I am new here, and I've tried googling the answer, and so far haven't been able to come up with much.  I am wanting to take images, and create a mesh for them.  Any ideas on what is the best software to be able to do this?  Any help would be appreciated!

Well  i dont have a clue what it is you want to do...
So that makes helping difficult 

I want to be able to take an image, say a picture of an object, and create a mesh model of that image.

you need a modelling program. some of them can be quite expensice, but Wings3d is free. Go to the Wings3d forum here, and click on the banner at the top of the forum and it will take you to the page where you download it free.

You'll need to start with a 3D modeling application. There are any number out there. Try the free Wings program to start with.

http://www.wings3d.com

I've got Wings, but I what I'd like to do is be able to take an image of for example, say a train or something, and import it, so that it will create a mesh of that object.  Does that make sense?

There used to be a program called canoma that did that, making models from pictures, but it's no longer available. If you're lucky you might be able to find a used copy on ebay

canoma was mostly for doing interiors (rooms with rectangular walls) that had rectangular items in them. trying to do a model from photos is probably too difficult to describe correctly, but one will just end up with a dull, flat-looking canoma-type model. to create a complex, multi-faceted model with curved surfaces and lots of "in & out" bits (non-zero 2nd and 3rd derivatives in cross section), one normally uses either a line-laser scanner, or a mechanical device that moves a point along the surfaces of the physical object. there is a post in this forum about using a line-laser and a webcam to do this, but it's not for the faint-of-heart IMVHO.

There is also a program called imagemodeler (sp?) which does similar to what canoma did back in the day. A version was given away for free on a cover disc for 3D world some issues back, but not sure where you'd find it elsewhere.

jonthecelt

Quote - I've got Wings, but I what I'd like to do is be able to take an image of for example, say a train or something, and import it, so that it will create a mesh of that object.  Does that make sense?

Are you looking for a program that will do this automatically?
Most meshes don't get built like that.
There are some peograms that will assist you in making meshes from images, but it still requires a fair amount of work on your part. as far as I know.

Canoma used to do that, and I used to have it, but I didn't find it all that useful or stable, so it fell by the wayside. http://www.canoma.com/  I don't know if the program still exists.

I gather Sketchup has some easy to use tools for beginners to create models from photos: http://www.sketchup.com/?sid=487

Hi dying-soul

Do you plan on animating these meshes?

Cheers,
Patorak

I know there were some programs that used photo's as a reference to make a model out of it.
I don't remember the name but as someone mentioned earlier it came for free on a 3D-world CD. I've tried it but the mesh that came out was horrible, it also made a texture of the photographs and applied that to the mesh so it would look a bit more acceptable. But when you made a untextured render it looked more like a shrunk patato than the original object, which was a hog as far as I can remember. You could make you own model  by printing out a kind of template, put your model on it and make some digital pictures with different angles of it, load those pictures in the program, and the software made a model (patato!) of it. For the free version there was only one 3D-format to export it, which was a very rare internetformat only to be read by a plug-in supplied by the manufacturer. If you wanted other more regular exportformats you had to buy the original for a (for me) unacceptable price considering the limitations of the program.

Best regards,

Bopperthijs

connie, thx fr the sketchup link. I had forgotten about that one.

The technique you want to use is called photogrammetry.. It is being used for generating 3D maps, cartography, and as an aid in creating virtual environments that must match "real" environments.

One picture of an object is not enough. You'll need several pictures from different angles.
Canoma could do this.
Other software that can do this (at a much better precision than Canoma) does exist, but is rather specialized and extremely expensive.

Actually there's a way to import a picture into Wings and work against that. Download the program, and drop by the Wings forum and ask. You might also look for Puzzled Paul, who has some tutorials. I've not done it, but I've seen others do it.

Use the free anim8or as a modeler. www.anim8or.com
U can import referene pictures in all axes X, Y, and Z, and model using the pics as a reference in the background.

I scale Posette in Poser to X 70 and Z 70%, screengrab her from the 3 positions, and import those pictures into anim8or to make clothes for her.

Then I Use Poser, make a small animation of 15 frames, start from X-70, and Z-70, and use 100% onn the 15 frame.
Import the clothing in frame 1, scale as close as you can but do not touch Posettes obj, and let the cloth simulation push Posette into her dress. 

I did a small tutorial on this forum some months back
Tony

awesome, thank you so much!

Here are a couple of programs that you can take a photo, set reference point and export a mesh. But they are both very expensive.

http://www.photomodeler.com/index.htm

http://imagemodeler.realviz.com/

*From Miss Nancy: canoma was mostly for doing interiors (rooms with rectangular walls) that had
rectangular items in them. trying to do a model from photos is probably too difficult to
describe correctly, but one will just end up with a dull, flat-looking canoma-type model.
*Actually, Canoma was mostly intended for modeling exteriors and especially for angular structures and buildings. It relies on perspective-based photogrammetry so that doing interiors can be problematical due to an inability to get enough perspective changes on walls.  I met one of the developers a couple years back in Palo Alto and he told me how Adobe bought the program and deliberately deep-sixed it because they were fooling with a web-based 3D program that never was completed. He gave me a copy and I actually still use it regularly and have seen it show up cheap on ebay every few months.

My profession is 3D forensic modeling and animation so that I have to often build stuff from scratch to use in legal animations.

The two most commonly used image-based modelers still commercially available are Image Modeler by RealViz and PhotoModeler by Eos Systems. I have also used both of those programs with good success although I actually prefer using Canoma because it is so easy to use. I use it to generate rough 3D shapes that are in proportion and I then import the shapes into a more capable modeler such as Modo or FormZ where I use the Canoma templates as a rough base to work from. I've built everything including vehicles, bridges and buildings using this workflow. Unless you have blueprints or good measurements it can really be a time-saver to help you build a 3D model in good proportion.

Oh, and one other thing that Canoma and these other image modelers does well is to create textures for your 3D surfaces. Let's say you have a couple photos of a billboard. Canoma will do a pretty nice job of correcting the billboard image that you can then edit in photoshop.