HP Z Captis pictured next to an HP Z workstation and monitor
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HP is a company that has long sought innovative ways to use the latest technology to improve the lives of creators and engineers. For example, the company makes a line of 3D printers designed for rapid prototyping and commercial manufacturing, as well as the FitStation, which creates volumetric 3D scans of the foot for custom insoles and shoes.
Similarly, HP launched Project Captis in 2019 in collaboration with Adobe to capture information about real-world materials. After five years of development, Project Captis is now ready for commercialization as HP Z Captis. HP designed Captis to support the first of a three-step process that enables partners to “capture, create, and experience” using Captis devices, Z workstations, and Jetfusion 3D printers.
HP Z Captis is born
Working with Adobe, HP set out to develop a digital material capture device capable of capturing material at up to 8K resolution. The brain behind this operation is the Nvidia Jetson AGX Javier module, which helps drive the camera and accelerate AI-enhanced features. Jetson AGX Javier also helps Captis with real-time noise reduction, HDR, color and pixel calibration. Captis uses this powerful AI module for real-time inference of photometric imaging volumes.
HP designed Captis to seamlessly integrate with Adobe's Substance 3D Sampler, an industry-standard 3D tool for bringing realistic textures to 3D objects. Adobe Substance is a complete suite of various 3D tools for 3D content creation (including 3D Sampler itself), and Captis provides an easy and fast way to bring realistic textures into 3D virtual environments. Captis also uses HP's Z Captis Capture Management SDK, so developers who don't use Adobe's workflow can integrate Captis into their own applications. The SDK also uses AI for photometric, super-resolution, and polarized image creation.
Although the Z Captis is limited in size to 30cm x 30cm in the area it can capture, this seems sufficient for most materials, meaning that the Z Captis can easily be used both in the studio and in the real world to capture new textures in real time.
HP Z Captis captures outdoor textures with HP EliteBook laptop
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Why capture textures?
Simply put, 3D creation is the blending of 3D structures or meshes with textures to give them a realistic appearance. The higher the quality of the texture, the more realistic the 3D object will appear to the user. That's why industries like architecture, automotive, entertainment, fashion, gaming, and design are interested in these high-resolution textures. With textures that are so easy to capture, designers and creators have access to more textures in higher quality, making it easier to iterate and collaborate. It also reduces the cost of 3D content creation, as textures don't need to be created from scratch and high-resolution information such as Captis' 8K textures can be brought in.
Creating high-quality 3D assets like these from Captis allows companies that design physical goods like clothing and shoes to determine the look of their products with fewer physical prototypes, reducing waste and cutting the emissions created by shipping samples across the world overnight. Platforms like Campfire 3D allow companies to easily collaborate in-house or cross-platform to experience these products on a Quest 3 or Vision Pro headset. Companies can build entire libraries of captured materials to sell to customers in both physical and virtual applications.
Multiple Z Captis devices in the studio capture multiple fabrics to a Z workstation.
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Beyond Capture
The real purpose of HP Z Captis is to help designers and creatives create highly photo-accurate recreations of real-world objects, which will ultimately drive demand for high-quality, real-world 3D assets like fabrics, rocks, grass, metal pieces, and more to populate virtual worlds. Capturing the textures of objects as close as possible to the real world will increase immersion in the virtual environment, and interacting with 3D objects will make people more engrossed in working and playing in virtual environments.
Moor Insights & Strategy, like other technology industry research and analysis firms, provides paid services to technology companies. These services include research, analysis, advisory, consulting, benchmarking, acquisition broking, and video and speaking sponsorships. Of the companies mentioned in this article, Moor Insights & Strategy currently has (or has had) paid business relationships with Adobe, HP, and Nvidia.
