How One Onion Led Us to ScanWOW
Hi everyone, my name is Max. I’d like to share the story behind ScanWOW, my first independent photogrammetry project. ScanWOW is a 3D scan library that we (I and 2 my friends) started building not because of a big business plan, and not because we wanted to launch “ mjust another marketplace".
If we simplify it, everything started with one onion.
In 2021, i was working on another DLC for Euro Truck Simulator 2. I needed to create a simple scene: vegetables in bags and boxes, sold by roadside “babushka.” Nothing special or complicated. Just a small roadside asset that would make the environment feel more alive and believable.
In my work, i often create large and complex assets: administrative buildings, skyscrapers, Gothic churches, cars, trucks, buses, locomotives. Usually, these are the kinds of things that look like real production challenges.
But that time, the problem unexpectedly turned out to be a simple onion.
I did not need a perfect scan. Not a highly detailed hero asset. Just a good, usable onion that could be placed in a bag of vegetables.
So i started searching. And i quickly found out that finding a decent scan of an onion was not as easy as it sounds.
Some assets were low quality. Some were missing textures. Some looked acceptable only in the preview. And anything reasonably decent started at around $20.
That was where it started to feel a bit absurd.
Paying dozens of times more for a digital onion than for a real one felt like a strange idea. Especially when you do not need just one onion, but a whole bag of them. One object did not solve the problem: we needed different sizes, shapes, shades, small differences, and a sense of natural variation.
In the end, i found something after spending several hours and going through one refund. Then i still had to manually change the size, color, and shape to create the illusion of variation.
And that was the first time the thought appeared:
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At the time, that thought did not turn into a project. I simply remembered that small pain.
A few years later, i finally had a chance to return to the idea more seriously. I saved up some money, bought a camera and a lens, started studying photogrammetry, testing different approaches, and thinking about whether the scanning process could be automated enough.
That was how ScanWOW began.
A year and a half of development by a small team of three people - in parallel with our main work. During that time, we built the website, started filling the library, assembled our own automatic scanning machines, and created the first working pipeline.
We now have 4 scanners for different tasks: small objects, medium objects, large objects, and for atlases. We also designed and printed our own circuit boards, automated a large part of the process, and tested a lot of things in practice over the past year.
I will talk about the scanners separately. There are too many details for one introductory article: early mistakes, photometric stereo, mechanics, cameras, lighting, circuit boards, software, automation, stability, maintenance. That is a whole separate story.
For now, I will just say that the process pulled us in deeply.
We started with a fairly simple idea: to create high-quality 3D scans of ordinary objects. But we quickly realized that if we wanted stable quality and decent speed, we needed to build a system. Not just “take photos of an object,” but control the entire path: shooting, lighting, color, processing, textures, asset structure, publishing, and future updates.
The main idea behind ScanWOW remained simple:
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We do not want to make one perfect onion. We want to make sets. Not one potato, but several variations. Not one rock, but a group. Not a random beautiful prop, but a library of objects that can become a solid basic toolkit for 3D artists.
For similar objects, we try to keep at least 5 variations. For objects where variety is especially important, 10 or more. We tried making 20 variations of one type, but with a team of three people, that quickly starts to feel like madness. So now we are looking for a balance between quality, quantity, and common sense.
Free access is also important to us.
We want people to be able to visit the site, download assets, test them in their projects, and calmly understand whether the library works for them. Without buying blindly and without dealing with refunds.
ScanWOW has free basic access, and the entire library is available through it. For many users, that will already be enough. And if someone needs more advanced formats, resolutions, or commercial use, that is the next level.
There are currently around 600 assets in the ScanWOW library.
Our internal goal is to improve the pipeline enough to minimize human intervention as much as possible and eventually reach up to a hundred new assets per day.
Honestly, we already understand how to get there. We have working hardware, tests, experience, and a list of mistakes that need to be fixed. The main limitation right now is not the idea or the technology, but the team. To close the gaps in the pipeline, bring the tools to a proper state, and speed up production, we need more people and resources.
But even in its current form, the project is already alive. The machines are running, assets are being added, and the website is developing.
And for me, that is the most important thing right now.
I do not want ScanWOW to remain just a nice idea or an internal experiment. I want it to actually help artists, developers, students, and small teams — anyone who needs 3D assets without unnecessary pain.
This article is the first part of a larger series about ScanWOW.
Next, I will talk in more detail about:
- how we started with experiments and the first prototype;
- what we shoot with and why we decided to build our own automatic scanners;
- how our scanning and processing pipeline works;
- what we consider a good PBR scan;
- what mistakes we have already made;
- how we want to scale the library further.
For now, you can visit scanwow.com, download the assets you need.
We are grateful for any kind of activity — feedback, requests, questions, bug reports, or simply seeing ScanWOW assets used in real work.
And if you need something specific, you can leave a request in our Discord channel:
