The Maker’s Toolbox: Creality Raptor Pro 3D Scanner Review

My past experiences with 3D scanners haven’t been great. I’ve found them to be frustrating and of marginal utility. But when Creality reached out and asked if I’d like to test their new Raptor Pro, I decided to give 3D scanning another shot. In this review, I’ll tell you if the Raptor Pro was good enough to finally bring me around to 3D scanning technology.

3D scanning skepticism

My career before becoming a writer was in mechanical design and drafting, so parametric CAD is important to me—I even wrote an entire book on Autodesk Fusion. I enjoy the mathematical and geometric precision of CAD, where every plane is truly flat and perpendicularity is perfect.

For those reasons, I’ve always been somewhat skeptical of 3D scanning. Even when it works well, you still end up with a mesh, and those are icky. In my mind, meshes were really only good for rendering and 3D printing. They’re imperfect approximations of a perfect solid model.

On top of that, the 3D scanners I’ve used in the past, which were affordable consumer models, never worked very well. Scanning was always a frustrating experience that mostly consisted of lost tracking, invisible surfaces, and noisy point clouds.

But the Creality Raptor Pro felt like it could be different. It relies on markers for tracking and primarily blue laser light for scanning, in addition to the usual structured infrared light. Those factors were enough to tempt me into testing the Raptor Pro.

Tracking and markers

The 3D scanners I’ve used in the past have relied entirely on visual tracking, which means that they attempt to position newly scanned points based on the location of previously scanned features. The advantage of visual tracking is that it doesn’t require markers. The disadvantage is that it is prone to lost tracking and confusion from similar geometric features.

Imagine you want to scan something very regular (in the geometric sense), like a machinist’s 1-2-3 block. The surfaces and edges all look the same to the 3D scanner, so it doesn’t have any unique features to act as landmarks when tracking. That causes it to lose tracking altogether or to lose its position. In the former case, it simply won’t scan. In the latter case, it will create wildly inaccurate virtual geometry, such as a 1-2-300 block.

The 1-2-3 block is an extreme example, but the same problem occurs when scanning anything with very regular geometry — something that is common for mechanical parts, which often have lots of long, straight edges, right angles, and symmetry.

The Creality Raptor Pro avoids all of those problems by using markers for tracking. Those markers are small, circular, reflective stickers that you must apply to the object (or surface it rests on) before scanning. Then, during the scanning process, the Raptor Pro uses those markers as references to maintain tracking.

It does take some trial and error to learn how to place the markers effectively, because the scanner needs to see several of them at any given time in order to track properly. You also want to place them irregularly (rather than in a perfect pattern), so the scanner can differentiate between areas.

If the thing you’re scanning is very small, like a game cartridge for a Tiger Game.Com console, you don’t need to place the marker stickers directly onto the object. Instead, you can do what I did here and put a bunch of markers on a mat. The Raptor Pro will use those to maintain tracking while still scanning the object on the mat.

But if you’re scanning something large — and the Raptor Pro is meant to scan things up to four meters long — then you’ll need to place markers all over the object itself. And you need to attach a lot of them.

That’s the disadvantage of marker tracking, because it can take quite a bit of time to place the markers and then remove them after scanning. And while the markers aren’t expensive, they certainly aren’t free, either.

Even with those disadvantages, I still prefer this marker tracking over visual tracking. With the right marker density and placement, the Raptor Pro maintained tracking very well. I was able to scan this entire tote lid, which is large and had the kind of regular geometry that would confuse visual scanning, without much trouble.

And the Creality Raptor Pro can perform visual tracking in its NIR (Near-Infrared) Structured Light mode if you don’t want to deal with markers and are scanning something suitable.

Laser lines and structured light

The Creality Raptor Pro has three scanning modes: 22 Crossed Laser Lines, 7 Parallel Laser Lines, and NIR Structured Light.

NIR Structured Light is the typical mode for entry-level scanners and is what I had experienced in the past. It struggles with certain material types and isn’t particularly accurate or precise. Its only real advantage is low cost and the ability to scan large areas quickly. The Raptor Pro’s NIR Structured Light mode works with both visual tracking and marker tracking, so it is still more useful than the other scanners I’ve used.

The two other modes rely on blue laser lines projected in patterns. One has a crossed grid of 22 lines, while the other has an array of 7 parallel lines.

