Latest products
3d printed jewelry from photogrammetry
by：Keke Jewelry
2022-07-12
Photography is an amazing technology to create 3D models of objects with just taking pictures!
I \'ve been working on and experimenting with it a lot for the last few months, and in the process of writing my Instructables 3D scan class, I want to do something simple from one of my scans
Of all the things I tried to scan, this starfish was one of the most successful models and I thought it would be a good pair of earrings.
For anyone working on 3D modeling, being able to capture objects from reality and bring them into the digital space is a very exciting prospect.
The possibilities that can be created using this technology are really endless, in fact, you no longer need a fancy 3D scanner, which allows almost anyone to access the process with a mobile camera!
I will give you an overview of the process I used to make these earrings as an example of a simple application of photography in design.
I will show you how I took photos and introduce you to a program called \"remake\" that will magically compile those photos into 3D models in the cloud.
For one more-
Take a deep exam for photography measurement and remake, check out my 3D scan class and all members take it for free!
Thank you so much to the beautiful Alana Black for agreeing to make these earrings for me :)
In addition, the design of this earring is inspired by the amazing custom clothing of electric candy.
Capturing good scans with photographic measurements is mostly about technology, not fancy equipment or supplies, but you need something basic.
If you know what you\'re doing, you can get some really good 3D capture with the least amount of equipment.
But in some cases, it would be helpful to have some better equipment.
You definitely need: other useful devices: There are a lot of software options on the market to convert your photos into 3D models, but the photography software I use is called ReMake.
You can try out the pro version for 15 days for free, which allows you to upload unlimited photos and create as many models as you want at that time.
After that, you can continue to use the free, limited software version, which is still great for most amateurs, or you can buy the pro version for $30 a month or $300 a year.
For educators and students, however, the remake is free!
To use ReMake, you need to create a free Autodesk account.
Go to and create the username and password.
With this account, you will also get 5 gb of free cloud storage space and you will need to store the collection of photos you uploaded to create the 3D model.
One of the drawbacks is that only Windows has the remake feature.
But if you\'re a Mac user like me, there\'s a way to fix this.
You can use boot camp to install Windows on your Mac so you can start your computer using the Mac or PC interface, or you can run both systems using Parallels at the same time.
You can also subscribe to the Frame for $10 a month, which will provide you with a Windows desktop based on a virtual cloud.
If you are already familiar with another software platform, or you can use what you are satisfied with for free in addition to remake!
Due to the way photographic measurements work, some objects are easier to capture than others.
Each situation will vary, but usually try to avoid it as much as possible: I \'ve tried a lot of objects in different ways, and the starfish I use for these earrings are one of the best scans I get.
If you\'re going to make a piece of jewelry with your scan, think about how your object will work for the app.
How will it hang?
Would it look small if it was big?
How will you connect it?
In order to take photography and rebuild things, you need to take a series of overlapping object photos from different angles.
The photographic measurement software detects features on objects and finds common points in overlapping photo pairs that can be used to find the position of the camera relative to each photo object.
There are two basic strategies when you take a photographic measurement: you can shoot by moving the camera around the object, or rotate the object while keeping the camera still.
Since I have a tripod, some lights and background, I prefer the second method, especially small objects like starfish.
For more details on both shooting strategies, please check out my photography measurement course for the free 3D scanning course.
When you shoot a rotating object, you need your background to be completely blank or feature-free.
This means that you need a black or white background large enough for you to shoot your object from a high and low angle.
Set your lights on both sides of your objects from the front, adjust them so that they emit diffuse light and produce a uniform background.
It\'s also a good idea to fix your object so you can see all the sides of it.
To do this for my starfish, I used a hard thread to go through a piece of wood and stick the wood to my Lazy Susan.
Then I put Lazy Susan in my black background and poked a small hole so the wires could go through.
I drilled a small hole in one arm of the starfish and stuck it to the wire so it was hung in the middle
The air on the background, but I can still turn it by spinning Lazy Susan below.
It takes quite a bit of skill to take an object to get the right photo.
In this sense, a large part of learning photography measurement is learning basic photography and lighting techniques, and therefore, I strongly recommend that you also take a look at the photography class in Audry montblas, learn some important basic information about camera operation and lighting.
Once you \'ve fixed your object, place your camera on a tripod in front of the object at an angle you think will capture some important details.
Make sure your objects fill up most of your frames, but are not cropped anywhere.
