It's the dream of every
3D printing enthusiast. You see something in the physical
world, scan it in seconds, and print it out in an exact replica
on your 3D printer just like that. Up until recently, this has only been
possible with commercial scanners that cost tens of thousands of dollars,
and tons of training to use properly. These days all of that is changing, and just
like 3D printers have become more and more available to consumers, we're
also seeing the first wave of consumer grade 3D scanners hit the market. But are they any good? I tested three different solutions for
at-home scanning, and in this video I'm going to compare them all and tell you which one is the best. Oh, and stick around to the end
because I'll also answer the question that's on everyone's mind. Should you get a 3D scanner? Let's dive in. The contenders. First things first, ladies and gentlemen. But if you look at my YouTube analytics,
it's more like lady and gentlemen. Let me present our three
contenders for the evening. In the left corner, weighing
in at a healthy 500 grams, the Creality CR-Scan Lizard. Now, I got this scanner by
backing the kickstarter campaign and then waiting, and waiting, like forever, but we'll get into
all of that a little bit later. It boasts 0.05 millimeter accuracy,
the ability to scan black objects, markerless scanning, easy to use
software, but can it live up to the hype? No, but we're still gonna talk about it. And in the right corner, weighing in at a
lightweight 160 grams, the Revopoint Mini. I originally discovered this scanner and
company at FormNext in Frankfurt, and I was blown away by the quality of the scans
that they were showing off in their booth. Now after a few months of back and
forth emails, Revopoint agreed to send me this unit free of charge for review. However, no money changed hands. While you could say that, this makes
me biased in favor of the Revopoint, you could also say that I would be
biased towards the Creality because I would want to make myself feel
like my money has been well spent. I also like to think that I'm
sent enough gear for review from enough different companies that I
have no real incentive to give one preferential treatment over another. Besides, of course, my actual
experiences with their products. Anyways, the Revopoint Mini boasts
0.02 millimeter accuracy, industrial blue light, high speed scanning,
a lightweight and convenient form factor, and much, much more. Oh my God, Jim, what's this
bursting in over the side ropes! We have the iPhone 14 Pro Max with. Polycam installed. I can't believe it! No, this isn't a 3D scanner, but with the
recent advancements in mobile phones, and LiDAR, and photogrammetry, you just know
that we had to test it out and compare it. The iPhone 14 Pro Max boasts not being
another device collecting dust on your shelves, patented you-already-own-it technology, the always in your pocket
user experience, and unlike all of the other contenders on this list,
it is fully wireless, has a battery and is internet connected, and it
doesn't require a computer to use it. By the way, I'm sure that there are
Android phones as well with LiDAR, where you could use Polycam, but I don't use
Android and I don't own any of them, so I'm just gonna use the term iPhone
interchangeably here with Polycam. So, deal with it. You can tell me nicely in the
comments, how wrong I am, below. And now let's get ready
to scan some stuff. Let's, let's just scan some stuff. So as we just mentioned, it's going
to be pretty hard to beat your iPhone when it comes to convenience. You know it, you love it. Let's not waste any time on it. Instead, let's focus
on these two scanners. When you first plug them in, a few things
are going to stand out at you right away. First of all, the Creality scanner not
only requires a USB cable, but also a separate power cable, which is annoying. And then once you plug it in, you'll
immediately notice the extremely loud and obnoxious booming. It's also heavy and I wouldn't want to
get stuck carrying it around all day in this massive suitcase that they provide. Compare this with the Revopoint
Mini, which not only has just one cable that goes into the computer,
but also makes no noise whatsoever. It has a tiny form factor, a little
bit bigger than a harmonica, and it will fit nicely into your pocket, even
with the included tripod and cable. Heck, you can even break down the
turntable into five different pieces and put that in your pocket as well. There's also a super convenient button
right on the back that you can use to start your scan, even though the
software makes that pretty easy as well. The winner of this round with
one point: the Revopoint Mini. While on the surface you might be
thinking that the software isn't a big deal, the reality is, at least in my
experience, that the software is much more important than the actual hardware. That's because it doesn't actually
