# Specific 3D Printers, Scanners, & Hardware > Einscan-S 3D scanner >  Strange things.  Can anyone explain?

## sl33pydog

I will have to get a picture of this later but for some of my scans with either the turn table or the free scan I get two characteristics:

1. Wavy lines.  Like there are grooves in the objects or my face (tried a face scan).  It happens more on difficult shapes.
2.  Bolding letters.  I have seen this happen to other users.  Is it just me or when there is fake 3d bolded text on a product the scanner thinks it is raised?  I have tried this several times with a bottle of Titebond II wood glue.  It's weird that the lettering would be bossed out like that.

----------


## This

2- bold lettering is because colours absorb light differently, and the scanner sees them as different heights.
best is to have the whole object in a neutral colour.

----------


## 24c

You can also see this on other folks scans, even the Einscan doll one, the pupils look raised on the eyes too, and *This* is spot on with his explanation.  :Smile: 

Mike

----------


## neveroddoreven

The wavy marks seem to appear for me whenever the scanned surface is approaching a perpendicular orientation relative to the front face of the scanner.  I am guessing this is caused by the projected light patterns being stretched into thin bars along the surface as it sharply angles away from the fronts of the cameras.  It seems to happen with vertically oriented surfaces more than horizontal ones.

You can avoid it by ensuring you keep this type of view to a minimum when scanning, or by reorienting the object so that the sharply angled-away surfaces are scanned horizontally.

----------


## neveroddoreven

For the raised color issue, you can try powdering the object with talc, or there are expensive $30+ cans of harmless spray talc or other fancy materials.

I am going to try a different substance, given it should be much cheaper and accessible starting right about now:  decorative spray snow.  It wipes off, and the texture isn't too invasive.  I don't need a super-thin coating for most applications, although I bet someone can find a technique that will help keep it thin and even.

Update: the spray snow was a disaster.  Next time I'll try a can of Tinactin.

----------


## hectorCM

> I will have to get a picture of this later but for some of my scans with either the turn table or the free scan I get two characteristics:
> 
> 1. Wavy lines.  Like there are grooves in the objects or my face (tried a face scan).  It happens more on difficult shapes.
> 2.  Bolding letters.  I have seen this happen to other users.  Is it just me or when there is fake 3d bolded text on a product the scanner thinks it is raised?  I have tried this several times with a bottle of Titebond II wood glue.  It's weird that the lettering would be bossed out like that.


Hello!
did you find any solution to the wavy lines?
I'd not figure it out how to prevent those to appear. attached is an example of the wavy lines?

does anybody knows why these lines happened?Screen Shot 2015-11-04 at 8.36.22 PM.jpg

----------


## sl33pydog

Funny you asked.  I'm in the middle of a scan and I have a theory of sorts.  It has to do with the sharpness and the resolution of the scanner.  I think it's like anti aliasing on videogames.  With low resolution lines at an angle to the pattern of the screen the line will appear jagged.  These jagged lines will translate into your scans when the scanner thinks those are smooth lines but in reality they aren't and the program things you have a raised surface.  This sort of coincides with the raised lettering on high contrast labels like @This talked about.  I'm also thinking that this would happen on deep surface scans.  So I think if we had better projectors in the scanner not only would our scans be better but we would also get rid of these wavy lines. This kinda of also goes along with the cameras too.  Look at these scans and a picture of reality with the crosshair.  You'll see sort of like 8bit lines when the line should be a smooth vector.
Capture.JPGIMG_20151104_204830.jpg

----------


## sl33pydog

Looking at the start up screen before it changes to white, the size of the unit and the specs of projectors, is there an RCA P50 projector in the head unit?

----------


## 24c

Just my 2¢, but the wavy lines issue I've seen on one of my early scans, but usually it was with the turntable, and it happens when you have a shallow viewing angle on start up. If I rotate the model on the turntable and scan again it doesn't do it the same.

Mike
PS. I think the native resolution of the projector is 1024x768, but it's pulled down to 800x600 for the software screens.

----------


## sl33pydog

I've got a projector coming that I'm going to try out since the software can't tell if it's pushing the pattern out through the scanner or any other connected display.  I tired this out on a small 7" display and was able to run a scan (of course no full scan produced) with the pattern on the screen instead of the projector.

----------