Remember, you will rotate your object, so if it is a strange shape, the frame will change as it rotates.
You need to take a lot of photos to capture an object from 20-
250 depends on the size and complexity of your object.
Take a picture and then rotate your object a little on the turntable, about 5-
15 degrees, take another photo.
Do it until you get back to where you started.
Next, move the camera on the tripod to a higher or lower angle and repeat the same process.
For more details on camera setup and shooting, please check out the shooting of my photography measurement class in 3D scanning class :)
When you think you have enough object photos, upload them to your computer and take out any blurry or otherwise defective photos.
Now you can upload them and turn them into a model!
When you open ReMake on your desktop, you will see the tabs for your \"dashboard\" and \"edit.
The dashboard is where you upload photos to your 3D model and access the model you have created.
The editor is where you view and edit the model after you rebuild it from a photo.
On the dashboard, click the photo icon under create 3.
At this point, you can choose \"online\" or \"offline\" to create the model.
Unless you have a very powerful computer, you always want to choose \"online \".
You can then choose to select a photo from either the local drive or the Autodesk Cloud Drive.
My photo is on my computer so I chose \"local drive \".
Browse to folders with photos of objects and open them.
All photos you have selected will be displayed in the window.
When you have all the photos you want, click the Create model button at the bottom of the page to upload your photos to the cloud.
Back on the dashboard screen, you will see a thumbnail of your project under \"My Cloud Drive\" at the bottom of the screen, showing the upload progress of your photos.
Do not click to stay away from this screen until the upload is complete and switch to \"wait in line.
Once it processes at least 1% in the queue, you can click away from this screen, but if you click away before that, your work will stop processing.
Now, just wait for your model to be created, which can take an hour.
Once a model has been created from your photo, you will receive an email telling you that your file is ready.
Now you can see if your model is successful!
On the remake dashboard, you will now see a thumbnail of the project under \"my cloud drive\" with the words \"ready to download \".
Click on this and you can save your model on your computer.
Click the model under my computer on the dashboard and open it in the editing environment.
When you first open the model, it will be displayed to you when the color map or \"texture\" is on.
After opening the color layer, the model almost always looks the best, so to really judge how accurate your scan captures the shape of the object, you need to turn off the color layer.
On the bottom menu, click the color cube and you will see the menu with the visualization option.
Click on the gray cube to view the model in the entity view.
If your model has any visible defects, you can usually fix and edit most of them with the remake editing tool, but if your model doesn\'t look good, you may want to try to re-
Take a picture of you
Learn how to use all the great editing tools in remake (
Such as: Slice, delete, hole supplement, bridge gap, smooth, engraving)
Take a look at my 3D scan lesson to clean up your model lesson.
If you want to make jewelry from a scan, you need a way to attach earrings posts or other findings.
One way to do this is to export your model to a program like Meshmixer or Fusion360, but you can also use the editing tool in remake, it\'s good not to complicate your workflow.
For these earrings, I want to connect several starfish on a chain that is getting smaller and smaller, so I need to print some models with one hole and some with two holes.
In order to make a hole in the arm of the starfish, I first use the engraving tool to pull and widen one end of the arm so that it can hold a hole.
I then use the lasso selection tool to select on both sides of the grid and remove the holes I want.
To close the edge of the hole, I use the bridge gap tool to regularly bridge between the sides around the hole.
Then I use the fill hole tool to fill the space between the bridges.
I used the same method to make a hole on the other side of the starfish between the arms.
I saved a version of the file with two holes, and one version only saved the holes between the arms.
I printed my model on the Objet connecx 500 printer at Pier 9, which is a UV curing resin printer.
These printers print at a very high resolution and are great for this small thing, but I think they can also work on many other printers.
When I import my files into the print software, I set them to the earrings size I want to make some smaller and larger.
I also try to print them with clear and white resin and I like how the two end up.
When I print and wash the parts, I assemble them into earrings with jump rings, earrings posts and pliers.
I think the attachment points on the print are a bit too fragile and I might make them a little stronger next time, but so far they still stay great!
I have been wearing my earrings, especially the smaller ones, and have received a lot of praise.
But on my lovely roommate Alana, they look better and she Model me kindly :)Thanks Alana!
Now that I understand how to capture something with photography, I am happy to make more work with this technique.
I am particularly interested in the idea of combining models to create unique forms.
If this instruction inspires you to make jewelry with photographic measurements, please post one I made below!
