VCUarts researcher’s 3D scanning system on display at Cabell Library

By Jeff Kelley

A stream of students, faculty and staff gathered inside The Workshop at the James Branch Cabell Library last week for an open house, where emerging 3D scanning technologies - from LiDAR to motion capture - were on display.

At the center of it all was Box Stage 2, a portable 3D imaging system designed to capture highly detailed surface scans at a fraction of the cost or complexity of traditional Hollywood-grade "light stage" systems. The system was developed by Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts researcher Ernesto Rodriguez Cruz

The open house marked one of the first opportunities for the VCU community to see and test Cruz's technology firsthand. Among the testers: Dean of Libraries and University Librarian Irene M. H. Herold, Ph.D.

"People think of libraries as places for knowledge preservation and access," Herold said. "But we are also about knowledge creation, discovery and innovation. Box Stage is a perfect example of how we bring disciplines together to support that work."

How it works

Throughout the event, attendees stepped inside the Box Stage's fabric cube, inside of which is an array of LED light strips and 11 digital cameras arranged in a semicircle. A person sits inside on a chair, and when cued by Cruz, double-clicks a remote that fires a half-second burst of lights. Cameras capture each angle of the face, and as the light shifts, subtle changes in highlights across the face reveal the shape of the surface - including fine details like pores and wrinkles.

Cruz, an assistant professor of communication arts at the School of the Arts, offered something of a humorous warning to those entering the box: "It's going to show you parts of your face that you have never seen," he said. "You get to see and count every single pore of your face."

Instead of relying on Hollywood-grade expensive optical polarizers to separate those details, the system uses standard white light and computational processing to analyze how light reflects off the skin, allowing it to reconstruct both the surface geometry and texture. The result is a fast, highly detailed 3D scan captured in less than one second and processed in minutes.

Box Stage will be available for students and the broader VCU community to test through the summer.

The technology is part of a growing suite of creative tools available through The Workshop, which supports creative and interdisciplinary work across the university out of the lower level at Cabell Library.

For Brent Fagg, assistant director for innovation at VCU TechTransfer and Ventures, the open house also served as an early look at Box Stage's broader commercial potential beyond movies and top-tier "AAA" video games. While the initial idea has been around 3D facial scanning for use in the entertainment industry, it may have use in medical fields like dermatology or facial surgery, among other markets.

"We don't yet know exactly how people will use it," said Fagg, who serves as licensing manager for the device. "That's part of why getting it in front of students and researchers is so valuable - it helps us understand where the real-world applications might be."