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Go download "123D Catch" from Autodesk. Do not stop and think. Do not ponder its capabilities. Just get it and play with it. Loads of fun.

This app turns every smartphone into a 3d camera. You walk around your object of choice shooting it from various angles, and then you send it off to the Autodesk servers. About 45 minutes later, it returns and you have a color, fully-textured, three-dimensional, zoomable model of the object that you photographed. It doesn't work on objects like sextants that have complex "tree-like" structures. It also can't handle reflective surfaces or transparent objects --glass bottles melt in its renderings. But it works extremely well on sculptures, shells, simple buildings, motionless animals, food, and objects with rough surfaces. Even if you can't take good 3d photos yourself, there's an extensive library of other people's works that you can explore. Look for "rusty door handle", "two shells", and "cat on stone wall" by user "fer 252". That's me. The attached image is an animated GIF made from my "two shells" photo. If you click on the small preview image below, your browser should show a pan around a photo of a whelk and a moon snail shell taken in my driveway in about two minutes (plus 45 minutes processing time).

I've been resisting making this off-topic post for weeks, but I can hold back no more! It's loads of fun. 

Frank Reed
 

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