While attending a recent conference we took a break enjoying the fresh mountain air on a hike. About half way up the hike, a couple people were pointing to some tracks on the trail saying it might be a cougar (mountain lion) track. Being the local Utah person and having seen cougar tracks before, I didn't think it could be as it had claws and cougars are feline cats and retract their claws. I decided to take a series of photos of the track with my phone and use Project Memento to create a 3D model to clearly show the track detail and unveil the critter that made it.

I launched Project Memento and simply dragged the 17 photos I took into it and then selected to create a 3D textured mesh. The photos are then uploaded to the cloud and you wait in a the queue for a notification by email or Project Memento.

The resulting 3D model clearly identified the track as a common canine dog. Track information to identify it was not a cougar was found at http://www.bear-tracker.com/caninevsfeline.html

Here is the screen capture of the 3D textured mesh result clearing showing the claw nails.

Here is a view with the photo textures turned off.

Go give the free Autodesk Labs Project Memento for the Windows PC a try for free and create 3D models as well as fix meshes. There was a new build posted just last week with support for Artec 3D scanner.

Cheers and happy tracking,
Shaan