Next up: Trial and error.

So, there will be a process involved here, its not quite clear what that is yet, but would follow certain required work flow:

Scan Item

Clean item

Export Item

Import Item

Use Item

After performing an initial scan, I realized a couple things.

First, manually moving the kinect sensor around an object of relative large size is awkward.

The cables are long enough for my needs, but they do drag along the floor and can be a tripping hazard. Ideally, at some point, we'd setup a platform for scanning, and remove manual manipulation and error input ;).

Taking is slow and steady, I have a scan! Though, my scan is ugly, really ugly.

First thing I noticed was, in my garage..., the lighting condition isnt that well... This cuases defects and deformities in the 3d model.

Ill be making a trip to lowes and will  try to improve this tomorrow.

Second, my deformed model, not only picked up my object of interest, but it also picked up a lot of noise.

It's important to remove this extra data, which can bloat the 3d models quick!

The internet has suggested different 3d tools, currently I am looking at freely available options...

meshlab seemed promising in the past, but I suspect my current model has too much data, and it just cant handle my needs.

netflab free version is asking for a licence again, so I am not interested in messing with that...

I am actually considering writing a utility that can clean these models up... in fact, I most likely will later in the process, after this POC is further along.

But, for now, I actually found Autodesk's meshmixer somewhat helpfull.

It too freezes up a lot, but so far, if I am nice* to it, it has provided some pleasing results.

The plane splitting option is great.

Also, the mirror utility can prove to be helpful: http://www.meshmixer.com/download.html

Though, as we speak I just tried doing something,in fact I forget what I was doing, mostly becuase meshmixer has been frozen for a little while now...

Anyway, I also suggest looking into the hollow function, it seems? to be able to fill holes, which is a big problem with kinect data...

OH YEA, I was trying to fill holes... I think.