Be sure to take a look at my 3D scan class and learn more tips.
I \'ve been working on and experimenting with it a lot for the last few months, and in the process of writing my Instructables 3D scan class, I want to do something simple from one of my scans
Of all the things I tried to scan, this starfish was one of the most successful models and I thought it would be a good pair of earrings.
For anyone working on 3D modeling, being able to capture objects from reality and bring them into the digital space is a very exciting prospect.
The possibilities that can be created using this technology are really endless, in fact, you no longer need a fancy 3D scanner, which allows almost anyone to access the process with a mobile camera!
I will give you an overview of the process I used to make these earrings as an example of a simple application of photography in design.
I will show you how I took photos and introduce you to a program called \"remake\" that will magically compile those photos into 3D models in the cloud.
For one more-
Take a deep exam for photography measurement and remake, check out my 3D scan class and all members take it for free!
Thank you so much to the beautiful Alana Black for agreeing to make these earrings for me :)
In addition, the design of this earring is inspired by the amazing custom clothing of electric candy.
Capturing good scans with photographic measurements is mostly about technology, not fancy equipment or supplies, but you need something basic.
If you know what you\'re doing, you can get some really good 3D capture with the least amount of equipment.
But in some cases, it would be helpful to have some better equipment.
You definitely need: other useful devices: There are a lot of software options on the market to convert your photos into 3D models, but the photography software I use is called ReMake.
You can try out the pro version for 15 days for free, which allows you to upload unlimited photos and create as many models as you want at that time.
After that, you can continue to use the free, limited software version, which is still great for most amateurs, or you can buy the pro version for $30 a month or $300 a year.
For educators and students, however, the remake is free!
To use ReMake, you need to create a free Autodesk account.
Go to and create the username and password.
With this account, you will also get 5 gb of free cloud storage space and you will need to store the collection of photos you uploaded to create the 3D model.
One of the drawbacks is that only Windows has the remake feature.
But if you\'re a Mac user like me, there\'s a way to fix this.
You can use boot camp to install Windows on your Mac so you can start your computer using the Mac or PC interface, or you can run both systems using Parallels at the same time.
You can also subscribe to the Frame for $10 a month, which will provide you with a Windows desktop based on a virtual cloud.
If you are already familiar with another software platform, or you can use what you are satisfied with for free in addition to remake!
Due to the way photographic measurements work, some objects are easier to capture than others.
Each situation will vary, but usually try to avoid it as much as possible: I \'ve tried a lot of objects in different ways, and the starfish I use for these earrings are one of the best scans I get.
If you\'re going to make a piece of jewelry with your scan, think about how your object will work for the app.
How will it hang?
Would it look small if it was big?
How will you connect it?
In order to take photography and rebuild things, you need to take a series of overlapping object photos from different angles.
The photographic measurement software detects features on objects and finds common points in overlapping photo pairs that can be used to find the position of the camera relative to each photo object.
There are two basic strategies when you take a photographic measurement: you can shoot by moving the camera around the object, or rotate the object while keeping the camera still.
Since I have a tripod, some lights and background, I prefer the second method, especially small objects like starfish.
For more details on both shooting strategies, please check out my photography measurement course for the free 3D scanning course.
When you shoot a rotating object, you need your background to be completely blank or feature-free.
This means that you need a black or white background large enough for you to shoot your object from a high and low angle.
Set your lights on both sides of your objects from the front, adjust them so that they emit diffuse light and produce a uniform background.
It\'s also a good idea to fix your object so you can see all the sides of it.
To do this for my starfish, I used a hard thread to go through a piece of wood and stick the wood to my Lazy Susan.
Then I put Lazy Susan in my black background and poked a small hole so the wires could go through.
I drilled a small hole in one arm of the starfish and stuck it to the wire so it was hung in the middle
The air on the background, but I can still turn it by spinning Lazy Susan below.
It takes quite a bit of skill to take an object to get the right photo.
In this sense, a large part of learning photography measurement is learning basic photography and lighting techniques, and therefore, I strongly recommend that you also take a look at the photography class in Audry montblas, learn some important basic information about camera operation and lighting.
Once you \'ve fixed your object, place your camera on a tripod in front of the object at an angle you think will capture some important details.
Make sure your objects fill up most of your frames, but are not cropped anywhere.
Remember, you will rotate your object, so if it is a strange shape, the frame will change as it rotates.