matter how good the hardware is at picking up the actual points. If the software doesn't do a good enough
job at aligning them or if it's so frustrating to use the software that
you'd rather just give up altogether, and this is where we come to the first
major issue with the CR Scan Lizard. You see, when Creality originally
launched the Kickstarter campaign for this product, it was intended to ship with
a totally different piece of software. And from the limited time that I did
have to play with it, it seemed to be half decent with auto noise removal,
auto alignment, and things like that. You can actually even still see
screenshots of it on their website. But then before the units even shipped,
another company actually claimed that this software infringed on their IP,
which not only caused Creality to delay shipment for months and months,
but also means that today they require you to use their CR Studio 2.0 app. I'll be honest with you guys, I
struggled for months to get this thing and the software to play nicely. I needed to get some profile files from
Creality, and then it was choosing the wrong camera to scan, and then even on the
rare occasions that it did work, it just wasn't intuitive or fun to use at all. Which mode do I need, points or faces? What's with this wavelength on the side? Am I supposed to center it or try to get
it to go all the way to one direction? Don't get me wrong, it looks amazing. It's just that it sucks. Scans don't align properly. There's no clear tooltip. There isn't nearly enough documentation
explaining the different features online. Compare this with the Revo scan software
that comes with the Revopoint Mini, which although extremely simplistic
and not abundantly pretty, just works. There are no funky menus or
tabs of different scanning modes that I don't understand. There is manual and auto for brightness
and depth, and a button to start scanning, pause or stop scanning. A simple slider tells me if I'm too far
or too close, and it automatically fuses all of my scans as soon as I complete
them with a shocking level of accuracy. In my testing, Revo Scan didn't even
need me to pre-scan the turntable or remove it manually in the software at
all, despite the fact that I accidentally covered it in sublimation spray,
which we'll get into in just a second. My only real criticism of the Revo
Scan software is that while it does get the alignments right, it takes
quite some time to actually do it. I would venture to guess that this is
because they probably aren't yet optimized for Apple silicone because I'm running
a top of the line M1 Max processor on my MacBook Pro with silly fast graphics
capabilities, and there's no reason that anything, even heavy 3D files should take
multiple minutes to process like this. Finally, let's talk about the iPhone
because of course, it's really hard to beat the user experience of an iPhone app. And indeed the Polycam app
is super simple to use. You just select if you are scanning
a room, a photo, or using LiDAR, and then choose whether you want
to do it with video or photos. One thing that I loved about the
Polycam app is that it actually gives you haptic feedback as
you scan new parts of the model. Kind of like when you first train
your iPhone for face id, so that you know, even if you don't actually
see the screen, that you are doing a good job and scanning well. Polycam also has the added benefit
of already being connected to a web device, making it extremely
easy to share your scans with the click of a button to any app that
you happen to have on your iPhone. Now, I'm not sure if Polycam processes
in the cloud or on the device for the free trial version because you do need
to keep the app open while it processes. And while it said that it would finish
in only 110 seconds, I don't actually know how long it took because I had
to quit the app after 20 minutes, and when I went back into the app, I
noticed that it had already processed. It just hadn't updated. The winner of this round
with one point: Polycam. Though, Jim, I gotta say I'm really
not sure that the guy who bursts into the ring and isn't even part of the
match is eligible to earn points. Back to you. Hey there, one quick second. We're gonna get right back into today's
video, but before we do, I have to thank this video's sponsor, which I'm really
excited about, and that is Onshape. I've recently switched to Onshape
from Blender and I'm planning to do a whole video all about that. But in the meantime, let me just tell you
a couple quick reasons why I love Onshape. Number one, first and foremost, no matter
where I am in the world, because Onshape is fully cloud-based and works like
Google Docs, if I have a great idea for upgrading my designs or even designing a
new thing, I can just pop it open on my iPhone and it works even in one of the
