Guide to DIY Scanning - Your Smartphone is a Material Scanner

Jerc

Hi guys and gals,

We just released a extensive guide on how to create high quality scanned materials using only a smartphone and a cheap light setup.
You can find all the details over here!
Let us know in the comments if you have any question or if you created a cool material using this technique!

m4dcow

Nice results, I would say that the light is pretty expensive for what it is. I would recommend for initial experiments getting a cheap led flashlight like
https://www.amazon.com/Hausbell-Ultra-Bright-Flashlight-Tactical/dp/B00CEOII9K you can unscrew the lens and bare leds put out a surprisingly wide beam of fairly even light. Then you can put the tracing paper over the head of the flashlight to diffuse the light using a cardboard and duct tape light box or even just tracing paper and rubber band can work. Even if the flashlight doesn't have a consistent daylight white balance, it doesn't really matter for the angled shots to generate the normals.

I've been doing material scanning experiments myself for awhile and ended up getting some high CRI cree leds (XHP70s), soldering dc connectors and making filter holders for them. The 5 I use cost about the same to make as the 1 manfrotto led light and put out more light and have higher CRI values. Only caveat is you would have to by a DC power supply and dimmer to modulate brightness though.

On another note, the multi angle to normal node is awesome, way better result than I used to get in photoshop or if I had rolled my own node in substance.