In a previous post I mentioned the importance of having high frequency details whilst scanning assets on-set. Sometimes if we don't have that detail we can just create it. Actually sometimes this is the only way to capture volumes and surfaces efficiently, specially if the asset doesn't have any surface detail, like white objects for example.
If we are dealing with assets that are being used on set but won't appear in the final edit, it is probably that those assets are not painted at all. There is no need to spend resources on it, right? But we might need to scan those assets to create a virtual asset that will be ultimately used on screen.
As mentioned before, if we don't have enough surface detail it will be so difficult to scan assets using photogrammetry so, we need to create high frequency detail on our own way.
Let's say we need to create a virtual assets of this physical mask. It is completely plain, white, we don't see much detail on its surface. We can create high frequency detail just painting some dots, or placing small stickers across the surface.
In this particular case I'm using a regular DSLR + multi zoom lens. A tripod, a support for the mask and some washable paint. I prefer to use small round stickers because they create less artifacts in the scan, but I run out of them.
I created this support while ago to scan fruits and other organic assets.
The first thing I usually do (if the object is white) is covering the whole object with neutral gray paint. It is way more easy to balance the exposure photographing again gray than white.
Once the gray paint is dry I just paint small dots or place the round stickers to create high frequency detail. The smallest the better.
Once the material has been processed you should get a pretty decent scan. Probably an impossible task without creating all the high frequency detail first.