deepest craters on the entire planet. It actually works, which is crazy to me. The other reason I really love
Onshape, besides the fact that it's super easy to use, is that unlike
a lot of the other CAD companies out there, Onshape has no intention
of ever making money off creators. They just wanna support the greater
community and for them the entire purpose of their business is
just to sell to other businesses. They're happy to give us access to the
software completely for free now and forever, and they've assured me that
unlike some of those other free CAD companies out there, that is something
that's never going to change with them. So to check out Onshape in anticipation
of the video I'm going to do pretty soon on why I've switched
to it, and support this channel, just go ahead and hit the link below. Doing so really helps out this
channel and also I think you're just really gonna enjoy Onshape like I do. Anyway, let's get back to today's video. Here we go. We are going to get into the scan results
and conclusions in just a moment, but let's first talk about the prices. When I bought the CR Scan Lizard, I got
a special Kickstarter price with the turntable for about $450 US shipped. Now that the Kickstarter is over, you're
looking to pay around $600 for it. Now, that might seem like a lot, but
coming from thousands of dollars for commercial scanners, it's actually
not that bad at all, and it puts this product firmly in the consumer range. As for the Revopoint Mini, it
currently retails for $799. At a third more expensive
than the CR Scan Lizard. That might put it out of range for your
average consumer, but I'll discuss why that might or might not be flawed thinking
when we get into the conclusion section. Finally, we have the iPhone and Polycam
combo, and while on the one hand you could argue that this option costs
really only $7.99 a month for one user with export privileges, if you already
have an iPhone with LiDAR on it. I actually think it's fairer to say
that it costs around $200, which is the difference between the iPhone 14 Pro
versus the iPhone 14 without the LiDAR. The winner of this round by
technicality with one point is Polycam, but only by technicality. For our main contenders, it's definitely
going to be the CR Scan on price. All right. Let's now talk about
what matters the most. How well do they actually scan? I compared these scanners on a variety
of different models, and while my tests were not fully comprehensive,
I ranged from extremely challenging black electronic devices to relatively
simple, brightly colored toys and models with both of the dedicated scanners. Despite what Creality may advertise
on their website, I found that proper sublimating spray, like this bottle that
I was given by ABX at FormNext or even just dry shampoo, was an absolute must. First, let's start out
with the CR Scan lizard. I'm gonna put it bluntly. I hate this piece of junk. Although Creality support was as
always friendly and mostly helpful, I actually put off this review for
months because I didn't want to deal with the hassle of using this product. I'm not sure if it's the hardware or
the software that comes with it now that Creality has had legal troubles, but
they come as a package and I don't see any third party alternatives available. So unlike with 3D printers, the
included software is a really make or break part of the experience. And this software reminds me of the
sulfur pits of Yellowstone Park. Truly beautiful and colorful,
but when you actually get in and try to use it, it stinks, and
you really don't want to go back. Honestly, I have neither the time nor
the patience to spend any more hours of my life trying to get a decent
printable model out of this thing. So if you were hoping for me to do
some kind of test of dimensional accuracy where I print out different
models, yeah, it's not gonna happen. Up next, let's check out
what poly cam had to offer. While it does get points for effort, the
Polycam scan has the major disadvantage of including everything that the
LiDAR captured, meaning that I would need to manually go in and remove
the surface that I actually filmed on in a software like Maya or Blender. But if I were going to spend the time
doing that, then I could probably just go into CAD and model the stuff myself. And that's only the beginning
because the Polycam scan also is significantly lower quality with jagged
curves, warp surfaces, and much less fine detail than the other scans. In the end, Polycam's model reminds me
of my two year old's daycare drawings. They're nice and all, and I really want
to encourage them, but at the end of the day, I really have no use for them. Finally, let's talk about
the most expensive option on the list, the Revopoint Mini. As I said before, I figured out
after many rounds of testing that sublimating spray was, as Revopoint
