Some of the coolest ideas in 3D graphics have actually been around for a long time. The techniques of image-based modeling allow 3D objects to be synthesized from two or more photographs. This is a form of photogrammetry, which was invented by Edouard Deville in the late 1800s.

While at the 2009 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, Christian Greuel (President of Realtime Arts) had his face scanned by Dimensional Imaging. The resulting raw mesh was very “heavy” — it had a high polygon count. Greuel did a quick optimization on the model in 3ds Max and composited this image in Photoshop.