A Hyper Realistic Face Mask with 3D Scanning and 3D Printing?

While unable to halt the spread of the COVID-19, Creatz3D worked with our partner, Shonan Design, last year to demonstrate the sophistication of 3D scanning and 3D printing by making hyper-realistic face masks.

One of the most popular scanners and a market leader, application engineers at Shonan were able to capture high-quality face scan data at up to +/- 0.1mm true accuracy in mere minutes with the Artec Eva portable scanner.

The data was then saved in VRML format and is manually touched up before sending it to 3D print on the Stratasys J55 – a 3D printer that supports the printing of realistic textures with PANTONE-validated colors for that actual face realism.

So the important question – can it unlock phones that supports face recognition? Well, we were able to find success on selected Android phones but iPhones were a no-go.

We were certainly not the first to attempt this though, as there was news about a Japanese retailer actually doing this and planning to sell them at a price tag of 98,000 yen ($950) in spring 2021.