The 22 Crossed Laser Lines mode is good for scanning larger areas from further away, which means it works with lower marker density. The 7 Parallel Lines mode is good for close-up precision scanning and requires higher marker density.

I mostly used the two blue laser line modes and found that combining both in a single scan produced the best results.

I would start with a Global Marker Scan, so the Raptor Pro could locate all of the markers in space. Then I would perform a scan with the 22 Crossed Laser Lines mode to quickly cover a lot of area. Finally, I’d go back over some of the areas with the 7 Parallel Lines mode to get thorough coverage of the high-detail areas.

Repeating that from as many sides of the object as possible usually resulted in complete and high-detail point cloud coverage — and ultimately a good mesh model. Sometimes, I would add NIR Structured Light scans into the mix, but I rarely found them to be worth the extra time.

As a bonus, the blue laser lines worked well on most materials and surfaces. The only time they seemed to have a problem was when scanning transparent things, like the glass of an LCD screen.

Faces and color mapping

The Raptor Pro, with the Creality Scan software, also has modes for scanning faces and mapping color/texture onto meshes. There is even a body scan mode — though I didn’t try it.

I tried the face scanning mode on my wife and it worked fairly well. The subject does need to hold still as much as possible, but the software is able to compensate for small movements and the scanning process is fast enough that you can finish in just a minute or two. I wasn’t able to achieve photorealistic face scans, but they were still pretty good.

The color mapping was similar. You can simply toggle that as an option when performing scans and then, after meshing, the Creality Scan software will give you the option to apply the texture map.

I had mixed success with that. It was sometimes decent, producing readable labels and logos. But other times, it would get a little confused and spread textures onto geometry where they didn’t belong.

This Game Boy Color scan, for example, was pretty good in some areas. But you can see that the D-Pad and button colors “bled” over onto the green body, even though the mesh model was just about perfect in those areas.

Precision and accuracy

Creality claims that the volumetric accuracy of the Creality Raptor Pro is 0.02mm+0.08mm/m. And that may be true, but precision and accuracy are two different things. I think it is possible that the accuracy is that high (under ideal conditions), but that can be misleading without precision.

This results in surfaces that look rough in the scanned mesh, even though they’re perfectly flat and smooth in real life. The same is true for edges and fine details. The razor edge of a knife isn’t going to scan perfectly straight — it will look rough and jagged.

Some of the settings, like smoothing and number of faces, can make things look better, but the fact is that the point cloud is imprecise.

Whether that matters or not depends on your use case. It probably won’t matter if you’re scanning an entire car door panel, but don’t expect to scan the threads of an M2.5 screw.

Accessories and the PC tether

If you purchase just the Raptor Pro, then you’ll need to use it while connected to the USB/power cable, and that is only about six feet long. So, you’ll be scanning with a six-foot tether to your computer.

That can be pretty inconvenient, especially if you’re scanning something large and you use a desktop PC. And, ideally, you willuse a desktop PC, because the Creality Scan software eats up a ton of RAM.

To ditch the tether, you’ll need the Creality Scan Bridge accessory. That is like a handle onto which you mount the Raptor Pro, and it provides battery power and wireless data transmission, giving you a lot more freedom. You can purchase it separately or as part of a package with the Raptor Pro.

Unfortunately, Creality didn’t send me a Scan Bridge for testing, so I can’t comment on its quality — though the reviews on the Creality Store page are pretty negative.

Creality also offers a manual turntable, and I didn’t get that, either. I’m not quite sure how useful it would be, but it is something to consider.

I am aware of a fellow maker who has designed an automatic turntable for the Raptor Pro, but I don’t yet have information on its availability.

Final thoughts

I’ve been impressed with the Creality Raptor Pro, and it is the first 3D scanner I’ve used that I wasn’t disappointed by. The marker tracking was very reliable and the scanning results were usually pretty good.

It isn’t perfect by any means, because it still takes experience and time to get high-quality scans. Small, fine details tended to be messy, but the ability to scan large objects balances that out.

At the end of the day, you do still end up with a mesh, so 3D scanning isn’t a substitute for CAD. But it is good for creating reference models, sculpting, and simply duplicating objects with 3D printing.

The Raptor Pro currently costs $1,799, and that is a lot higher than entry-level 3D scanners. But, in my experience, those entry-level 3D scanners are so bad that they aren’t worth considering anyway. As such, the Creality Raptor Pro is the first 3D scanner I’ve tested that I can actually recommend.