For 2D imaging to become a common practice in computing several developments were necessitated. This allowed for the proliferation of outlets for digital images, in particular the growth of the World Wide Web. But to really make 2D imaging common, we needed inexpensive scanning technology along with improvements in the facility of scanner software. 3D applications are just now gaining this type of broad infrastructural support with 3D acceleration being built into CPU's and the integration of 3D into web environments and a variety of other computer based entertainment environments. The market's are there, the base technology support is there, what isn't yet available is inexpensive hardware and well developed, easy to use, software.
Computer modeling is a time consuming and complex task.
Often models are created that are derived from real world objects, yet the ability to easily utilize these real world objects as the basis of computer models has many difficulties in current implementations. Recent developments in computer visions systems have created new ways to bring raw 3-dimensional data into computer modeling systems. These systems are often known as 3-D scanners. One shortcoming in these systems is the way their data is interacted with in modeling applications. Data sets from these scanning systems are often far too dense in areas that are of little interest to the modeler and lack detail in other areas.