When Pegasus PR approached me to do a presentation for their Inspiring Healthy Futures event, I thought that it would be great a opportunity to talk about 3D body scanning and 360 time freeze photography and how we have been fusing this emerging technology with art to grab people’s attention. The only tricky bit was the actual theme of the event ‘inspiring healthy futures’, because what we had been creating was more to do with fun and novel event experiences rather than inspiring people to live healthy. Luckily, there are a number of applications for this technology within the health and fitness industry as well as other sectors.
The video shows the entire 18 minutes presentation, and below are just a few snippets of information taken from it.
Who can benefit from this technology?
Event organisers, PR and creative agencies, film and advertising companies, photo-booth owners – fun, engaging, immersive and novel experience for events using either the 3D body scanning booth or 360 degree time-freeze photo booth; it’s a great footfall driver and creates a social media buzz (at London ComicCon, approx. 1M impressions were made on Twitter alone from just 300 body scans and people sharing their ultimate 3D selfies)
Game developers, AR and VR content providers – creation of high quality 3D avatars or video gaming assets, saving time and labour costs for 3D modeling
Museums, shopping centres, art galleries – 3D digitising and display of national collections; 3D body scanning as a footfall driver and additional revenue from personalised souvenirs
Apparel retail outlets – 3D avatars for virtual fitting rooms – you could just drag and drop a dress onto your 3D model online to see how big your bum looks in it
Health and Fitness providers, Prosthetic manufacturers – 3D scans for accurate prosthetics, scans for body posture analysis, biometric measurements
The use of 3D technology is rapidly growing, there has been a surge in interest in 3D printing and a lot of uses of this technology within the medical arena, especially for custom made prosthetics. Being able to accurately capture a 3D model of the human form means prosthetics can be custom made to precise measurements thereby creating a perfect fit for the end user.
Market research findings
319 people were surveyed to find out what they thought of emerging technologies and 3D scanning as part of an Innovate UK supported R&D project for 3Dify. The sample had an even gender split and had respondents from across all age groups. Here are some interesting results:
The vast majority (92%) expressed at least some interest in finding out more about 3D scanning and printing technologies. Men were generally slightly more interested than women in finding out more about 3D technologies (and they generally had higher existing levels of engagement with the technology). Older age groups were just as interested in finding out more about 3D technology as other age groups, despite lower present levels of engagement.
Levels of interest in both 3D digital images and 3D printed figures were generally high:
75% said that printed figures ‘appeals a great deal’ or ‘appeals a fair amount’; and
65% had the same view of digital outputs.