makes clear on their website, an absolute must for darker objects. So once I applied it, did the
Revopoint mini actually deliver? Yeah. I'm actually a little bit shocked to
admit it after my experience with the CR Scan and the long saga I had with it. But after doing four or five
scans of a complicated camera, I had a half decent rough draft. And while I could have done a few
more scans and slathered on some more sublimating spray, I was
starting to worry that I would never find my camera under all of it. So instead, I opted to take the
opportunity to test out the auto mesh and fill holds features of the software. And to my surprise, the
resulting model was really good. Good enough that I'm actually going to
use it for an upcoming project where I print my very own camera accessories. So stay tuned for that. Strictly by using the auto
brightness and auto depth features with no manual tweaking, I was actually
able to reproduce my success on a wide range of objects, including silk PLA,
with lots of details and a few more that you probably don't wanna see on video. No, not that you perverts. I'm talking about my dental guard. Jeez. Jim, I think it's pretty clear that
all in all, we have a knockout in the fourth round, and while I don't
understand the rules of boxing at all, I'm pretty sure that if one person
gets knocked out, none of the points up until that point matter at all. The winner by knockout,
the Revopoint Mini. With the fight now over and our champion
chilling out in the locker room, let me now do what all TV commentators
do and give my opinion on something I know very little about to keep you
the viewer watching for ad revenue. Jim, I think the question on everybody's
mind tonight is this: Should you buy a 3D scanner for 3D printing? Given the fact that the only usable option
on this list is really the $799 Revopoint Mini, I'm going to have to say that for
the average hobbyist, the answer is no. With things like Onshape being free for
consumer use and millions and millions of models available on sites like Printables,
Thangs and GrabCAD, the reality is that for everything but the most complicated
or personalized of objects, you can either download readily available
models or just create your own for free. And what's more doing so is a
valuable learning experience that will really serve you as you go about
creating more models for 3D printing. With that said, your time is valuable
and modeling something complicated that you can't find online from
scratch can take a full day of work. Plus, I can easily think of
a number of things that would basically pay for the entire cost
of this scanner if you needed them. My dad, for example, has these
custom orthotics in his shoes, which are made of polycarbonate and they
need replacing every few years, and they cost like $250 a pair. If I use this scanner to scan his existing
ones and then produce new ones for him for pennies for three different pairs
of his shoes, well then I've pretty much paid for the entire cost of the scanner. And the same is true of a lot of
little projects around the house. At the same time, $799 is a lot of
money, and I remember feeling that even the $450 that I spent on this CR Scan
Lizard was a bit of a frivolous expense. So while I really, really like the
Revopoint Mini, as someone who works in 3D printing for a living now, and I
probably could even justify paying the $799 price tag for it just for enhancing
my projects on this channel, I have to be honest and admit that I don't think
that I could justify paying the price for this product for just casual at-home use. Don't get me wrong, it's a great value. But something tells me that like every
other piece of technology that shifts from industry to consumer grade, this is only
the beginning for 3D scanners, and we're going to see the prices of them really
come down over the next five years or so. I don't think we're that far away
from the point where a scanner just like this, really will be a
negligible expense of $200 to $400, much like many of the high quality entry
level 3D printers that we're seeing today. The bottom line. If you have a specific use case right
now and you regularly need to scan things that you can't find online,
the Revopoint Mini is an awesome product at an incredible price. The Creality Scan Lizard, not so much. For the casual enthusiasts
and everyone else, I think it's worth waiting a few
years just to see where prices land. Thank you so much for watching,
liking, subscribing, and leaving your comments below. Live, live, live. Hit the subscribe button for more content. And a special and heartfelt thank
you to my Patreon supporters who are helping me turn this into a full-time
job that I'm really passionate about. That's all for now, but I'll see
all of you on The Next Layer. Live on pay-per-view, Jonathan
Levi makes an ass of himself. How the hell am I gonna get
all this stuff outta my hair?
