This app allows you to create 3D models with the iPhone camera

Epic Games, designers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine engines, has announced RealityScan, a new application that creates 3D models with the iPhone camera. The app takes images of an object from several corners to handle them and generate the model.

RealityScan has relied on construction tools with photographic software used to create loyal performances of an object or structure. Techniques are widely used by development and special video effects, although you need to have a good camera and follow the safe steps to take a better shot.

This application uses the same principle of taking multiple pictures, only in a simpler way to democratize the creation of 3D objects. RealityScan guides users through augmented reality and interactive feedback. Once the images are taken, they are processed and a model is created that can be published or sold on SketchFab.

The video shows a person sweeping an old sofa with the iPhone. The end result, available in SketchFab, is a detailed model of nearly 100,000 triangles that looks good enough to be used in a game or architecture project.

At first glance, RealityScan is not much different from what exists in other photometric applications, although its advantage lies in the technology that drives it.

The development of RealScan has been executed on behalf of CapturingReality and Quixel, two companies that are from Epic Games, which are dedicated to scanning the surface. While the first of them competes with AGISOFT for the throne in the best photogrammetry software, the second is the leader in the sale of digital properties thanks to its Megascans store.

“RealityScan is the first step on our journey to make 3D scanning available to all creators. We believe that this tool will greatly help people of all skill sets to better understand the basic principles of scanning, bridging the gap between beginners and professionals,” Epic Games mentions in its official statement.

Although the creator of Fortnite seeks to bridge the gap between an ordinary person and a photo expert with DSLR or a drone, the goal is still further away.

You can scan objects with RealityScan and download samples to SketchFab (owned by Epic Games) for sharing or selling. The 3D model can be integrated with non-real engines and combined with other objects in the Megascans library.

RealityScan is to photogrammetry like Live Link Faces to capturing facial expressions. Both applications find ways to facilitate the technical process, but the end goal is the same: “stay in our ecosystem.”

The same can be said from Metahuman Creator, another application to create digital characters and integrate them with unrealistic engines.

Epic Games' claims are available in beta with a limited to 10,000 users through TestFlight. Places are currently running out, so you have to wait a few months for access to expand to more people on iOS soon.

On the other hand, if there are users of Android smartphones, unfortunately they will have to wait until the end of the year, when the beta version of this operating system is released.

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