This week, we are going to use some 3D scan phone apps to scan an object, export it as mesh, and clean it in a mesh editing software.

I played with 'display.land' but it takes forever (more than 12 hrs) for my scan to be rendered. So I decided to use the example 'shell' our professor Jennifer Jacob shared with us.

I was close to a cleaned version of it and I saved the project. However, I realized you have to export a mesh of the current model in order to really save it. There is also no editing history for you to track, meaning you can not undo anything. So I had to start over.

Step 1: Heal the Mesh

First I performed a simple heal following this video to clean up the mesh:

Step 2: Remove Structure From the Mesh

There are some bumpy structures I want to remove. So I selected the mesh, and deleted the selection. The resulting mesh leaves a hole in the place I deleted the bump.

Step 3: Clean Up Mesh and Fix the Holes

Then I followed this video to clean up the mesh with hope to fix the hole.

I tried the filter 'close holes' and it worked in Meshlab. However, from this video, I also found Meshmixer very intuitive and interesting.

Step 4: Smoothing and Other Features in Meshmixer

I explored Meshmixer and a life-saving feature is the 'undo' option! I used the brush to smooth out several regions, especially the bottom flat region. Then I tried the stamp tool and made a carved sea star on the shell!

Step 5: 3D Printing

I used tree support just to try it out for some hanging structures. The printing time is about 6 hrs. The final prints look good! Tree support is also easy to peel off.