Twindom launches Twinstant full-body 3D scanning system for 3D family portrait photography

Source: http://www.3ders.org/

In the age of the selfie and the thousands of photos that populate every device we own, having something tangible is more special than ever before. That’s exactly why 3D scanning and 3D printing services are growing in popularity. Just a few months ago, the Shapify Booth was launched in the US that offers exactly that, but now the Twinstant has been launched by the California-based Twindom. Not only is it an extremely quick scanner, it also features a very large scanning area that can be used to make family portraits. "Twinstant is an instantaneous, full-body 3D scanning system capable of capturing entire families in 3D at the click of a button." announces the company.

Twindom, based in Berkely CA., has also noticed a changing atmosphere in the photography market. "85% of our customers are what we call 3D portrait customers and only 15% are 3D Selfie customers, making 3D portrait photography a much bigger, more valuable and overall more important market for the 3D printing industry as a whole." David Pastewka says, who is Twindom’s CEO.

And that is exactly what his company is aiming at. Twindom built their first 3D scanner in 2013, which became a commercial hit after scanning its first customer in September of that year. Like most full-body scanners, it transforms that data into high-quality 3D printed souvenirs. Since then, their scanner have been used at malls, tourist hotspots, parties and so on, but – like the selfie itself – few people were buying because the notion was overly vain.

But, as anyone with an emotional family photo will tell you, photography isn’t (or shouldn’t) be about vanity. As Pastewka explained to us, he was gripped by the tearful reaction of a customer in San Francisco when given her 3D print. 3D scanning and printing should be about emotional bonds. "I approached this customer and I noticed she had a 3D print of 2 girls in matching outfits with big smiles on their faces in her hand. She explained that she had children and grandchildren of her own and seeing these little girls (whom she had never met) frozen in time instantly resonated with her. She called it a 'perfect little 3D photograph'. She didn’t understand what 3D scanning was and she had never heard of 3D printing, but it didn’t matter, because what she saw was a '3D photograph', and that she understood.’’

And that Pastewka argues, is what their new Twinstant is all about. "From everything we have seen and heard from customers, 3D photography has the potential to be the first mass market application for consumer 3D printing, but first it has to move away from being a gimmicky 3D Selfie," he says. And to achieve that, they have built a very large 3D scanning system capable of capturing not just a teenage girl, but an entire family of seven people. Perhaps most impressively, this system is capable of scanning a large group of people almost instantaneously, as too much movement ruins the scan. To further contribute to the image of a family machine for emotional moments, they are also strictly referring to 3D prints as 3D photographs, to make it instantly understandable to young and old.

The Twinstant 3D scanner itself is marketed to businesses, such as event planners, malls, wedding organisers, for a starting price of $60,000. This includes the full scanner which has been specifically designed to be set up within just two hours. It also comes with the Twinstant software capable of making the near-instantaneous 3D scans. All the data collected through the software can then be processed into 3D prints, a service which is fully run by Twindom itself and sent to the customer’s home. Currently, Twindom 3D print scans run from anywhere from $8 (for a 3 inch individual model) to $175 (for a 7 inch tall full family print), with plenty of options in between.

While quite an investment, I can definitely see this catching on. As so many weddings feature photo booths nowadays, why not a fully body scanner?