In my quest to digitize my geckos rather than make 3d models of them scratch I began to experiment with different software and image capture set ups to get better models than my proof of concept provided.  I created a known size box, as was suggested to me online, moved the apparatus to a bathroom, put tape on the walls, and improved the lighting on the gecko subjects. I also build a sort of parallel bars for geckos out of bbq spears and rubberbands for them to sit on. This all has resulted in both hilarious poses of the geckos that they are comfortable in and better scans.

 

A low polygon count model of the chahoua Zenobia

 

Here are some of the videos I used to create the scans to give you an idea of the process:

Quasimodo the gargoyle gecko

 

Zenobia the Chahoua

 

La Crepe the Leachie

This is certainly something newer for home users, and the quality of the free software available for making 3d images from 2d image sets appears to vary wildly.  I tried uploading images and video to another online only software, my3dscanner.com, and got terrible results. I downloaded the files they generated and opened them in meshlab and got pretty poor results compared to 123d catch. This is the best point cloud the website generated and it was only half of a poorly scanned gecko:

 

 

Hopefully things will improve before the Printrbot arrives, and if not I can always make the models the old fashioned way.