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For the last year I have been playing around with a variety of methods to create 3D models of my fossil collection. The end goal being to have my fossils available to other collectors all over the world to print their own on a 3D printer as I don't sell or send fossils out of New Zealand. My models can be downloaded for free: https://sketchfab.com/mamlambofossils If you want to print them and sell them, go for it! Just email me about it first so I know about it. My 3D printer is a Creality Ender 3 V2 Neo ($300 USD, $570 NZD) which is quite an entry level printer but I am getting great results. Photogrammetry I've tried out a number of free and paid for apps and found Reality Capture (https://www.capturingreality.com/) to give the best results. The payment model is that you pay per model you export. So you can generate as many as you want to, but to export it and share, you have to pay. I found it worked out to about $2 - $4 per model. Between 3D scanners and photogrammetry, photogrammetry gives you the best texture (not important for printing), but is WAY slower than a 3D scanner. 3D Scanning The RevoPoint Mini (https://www.revopoint3d.com/ - $960 USD) was a 3D scanner I backed on Kickstarter and I use this for scanning smaller objects as it has a very high resolution of 0.02mm. It's got a big brother, the POP 2 which I have as well, which is for larger objects. The software isn't as good as that of the MagicSwift and it can lose tracking easier if the fossil isn't on a turntable. The Revopoint scanners give a good texture and I used them to scan these models: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/plesiosaur-vertebra-from-new-zealand-b7ea650cc2f34177af9cce5ad9a442b5 (plesiosaur vert) https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/unknown-species-of-fossil-shell-from-new-zealand-512ac1cb27724fcab2350259e65bf195 (shell which photogrammetry couldn't handle because of the hollow section and broken bit) I got a MagicSwift Plus 3D scanner sent to me to and I found this to be the fastest option for scanning a fossil, I could get an object scanned and uploaded to Sketchfab.com within 20 mins, much faster than photogrammetry which can take an entire afternoon. It offers two options for the texture, a greyscale (fastest) or using a smartphone to capture photos and then lay it over the model. This usually gave good results but I also had some issues on one model where I had to redo it. It's about $1000 USD. https://store.3dmakerpro.com/products/magicswift-plus-3d-scanner If I was visiting a museum and wanted to make as many 3D models as I could in a short time, this would be my choice. Especially if the models were for printing where color and texture don't matter. Models I scanned with the MagicSwift: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/plesiosaurus-bone-cluster-new-zealand-611c6146581043cf8b5b4920f731d21a (plesiosaur vert cluster) https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/late-miocene-fossil-penguin-in-concretion-57ccc2aff7d44a3091d80370e6eada4c (penguin) Below is a video of me unboxing the MagicSwift and scanning a crab: My latest project is to print a life size Little Bush Moa from 3D models created by Daniel Thomas (Auckland Museum, Massey University). It's the smallest of the moa so I thought it would be quite a cool project to get into. Here are some of the leg bones I have printed so far. Here is a time-lapse of me printing one of the femurs. It took 20 hours: Drybrushing Anyone that has painted miniatures will be familiar with the drybrushing technique. I paint the model in black acrylic and then use drybrushing (removing most of the paint from the brush) to add highlights. Using this technique you can get really realistic results. The layers visible in this model was because I printed the crab horizontally instead of vertically - oops! I've since learnt not to do that!

I mentioned photogrammetry in a thread on micro vertebrate material by @jpc I was going to post this in there, but thought I'd post it in its own thread. - What is photogrammetry? - There are a couple of tutorials on TFF about photogrammetry. Here: Creating a 3D model of fossils using photogrammetry - Fossil Photography - The Fossil Forum And here: 3D Fossil Scanning W/ Photogrammetry - Fossil Photography - The Fossil Forum But briefly, it is the process of making a 3D model from photos. You can make a 3D model from something small to something large. From an individual fossil, to a complete landscape! You just need enough photos to cover all the angles and there needs to be enough overlap between photos so the software can match them up. - How can I do it? - The software uses features to make a 3D point cloud and then uses that information to make a more detailed model based on every pixel (a depth map). - Meshroom is easy to use with default settings. And it FREE. You just drag and drop your photos and hit "start". Of course you can get more fancy with time and start editing the settings! - Link to Meshroom download here. It is a non-profit FREE software platform: AliceVision | Photogrammetric Computer Vision Framework - Photogrammetry may be an option for "collecting" fossils that you might prefer to leave in the field. They are too large, you are in a national park etc. Then you have the option of 3D printing one for yourself at any scale when you get home. They did this for large whale fossils in S. America I recall. - Here are four images from the process of making a 3D model of a Zoophycos trace fossil from New Zealand. I hope this inspires a few of you into the world of photogrammetry! And like those email signature lines that say "before you print, think about the environment" we might "think before we collect, think about others". Maybe leave that big block of fossils on the beach and do your back a favor too. Oh I'm running it on a laptop with 32 G of memory. You can get by with 16. Keep in mind the more photos you have and the more detail you ask of the software the longer it will take. But just leave it running overnight and wake up to a 3D model - Clockwise from top left. 1. One of 25 images taken using an Iphone 12 in the field. 2. An example of the pipeline in Meshroom software that shows you how many features it identified and matched to all the other angles. 3, The final 3D model. 4. The 3D model with photos draped over the top. The trace fossil is 20cm across (about 8 inches). Hope you enjoyed this and feel free to ask any questions about how to do this. Its very easy once you know how.

Prompted by recent discussions of 3D printing fossils, I want to start a topic for it. As ZiggieCie points out, 3D printing will have an increasing impact on the fossil world. The recent publication of the discovery of Homo naledi, accompanied by 86 3D-printable bone specimens, surely marks an inflection point in the scientific sharing of 3D fossil data. Popular sites describe how to print your own H. naledi fossils. Folks have shared prints of their own. Below is a 3D print from the authors of the study. Here on TFF, Cris himself has explored using photogrammetry to generate 3D data for a whale vertebra. (Photogrammetry is the use of photographs to make measurements, particularly precise distance measurements between surface points.) That prompts the question: can anything for which we have 3D data be 3D printed? The answer is: not without significant work. 3D viewable data and 3D printable data are very different. You can view 3D data that's pure fantasy. Consider a geometrically ideal plane with mathematically zero thickness. Easy to view on a computer screen. Quite impossible to produce in reality. And 3D printing is all about reality. The key idea is that, to 3D print an object, it must be a solid three-dimensional object that is watertight. Technically, it must be manifold: every object must be composed of polygons that share each edge with exactly one other polygon. Non-manifold objects can't be 3D printed. The 3D printing site Shapeways has a detailed tutorial on fixing non-manifold models. From personal experience, I can say that fixing manifold issues, even with models designed for 3D printing that have gone off the rails, can be a tremendous pain. Tools are getting better for fixing non-manifold models. At this stage in the development of the technology, it's still critical to know what manifold objects are. So for Cris's photogrammetry data, it can be visualized easily, but for 3D printing, it's a big deal that the bottom of the whale vertebra wasn't scanned. The model just ends in midair, meaning it's not manifold, and can't be 3D printed without repair work. Hope to hear more from others who have tried 3D printing. I've posted a topic on 3D printing a trilobite sculpture -- not fossil data -- which may also be helpful if you've never seen a 3D print being made before.