Meet Digital Jay 😁

Hello Supporters! 👋

Julia and I went on an adventure this week  and had our bodies scanned. What a crazy idea indeed! I've been working  with body scans for a while and have come to appreciate how important  the concept of a digital double is becoming. I thought for a laugh, it  would be hilarious to make a version of myself for Daz Studio and Unreal  Engine.

Here we have the first rendition of what I'd like to call Digital Jay, or perhaps Jay 51 (based my current age).

I  tell you, it's quite the experience seeing yourself in Blender 😆  Granted, my digital twin needs a bit of work, but this isn't bad  considering it was made with a handheld Structure iPad scanner.

The  process was quite simple: after we found a good even light in the  studio, the operator (Julian) walked around me while I was standing  still for about 1 minute. The data gets sent to the cloud for  processing, is sent back within 10 minutes and boom - we have an OBJ  complete with 4K diffuse texture.

From what I understand, the  device sends out an infrared pattern onto a surface and measures the  reflections. Whatever deviations are detected is translated into  vertices in 3D space. This is very different to the more common  photogrammetry process, which takes regular pictures from various  angles.

The result is relatively low res, but probably good enough  for a game character. However, this wasn't the only scan we took that  day! The company we went to is called 3D Chimera, a Miami based 3D printing service, in fact Brian found them online when we talked about body scanning.

They  had another scanner made by Polyga that can create much higher  resolutions of a face, albeit without a texture. It's a device that  flashes bright lights at the subject, so for that and wrapping reasons, I  thought it best to keep my eyes closed for the 30 seconds it took for a  sweep. Check this out:

Look at the skin detail. I'm  thinking that with a bit of fiddling, I should be able to combine both  versions to create a complete version with great facial detail - at  least that's the plan. The sizes very different, and it'll be a puzzle,  but let's see how this works out.

I'll spend some time over the  weekend to get the full body scan cleaned up with Wrap, convert the  textures, import it all onto Genesis 9 in Daz Studio, and from there  hopefully Digital Jay should walking around soon in a Third Person  project inside Unreal Engine.

If you're curious about what 3D Chimera looks like from the inside, I've made this little video for Brian because I know he's into 3D printing. You'll also meet our  scanning operator Julian, who was very generous with his time and  explanations. I wanted to shoot a little interview with the owner of the  company while we were there, but things were too exciting so it'll have  to wait until next time.

While I have you, and speaking of Unreal  Engine, I'm doing a Daz+ stream this Saturday! Join me for animating  Daz content in Unreal Engine and retargeting animations from other  sources. In case you have a favourite Daz character, or you happen to  have a digital double of yourself for the purpose, drop by and learn how  to do it. It'll be fun!

Have a good week 😎