Drew Cox and his team wanted an easy way to create three dimensional pictures and share them with others. After successfully crowdfunding the Matter and Form 3D scanner in 2013 the team is back with Bevel. Bevel is a clip-on attachment for smartphones designed to create 3D objects.
The final specifications aren’t set yet but the lasers will follow the scanner lasers, as Class 1 lasers at a 650 nanometer wavelength. Also in question are the times required to pan back and forth when scanning an object, and the time required for the app to consolidate the data points into a 3D picture object.
Cashew was launched in June as Matter and Form’s online service to share, modify and discuss 3D scanned models and objects. All data will be able to interact with and live on the Cashew servers, and interact with the Oculus environment. Bevel is intended to be used to capture a moment in time. The three dimensional picture will feel more real than a two dimensional picture or video. That’s really what the Bevel is selling, along with all of the different applications and advances in technology that will happen in the coming years.
The Bevel unit itself plugs into any headphone jack on a smartphone or tablet and requires charging through a USB. The campaign says that a full charge will give three hours of scanning time. The app is compatible with iOS and Android and 3d files can be texted, emailed or uploaded. Optimum scanning distance for this first iteration of Bevel is around one meter. Scans can be used as STLs for 3D printing but the models will most likely need processing to get to watertight, easily printable objects.
Bevel is an awesome product that has several development questions. Earliest units ship in December 2015 (the wave available to purchase through Kickstarter now will ship February 2016) and I’m giving the benefit of the doubt that several design issues will be ironed out by that time. 3D photography feels like a step on the path to hologram generation and that’s a very inspiring thing.