Kiri Engine now supports Neural Surface Reconstruction
A 3D scene reconstructed with Android and iOS 3D scanning app Kiri Engine’s NeRF capabilities.
Originally posted on 3 January 2023. Scroll down for news of the public release.
Kiri Innovations has announced that it will support reconstruction of 3D scenes via Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) in Kiri Engine, its 3D scanning app for Android and iOS devices.
The implementation, which the firm claims is a first for Android phones, was demoed at CES 2023.
Updated 9 August 2023: Kiri Innovations has now released the technology publicly, as part of the new Featureless Object Mode in Kiri Engine 2.9.
A new AI-based alternative to photogrammetry or LIDAR for 3D scanning
Developed by researchers at UC Berkeley, Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) are a new method for training a neural network to generate and optimise a volumetric representation of a scene from a set of source images.
Although its creators focused on NeRF as a means of synthesising new views of a scene, the volumetric representation can be converted into a 3D mesh, making it an alterative to photogrammetry for 3D scanning.
The technology is available on desktop machines via Nvidia’s free Instant NeRF, and on iOS devices via Luma’s free Luma AI app.
Now coming to Android phones and tablets in Kiri Engine
Kiri Innovations’ adoption of Neural Radiance Fields will also make NeRF available on Android phones and tablets, since Kiri Engine – previously purely a photogrammetry-based app – is available for Android and iOS.
You can read more about Kiri Engine in this story.
Updated 9 August 2023: Kiri Innovations has now rolled out the functionality in its Kiri Engine 2.9 updates.
The app’s new Featureless Object Mode uses a NeRF-related approach (Neural Surface Reconstruction or NSR, discussed in this story) to reconstruct shiny or reflective objects.
You can see Kiri Innovations CEO Jack Wang discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of traditional photogrammetry and AI-based approaches for 3D scanning like NeRF and NSR in the video above.
Pricing and system requirements
Kiri Engine 2.9 is available for Android 7.0 and iOS 14.0.
The app itself is free to download, and users can export up to three 3D scans for free per week; to export more requires a paid Pro account, which now cost $14.99/month or $59.99/year.
The new Featureless Object Mode is restricted to Pro accounts.