I wanted to have a 3d model of the Hydra controller for visualization purposes and as a template to create 3D printable accessories for it. Since a professional 3D scanning is quite expensive I decided to use the excellent 123D Catch (Project Photofly) service which reconstructs objects from several photos.
The featureless black plastic material of the Hydra offers little for tracking so as a first step I needed to add some texture to it. I sealed the openings the best I could and then peppered the surface with baby powder.
With these high contrast reference points in place I took 82 pictures and let 123D Catch do it’s magic. The result was reasonably good, although far from being ideal:
The shiny plastic buttons on the top reflected the lights which confused the system so that area is a mess. The also reflective bumper and trigger got through in a much better shape.
I used this raw model as a 3D reference to manually build a subdivision surface model in modo:
It’s too imprecise for accessory design but should be fine for visualization tasks.
Contains the PixarSDS model (.lxo) and polygonal meshes (.obj).
