LUMEN-PS is free, open-source software that turns an ordinary flatbed scanner into a photometric-stereo material scanner. From four scans it recovers normal, albedo, roughness, height and alpha maps — no camera rig, no synchronised lights, no special optics.
How It Works
Photometric stereo recovers surface detail by observing how a surface responds to light from different directions. Normally that requires a controlled rig with multiple lights.
A flatbed scanner already contains a moving light source in a fixed, known geometry. Scan the same object four times at different rotations and you have four lighting directions — enough to solve for surface normals. It is a genuinely clever reuse of hardware most people already own.
What It Can Capture
It started as a foliage scanner and works on any shallow surface relief:
- Leaves, petals and pressed plants — the original use case, and it captures the alpha channel too
- Fabric and textiles — weave detail that is hard to photograph well
- Paper, card and worn surfaces
- Bark, stone and shallow-relief textures
Why This Beats Photographing a Texture
A photograph gives you colour with the lighting baked in. You then fake a normal map from it, which produces a plausible but incorrect result.
LUMEN-PS derives real surface normals from actual light response, so the detail reacts correctly when you light it. A scanner also gives you perfectly even illumination, no lens distortion, no perspective and a fixed scale — all things you fight when shooting textures with a camera.
What It Cannot Do
Depth is limited by the scanner. Anything with significant height sits away from the glass, goes out of focus and breaks the assumptions the method relies on. This is for flat and near-flat subjects only.
It is also not photogrammetry — you get texture maps, not a 3D model.
Who It Suits
Environment and texture artists who want genuinely original materials rather than the same library everyone else uses. Scanning your own bark, fabric or foliage is one of the few remaining ways to make a scene look like nobody else's.
If you want ready-made CC0 materials instead, Poly Haven and ambientCG are in our resources directory.
Creator: Samukashvili · Price: Free / open source · Get it: GitHub