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Skanect: Kinect app used to scan 3D models of rooms: Digital Home

A quite literal addition to our Digital Home section is Skanect; another Kinect mod that shows off how sophisticated Microsoft’s little sensor bar is and makes us wish we’d paid more attention in DT classes. Anyway. Skanect as its name suggests, lets you use a Kinect bar and Kinect for Windows to scan a room and map a complete 3D image.

When a scan is complete, you’re then able to zoom in and out and pan yourself around virtual models of your room.

Skanect is work in progress and is the product of French start-up Manctl. Early versions of Skanect are available to download now for Windows and Mac OS X now for free, with a view to launching a more sophisticated, paid version later, alongside a limited freeware version.

Skanect: Kinect sensors used to scan 3D models of your home: Digital Home

Skanect will let you do more than just map your room once its ready though.

Speaking to Wired.co.uk, Manctl CTO Nicolas Burns said “We’re working on a scanner that lets you scan people, objects and rooms,” citing examples of an orthotic company using Skanect to render accurate 3D models of people’s feet.

“We also built a scanner for a lingerie customer who wanted to make bra fittings,” said Burns. “A lady moves around in front [of the Kinect] so we can precisely measure her size.”

We can imagine walking into the changing room of the future and having a Kinect bar scan us before getting fitted for a suit that’s perfectly made to measure.

As well as footwear and fashion, we can think of literally hundreds of situations where this could be useful – planning interior design, mapping your own home before exporting it to, say, Minecraft, or movie set designers making digital copies of maquettes.

Conceivably you could scan an object and then create a copy using a 3D printer. 3D piracy – it starts here…

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