As I type this, a 99%-unclothed Naomi Campbell (okay, she's wearing shoes) is posing for photographer Nick Knight, who is using a 3D body scanning device to capture her likeness digitally in a warehouse somewhere. You can watch the whole supermodel camgirl stunt online: QuickTime stream link. It's live now (12:20pm ET), not sure how long they'll continue. Susannah Breslin, who points us to this spectacle, says "I can't tell if this will be interesting or not. Maybe if she hits someone with a phone." Link to project home page.
Update, 12:57pm ET: Ms. Campbell's not on set anymore, and the scanners aren't active — but here are some low-res screengrabs from the video stream, so you can get an idea of how they set up the shoot (worksafeness: one of them contains blurry, pixelated, waist-up nudity): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7.
The model stood on a small circular platform, and scanners were perched mid-torso level on mobile, mechanical arms. I'm not sure where the resulting photos will be shown, but it looked really cool. There's a technical credit on the project website for the scanning technology — "Kev Stenning at Rapido3D." Here's that company's website: Link. Would be interesting to know the resolution at which they're scanning for this shoot, and more tech specifics about the devices they're using.
Reader comment: Brem says,
The scanning system they are using is a set of Full Body scanners from InSpeck, a company I worked for, incidently: Link. Here is the product details: Link. It appears those actual cameras are 1.3 Megapixels.
There are 4 cameras on two columns and the subject usually takes 50-80% of the image.
So in theory: 1.3 x 4 x 0.8 = approx 4.2 Million polygons, but with sampling and polygonal reduction, it would come to aroudn 1 M polygons or less, depending on the needs.
Michael Calanan says (@1:50pm ET),
They've started 3D scanning again, here's a snapshot of the QT feed: JPG Link JPG Link 2.
Bob Klepfer says,
Your story gave me a most startling deja vu—remember "Looker"? (Ed. Note: Michael Crichton wrote that one.)
Definitely a favorite for adolescent boys, at least. Now just be on the lookout for something to "happen" to the models so they don't have to pay them fees.
