Care for a twin?

Why go in for a plain old selfie when you can capture your likeness in a 3D avatar

After the velfie, or video selfie, that took everyone by storm in 2015, it is now time for the 3D selfie. To gauge its rising popularity, visit the small kiosk of TwinMe at DLF Cyber Hub, Gurgaon's gourmet and entertainment destination. It is bedecked with colourful banners and posters, promising life-like 3D printed figurines made using advanced 3D scanners and printers.

On any given day, there are dozens of people lined up outside the booth - some out of curiosity and others to get clicked. "Who orders photo albums these days? Selfies too keep languishing in the phone or are put up on social media and then forgotten. But 3D selfie or figurine is something that you can display in your house and cherish forever," says Ashish Chopra, a 32-year-old communications specialist who is here to get one of his.

The booth in Gurgaon is barely a month old and already 500 people have got their 3D selfies made, claims Pune-based entrepreneur Tushar Ganage. TwinMe is a part of Little Green Men Technologies that he and his brother, Jitesh, founded two years ago. The idea stemmed from the brothers' desire to bring 3D printing into the life of the average consumer. They built several prototypes on a scanning system, which was assembled in-house in Pune, before coming up with a final version.

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y two or three companies providing the 3D selfie service, but none uses the advanced photogrammetry technology where 120 camera sensors take an image of a person from all angles in 1/6th of a second," says Ganage. The others use white light scanners, which need to be taken around a person in a full circle to get a complete scan. "That takes time," he says. "This one allows you to capture images of even small children who keep moving all the time and might not get scanned properly by the white light technology." Now, 70 per cent of the business comes from couples, especially those with children.

Here's how it works: walk into the booth in Gurgaon or schedule an appointment with the TwinMe Studio in Pune. Once you select your preferred figurine size, the 120 camera sensors spur into action to scan you, in three-dimension. This data is sent to Pune where your details, such as features and colour, are processed and a digital form prepared for life-like 3D printing. "This form is rendered using a software to create a 3D image after which an artist does the touch-up using a sculpting software," says Ganage. This is then sent to a 3D printer to print the figurines. The sandstone figurine is ready in about four days and delivered within 10.

The figurines are available in seven sizes (scaled at 6 feet). "My height and my colleague's height will be different, so the sizes of our figurines will also be different," says Ganage. "If I am 6 feet tall, I can choose from 10 cm, 15 cm, 17.5 cm, 20-25 cm or 30-35 cm-sized figurines." The price ranges from Rs 6,000 for a 10 cm one to Rs 44,000 for the one that stands 35 cm tall.

Given the response, TwinMe has decided to expand. It is opening a store in Khan Market in Delhi on January 15 and another at Inorbit Mall, Hyderabad.