If you’ve experienced the first-person shooter Bioshock Infinite, then you probably know that while you play as Booker DeWitt, its actual main character is Elizabeth, your perpetual companion and emotional anchor.

Since the beginning, BioShock creator Ken Levine has stressed that his goal was to make Elizabeth feel like anything but a video game character. And while half of that effort is good writing and voice acting, the other half is good technology: Elizabeth had to look and act real — otherwise, the Bioshock Infinite experience would fall apart.

And pulling that off, as you might expect, takes a lot of work.

“It’s actually amazing how dedicated these game developers are about making their characters as believable as possible,” Anna Zevelyov, the development director at 3D scanner maker Artec, told me.

A similar amount of effort was put into Bioshock Infinite’s technically impressive television commercial, and 3D scanning technology was a part of its production. Using Artec’s EVA scanner, Irrational Games scanned Russian cosplayer Anna Moleva, capturing, processing, and animating her facial expressions.

The result is what you see in this video:

As amazing as all of this is, 3D scanning has been around for decades — so none of this is new. But what is notable is just how cheap 3D scanners are getting.

“Scanners that would have cost $150,000 five years ago are much more affordable today. It’s still not supercheap, but it’s 90 percent cheaper than it used to be,” Zevelyov said.

For game developers — many of whom are cash-strapped and under increasing pressure to perform under strict budgets — this is significant. Expect to see lots applications of 3D scanning as time goes on.

For a good look just how much work went into creating Elizabeth, watch the video below.

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There’s an old adage in the menswear world that says that a cheap, well-fitted suit will always look infinitely better than an expensive, poorly fitting one.

But while the casts of shows like Mad Men and How I Met Your Mother seem to effortlessly pull off the well-dressed look, doing so for most guys tends to be too expensive, too intimidating, or too time-consuming.

Offering a solution to this sartorial snag is Tailor Truck, a mobile suit store that will use 3D scanning to create suits that are ideally, er, suited to customers’ body types.

Carlos Solorio, the co-founder of Tailor Truck parent company Arden Reed, says this is a use case that 3D scanning was made for.

“3D scanning gives us accurate measurements to the scale of millimeters. Before that it was inches, which doesn’t make sense for measuring clothing fit,” he told me.

The 3D body scanner Tailor Truck will use is powered by 14 sensors at multiple heights and angles, allowing it to measure over a million points of information.

The technology, of course, is nothing new, but plunging prices means that 3D scanning is finally getting to the point where it’s affordable for small businesses and, in some cases, individuals. (We’re seeing the same trend with 3D printing.)

Solorio wants to use the project’s eventual Kickstarter funds both to finish building the truck and to take it on a cross-country tour of cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. If Solorio is right, those cities may see a major influx of well-dressed gentlemen very soon.

Forget printing objects — with its latest invention, MakerBot wants you to scan them.

Unveiled as a prototype at SXSW today, it’s new Digitizer Desktop 3D Scanner fills a major hole in MakerBot’s 3D printing ecosystem: Getting the objects you already have in the physical world into the digital one.

“This is sort of like the scene in Tron when they get digitized into the game,” MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis said during the device’s unveiling. “This kind of the washer-dryer combo of 3D printing,” he added.

With the device, owners can not only prototype new objects, but they can also re-create existing ones. The idea isn’t new, but MakerBot says it’s doing 3D scanning in a way that’s easy and accessible, which has been one of the company’s biggest strengths so far.

But like 3D printing, 3D scanning brings with it a whole host of copyright issues, all of which are likely to give manufacturers the vapors. Just because consumers can scan their property, does that mean they should be legally allowed to? In many ways, 3D scanning is the most dangerous technology yet for anyone who makes a living creating widgets. MakerBot may have just opened up a can of worms — not only for others but itself as well.

“Yes, it’s possible for a MakerBot to make a MakerBot,” Pettis said. “But I’m cool with that.”

Photo: Tom Cheredar/VentureBeat

Treemetrics provides a 3D laser scanning system to accurately measure the height, straightness, taper, and volume of the trees in a section of forest. The European Space agency will combine the latest satellite data with Treemetrics’ ground-based forest information.

2D satellite images provide a bird’s eye view of huge areas of forest. Treemetrics uses this data to spot missing trees, which may indicate disease or illegal logging, and to determine where ground scanners should be most urgently deployed. Making the whole process cheaper and more efficient means that owners of smaller forests can starting using the technology.

There are sound reasons for better tree tracking. “Timber demand is set to double over the next 30 years. People need wood for shelter and heat,” said Treemetrics CEO Enda Keane. “Forests are also a vital ecosystem in which 90 percent of the world’s mammals live.”

Currently, forest measurement is done manually by a forester who uses calipers to measure the radius of a sample of trees. But with Treemetrics’ technology, a 3D laser scanner emits laser pulses that bounce back from objects in the area, gathering millions of data points over a 30 meter radius of forest. Those data points are then used to construct a 3D model of the trees. Better measurement means that fewer trees can be cut while maximizing value.

Treemetrics claims that its system can reduce measurement costs by 75 percent.

If there is one thing foresters hate doing, it’s cutting trees. Keane should know, since he worked as a forester himself for 10 years. He says that 20 percent of the value of forests worldwide (or approximately 10 billion Euros) is lost annually due to inaccurate knowledge of the quantity or quality of the timber available before trees are harvested.

Keane first encountered 3D graphics via satellite images, which foresters use to get different views of the forest. Having started the company in 2005 with Garret Mullooly, he collaborated with research teams at several European universities with expertise on image processing, forest recovery, and optimization to develop the software for the Treemetrics scanner.

The system is now used in forests in Ireland, Norway, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the US. Treemetrics’ business model is software as a service, where users are charged per hectare of forest. Keane says the company has no direct competitors.

Treemetrics is based in Cork, Ireland, has 15 employees and has received 1.4 million EUR ($1.87 million) in private and government funding.

3D printing is turning heads these days, especially with do-it-yourselfers. Y Combinator startup Matterport has invented a small scanner, pictured above, that can scan any space or object and create a 3D model.

“We turn reality into 3D models and our scanner is 20 times faster and 18 times cheaper than any other tool on the market,” says Matterport co-founder Michael Beebe, “We are creating fundamentally new technology, like the steam engine or the car.”

Best of all, no precision is needed. With a wave of the hand, the device smartly scans the environment and understands the shapes, features, and placement of everything it scans.

Beebe showed off the technology at Y Combinator’s Demo Day. The team highlighted that its scanner is currently being used in the construction, film making, and real estate industries.

Beyond just scanning a room, the implications for a 3D scanner can be quite cool. You could scan any object of your choosing and send the model to a 3D printer to get a 3D replica of virtually anything in the world. Excuse me while I go scan the new iPad and make a replica.

Matterport is one of 39 companies presenting at Y Combinator’s Demo Day Spring 2012 event. Check out other cool companies making their debut here. 

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