3D structured light scanning is a way of taking images of 3D objects and creating meshes or 3D point clouds from the images. You can do it at home by projecting alternating patterns of striped light across a person or surface. You take 3 images of the object or person, each image has a different pattern projected onto it. Then you run the image through a program that assembles figures out the distances between the points of the object and creating a 3D point cloud. However, this is very difficult to get right, and you need rather precise lighting in order to produce the correct effect. Whenever I have tried it, it usually just ends up flat.

When done correctly, it should look like this:

Or this: