For all you makers out there, makerbot has opened up preorders for their 3D scanner.

Personally, I am underwhelmed with the apparent scan quality and price ($1400).

Luckily, their competition looks more like my speed: the matterform 3D scanner appears to have better 'resolution' (0.43mm) and is less than half the price ($599).

Still, it's not clear even the Matterform will have the resolution to suit my purposes. Once they post output from their second beta model we'll be able to tell more.

Interesting. Is there anything out there that handles epic proportions. If so what does it cost?

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

There is the nextengine 3D scanner, which is $3,000. You can upgrade that for anywhere between $1000 - $5000, which will get you better software (better resolution, better meshing between separate scans, more useful output formats, etc.) and/or better hardware (automated rotating scanning base).

There's also the david laser scanner, which is more of a DIY deal that can apparently scan flies, but I'm not certain what the final cost of being able to do that is. You have to buy your own camera (which can be cheap or expensive) and your own laser (which can be cheap or expensive).

In the end I think I'll wait until someone does a head-to-head comparison before I buy anything more expensive than the Matterform.

Fantastic. I was unaware that quality that good was beoming cheaper at that rate.

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Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)