A new photo studio that recently opened up in Wesley Chapel is the first in the Bay area to offer 3-D portraits.

Cool Dims uses a technology called photogrammetric 3-D scanning, which sends an image to a 3-D printer, which then creates a lifelike figurine of the subject.

"As far as I know, we are the only one in the Tampa Bay area that does this," said Chris Lee, 38, the owner and president of Cool Dims. "I got the idea from a TV commercial I saw about 3-D printers."

Lee said it took him about a year to build a custom rig with 92 cameras that are positioned in a circle around a subject to capture every angle.

"We have software that can take all those images that it can produce and convert it into a 3-D image," he said. "Then we take that 3-D image and we print it out on a 3-D printer in full color and just about any size, even life size."

Lee prints his 3-D models at a Lutz company called The Object Shop. The minimum height they print is 4 inches and typically only go up to 15 inches. Lee said the sweet spot seems to be an 8-inch figurine.

Cool Dims, located at 29157 Chapel Park Dr. in Wesley Chapel, opened up to the public in February and Lee said his target market is almost endless.

"We target obviously a lot of the kids that are in sports programs but then again, we also do graduation," he said. "We do a wedding cake topper. Pretty much anybody who just wants their own little statue of them self."

Angelo and Tina Antoulinakis brought their 1-year-old son, Patrick, to Cool Dims to have a 3-D figurine printed of the boy.

"We thought it would be really fun to have something that we can track it every yeark, rather than just a picture," Tina said. "Something we can actually place on a shelf and see physically how much he changes every year."

Antoulinakis said her husband has their son's figurine on his desk at work and it's a hit with the fellow employees.

"Everybody just loves it and they can't wait to get one of their own," she said. "I wish it was around when I was a kid."

Lee said on average a customer can expect to spend $250 for a 3-D scan and figurine, which also includes a free 2-D photo shoot.

"We did invest quite a bit of money into the studio to get it up and running." he said. "But we want to try and make all of our products affordable for everybody."