You need to take a lot of photos to capture an object from 20-
250 depends on the size and complexity of your object.
Take a picture and then rotate your object a little on the turntable, about 5-
15 degrees, take another photo.
Do it until you get back to where you started.
Next, move the camera on the tripod to a higher or lower angle and repeat the same process.
For more details on camera setup and shooting, please check out the shooting of my photography measurement class in 3D scanning class :)
When you think you have enough object photos, upload them to your computer and take out any blurry or otherwise defective photos.
Now you can upload them and turn them into a model!
When you open ReMake on your desktop, you will see the tabs for your \"dashboard\" and \"edit.
The dashboard is where you upload photos to your 3D model and access the model you have created.
The editor is where you view and edit the model after you rebuild it from a photo.
On the dashboard, click the photo icon under create 3.
At this point, you can choose \"online\" or \"offline\" to create the model.
Unless you have a very powerful computer, you always want to choose \"online \".
You can then choose to select a photo from either the local drive or the Autodesk Cloud Drive.
My photo is on my computer so I chose \"local drive \".
Browse to folders with photos of objects and open them.
All photos you have selected will be displayed in the window.
When you have all the photos you want, click the Create model button at the bottom of the page to upload your photos to the cloud.
Back on the dashboard screen, you will see a thumbnail of your project under \"My Cloud Drive\" at the bottom of the screen, showing the upload progress of your photos.
Do not click to stay away from this screen until the upload is complete and switch to \"wait in line.
Once it processes at least 1% in the queue, you can click away from this screen, but if you click away before that, your work will stop processing.
Now, just wait for your model to be created, which can take an hour.
Once a model has been created from your photo, you will receive an email telling you that your file is ready.
Now you can see if your model is successful!
On the remake dashboard, you will now see a thumbnail of the project under \"my cloud drive\" with the words \"ready to download \".
Click on this and you can save your model on your computer.
Click the model under my computer on the dashboard and open it in the editing environment.
When you first open the model, it will be displayed to you when the color map or \"texture\" is on.
After opening the color layer, the model almost always looks the best, so to really judge how accurate your scan captures the shape of the object, you need to turn off the color layer.
On the bottom menu, click the color cube and you will see the menu with the visualization option.
Click on the gray cube to view the model in the entity view.
If your model has any visible defects, you can usually fix and edit most of them with the remake editing tool, but if your model doesn\'t look good, you may want to try to re-
Take a picture of you
Learn how to use all the great editing tools in remake (
Such as: Slice, delete, hole supplement, bridge gap, smooth, engraving)
Take a look at my 3D scan lesson to clean up your model lesson.
If you want to make jewelry from a scan, you need a way to attach earrings posts or other findings.
One way to do this is to export your model to a program like Meshmixer or Fusion360, but you can also use the editing tool in remake, it\'s good not to complicate your workflow.
For these earrings, I want to connect several starfish on a chain that is getting smaller and smaller, so I need to print some models with one hole and some with two holes.
In order to make a hole in the arm of the starfish, I first use the engraving tool to pull and widen one end of the arm so that it can hold a hole.
I then use the lasso selection tool to select on both sides of the grid and remove the holes I want.
To close the edge of the hole, I use the bridge gap tool to regularly bridge between the sides around the hole.
Then I use the fill hole tool to fill the space between the bridges.
I used the same method to make a hole on the other side of the starfish between the arms.
I saved a version of the file with two holes, and one version only saved the holes between the arms.
I printed my model on the Objet connecx 500 printer at Pier 9, which is a UV curing resin printer.
These printers print at a very high resolution and are great for this small thing, but I think they can also work on many other printers.
When I import my files into the print software, I set them to the earrings size I want to make some smaller and larger.
I also try to print them with clear and white resin and I like how the two end up.
When I print and wash the parts, I assemble them into earrings with jump rings, earrings posts and pliers.
I think the attachment points on the print are a bit too fragile and I might make them a little stronger next time, but so far they still stay great!
I have been wearing my earrings, especially the smaller ones, and have received a lot of praise.
But on my lovely roommate Alana, they look better and she Model me kindly :)Thanks Alana!
Now that I understand how to capture something with photography, I am happy to make more work with this technique.
I am particularly interested in the idea of combining models to create unique forms.
If this instruction inspires you to make jewelry with photographic measurements, please post one I made below!
Be sure to take a look at my 3D scan class and learn more tips.
Custom message
