specimen · renato.design
LiDAR scanner with afterwords.
Only for iPhone
Free
iPhone
specimen is a 3D scanning app for iPhone that treats the captured object as a specimen — worth describing, worth situating, worth demystifying.
You point the phone at a thing. You walk around it. You flip it over. You capture the bottom. The app produces a mesh you can open in Rhino, Blender, or any 3D software.
Witness describes what was captured in clinical language. A registrar's voice. Surface reads as glazed ceramic. Bottom not captured. Approximately fourteen centimeters across.
Afterwords is six voices from the dead. Sōetsu Yanagi speaks on the beauty of humble objects. Walter Benjamin speaks on what scanning
itself is — what aura means when an object is captured. D'Arcy Thompson speaks on the forces that made the form. Roland Barthes speaks on the detail that pierces the viewer. George Kubler speaks on where this object sits in its class. Vilém Flusser speaks on the gesture of capture.
Concordance names the mechanism, not the marketing term. Light detection and ranging. Infrared pulses. Time of flight. Structured light. Photogrammetry. Triangulation.
Exports in millimeters, Z-up — the Rhino-default design-studio convention. Switchable to inches for the truly stubborn or architects
among you. Share a capture package as a .zip and AirDrop it to a Mac running the free specimen Companion for full-detail reconstruction Apple only exposes on macOS.
Requirements: iPhone with LiDAR (iPhone 12 Pro or later Pro / Pro Max). Apple Intelligence–capable device if you want the voices to speak on-device; the app falls back cleanly otherwise.
No cloud. No account. No credits. No subscription. Built for students and makers as a tool for contemplative work.
specimen is part of renato.design, a creative research practice authored through Iterative LLM Co-Authorship — a collaboration between Phil Renato and Claude (Anthropic). Released as a research artifact, not commercial software. See the disclaimer in Settings → About for details.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• OBJ exports now stand upright in Z-up viewers (Rhino, Blender).
• Resolved a mixed-source capture bug that produced fractured
reconstructions in Companion and other tools.
• Share becomes usable much faster — Afterwords now generate in
the background while the capture package is ready to share.
The developer, Phillip Renato, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Phillip Renato
- Size
- 1.7 MB
- Category
- Graphics & Design
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 18.1 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 18.1 or later.
• iPhone 6S
• iPhone 6S Plus
• iPhone SE (1st generation)
• iPhone 7
• iPhone 7 Plus
• iPhone 8
• iPhone 8 Plus
• iPhone X
• iPhone XS
• iPhone XS Max
• iPhone XR
• iPhone 11
• iPhone 11 Pro
• iPhone 11 Pro Max
• iPhone SE (2nd generation)
• iPhone 12 mini
• iPhone 12
• iPhone 12 Pro
• iPhone 12 Pro Max
• iPhone 13 Pro
• iPhone 13 Pro Max
• iPhone 13 mini
• iPhone 13
• iPhone SE (3rd generation)
• iPhone 14
• iPhone 14 Plus
• iPhone 14 Pro
• iPhone 14 Pro Max
• iPhone 15
• iPhone 15 Plus
• iPhone 15 Pro
• iPhone 15 Pro Max
• iPhone 16
• iPhone 16 Plus
• iPhone 16 Pro
• iPhone 16 Pro Max
• iPhone 16e
• iPhone 17 Pro
• iPhone 17 Pro Max
• iPhone 17
• iPhone Air
• iPhone 17e
- iPhone
- Languages
- English
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Phil Renato