetry and structured light methods. This is the technology that Twindom uses on it's full body 3D scanners used to make 3D portraits.

In order to keep a 3D printed figurine looking like brand new it's important to keep it in an environment where it won't be damaged. 3D printed figurines are meant for display purposes only. While it is fine to pass them around at gatherings occasionally, they really should stay on a shelf, your fireplace mantle, or in a glass display case (bell jars work very well). When you're deciding where to display them you will want to avoid:

One of the most popular types of events for people in the 3D printed figurine industry are comic conventions. If you're trying to decide what your first event should be, comic conventions can be a great place to start because of the large crowds they can draw. Ideally you want to target comic cons that have over +5,000 people and take place of over 1-2 days. In this post we will go over what a sample comic con could look like in terms of number of people 3D scanned and revenue for you as 3D printed figurine business owner.

Starting a 3D figurine business can be really difficult especially when most customers have never heard of the concept. You will want to make sure you have a full body 3D scanner that produces good quality 3D portraits, have a reliable way to handle 3D printing fulfillment of the 3D figurines and a well though out business strategy. You can find more information about the first two in other sections of this blog. After surveying many different 3D portrait businesses, here is what they ranked as most important things to focus on:

In this post we are going to learn about the different components of a 3D model before it becomes a 3D printed figurine. To start off, here is an overview on how the data flows from the time a capture is taken on a full body 3D scanner to the time the 3D model is printed out on a full color 3D printer:

1. Person stands inside full body 3D scanner and has their picture taken (<1 second)
2. Photo data is processed into a Preview Model for customer to view onsite (5-10 minutes)
3. Preview Model is processed into a Print Quality Model when customer orders their 3D portrait
4. Print Quality Model is reviewed by a 3D artist
5. Print Quality Model is submitted to full color 3D printer to be made into 3D printed figurine