3D Scanning Workflow - Step #1 UPDATE: Material File Correction

While I am still no expert in Affinity Photo, a few lessons by by Ezra and Ally of Affinity Revolution have been VERY helpful!

At first, i thought I could solve the overly bright issues in some areas by a simple color replacement.  I was sweating bullets when I realized that the Color Replacement Tool in Affinity ALWAYS respects the underlying brightness value.  This great for changing a shirt from one color to another because the features like folds and shadows remain.  But, it is NOT so great when you want to turn bright red to darker red.

Fortunately, I enrolled in the free "Magically Remove Shadows" online course.  It turns out that the process of removing shadows can be helpful in reducing glare as well. My stab at it isn't perfect.  But, it DOES show me that I'm on the right track and that my gut feeling that Affinity Photo is the right tool for the job has been validated. 

So, lets compare the BEFORE and AFTER.  First the FRONT view.

Santa Front - Before Editing Mesh in Affinity

Santa Front - After Editing Mesh in Affinity

As is plain, Affinity Photo was able to reduce the affects of glare considerably!  The most important part of this transformation is that if I should want to try using the Color Replacement Tool, the undying tonality will help match the final colors better.

Now for the BACK view.

Santa Back - Before Editing Mesh in Affinity Photo

Santa Back - After Editing Mesh in Affinity Photo

This area is a bit less successful.  That is probably because I applied the corrections uniformly across all the images and that's probably NOT the best strategy.  But, I was anxious to show some results.

The great thing is that like MF Studio and the Matter and form scanner, we can go back into an Affinity Photo project and refine it.  But, even at this stage I think that the concept of improving color captures by editing a mesh in a photo image application has been well demonstrated.

Lastly, here is a comparison of the two mesh files.followed by BevelPix links where you can see the objects in full 3D.

Santa Mesh File - Before Editing Mesh in Affinity Photo

Santa Mesh File - After Editing Mesh in Affinity Photo

And the BevelPix.com links:

     https://bevelpix.com/creations/5e153984761dfe666220896d

    https://bevelpix.com/creations/5e23711c1265aed1ecc4ed8c

The takeaway from this post is that capturing does not have to be, nor should it be, a one-step process.  Learning to take advantage of other tools to create an improvement WORKFLOW is an important skill to use.