For almost 200 years, photography has been helping us capture and share the most vivid impressions and the most important events: an unforgettable vacation on a paradise island, the first birthday of a child, or the first day at school. However, the last decade has been marked by breakthrough milestones in image processing — 3D technologies have opened up new possibilities.

A 3D Concept Close to Perfection

2D animation has long since given way to its 3D successor: https://cyber-fox.net/blog/2d-vs-3d-animation — could anybody imagine Frozen or Toy Story in a flat format? In addition, 3D technologies have proven themselves excellently in the film and gaming industry. What’s more, after mastering a certain set of skills, anybody could turn photos into 3D art online.

CyberFox has developed a unique solution for transforming 2D pictures into 3D models on its branded online configurator for any online platform. You don’t even have to pollute your website with any plugins! Here’s what Cyberfox lets you do:

• You can create 3D models on any device;
• The original photos are uploaded in real-time in 2-3 seconds;
• The results of your creativity can be easily downloaded and uploaded to any other website, social media platform, or messenger;
• You can change the size and color of your 3D model, create your own settings, and add new components from the extensive CyberFox library;
• During the first month of use, the company provides you with free technical support.

Let’s try to bring the online future closer! To turn your 2D pictures into 3D models, follow the step-by-step guide below.

Step 1. Images

You can find many recommendations for converting a 2D image into a decent 3D visualization on the Internet. Many enthusiasts successfully use an iPhone or other smartphones for these purposes.

Professionals are adamant that the best cameras for this purpose are DSLRs such as Nikon or Canon with a wide-angle lens of 24-70 mm. These cameras allow you to store your photographs as RAW files, which excludes any distortion.

Here are a few tips to keep in mind when shooting photos that will be transformed into 3D:

1. The best camera orientation is portrait. It will allow you to get the height of the entire object.
2. Panoramic shooting is carried out by 360° photographing the object from different camera angles without moving in the vertical plane.
3. Make a mini-panorama by taking photos from each angle, which will provide the overlap of frames necessary to build a 3D model.
4. You need to take three pictures at each point.
5. When you combine all the images, you get one image showing the whole panorama. The overlap of frames should be about 80%. Each new image shows 20% more new space than was in the previous image. This allows 3D software to match images correctly.

Step 2. Photogrammetry

This method restores the 3D depth of a real object based on multiple images. Result: the object looks like it does in the real world.

How does modern photogrammetry technology work?

Most digital devices can save additional information to a photo file, including:

• The coordinates of the shooting location, which is received from the GPS receiver,
• The conditions and methods of image acquisition;
• The camera type and settings, etc.

All information about photography is stored in a particular file. In turn, smart online software uses machine vision and photogrammetry technologies to find common points in photographs. As a result, each pixel in the photo has a match in other pictures.

Every match becomes a key point. If a point is found in three or more photos, the program calculates the coordinates of this point in space and saves them in the online configurator. The more matches there are in different photos, the more accurate the model will be.

Step 3. Sculpting

After creating an online point cloud, the image is processed into a three-dimensional highly-polygonal model.

The sculpting process consists of editing a grid/mesh of polygons, the working elements of which are vertices and edges.

You can often notice a lot of noise (micro defects of the image) on a 3D online model.

It occurs for the following reasons:

• Damage to photos when taking pictures very quickly (problems with focusing)
• Low shutter speed and large aperture size of the camera (which also leads to a blurry image)
• Micro-movements of the object (it is especially difficult to photograph an animal since moving even 1 millimeter leads to such noise).

To reduce the noise level, an operation called “retopology” is used, which involves leveling the surface of a 3D model by reducing the number of polygons: the image becomes smoother – i.e., low-polygonal.

Step 4. Downloading and Storing a 3D Image

The export of the designed model from the online configurator is carried out in the so-called "3D standard" mode and allows you to download a file in different formats:

• STL is the most commonly used format, primarily for 3D printing.
• OBJ is another standard format for saving three-dimensional models. It is supported by all popular 3D online configurators.
• GLTF is an optimized file for use on the Internet.
• SVG is a vector file for laser cutting, which carries the parameters of only a two-dimensional image, i.e., it contains information only about the base surface.

Conclusion

In this article, we outlined the basic principles of online transforming a 2D image into a 3D model and discussed how to turn your efforts into the highest quality result. We hope that our advice will contribute to a deeper understanding of the 3D modeling processes.