Working Through the Scanning and Modeling Process

We've posted a new video on our Youtube channel, Archaeology3D, featuring a rotational view of a large rim portion of a ceramic vessel from the Museum of Ontario Archaeology's gallery. The video and digitization was produced by SAAU interns Kelsey Baxter, Alan Bartholomew, and James Meager. The rim was scanned using one of Sustainable Archaeology's 3D3 digitizers - the structured light scanner, which has been set up for the scanning of larger artifacts (in contrast to the macro structured light digitizer, which is used to scan very small artifacts).

A 16 megapixel Canon Rebel T3i was used to capture the artifact's original colour and texture. Flex software was used to align and merge the digital scans and to export into an OBJ. Holes in the geometry were filled using the Rapidform software, and the high resolution texture was applied from the Canon camera to the high resolution 3D model using Z-Brush. Everything was then pulled together into Maya and rendered using Mental Ray.

Below are two screen shots from the digitization process. These images demonstrate the contrast between the textured (top) and untextured (bottom) 3D models. The ability to add texture to the 3D model allows for the creation of truly life-like digital versions of the original artifact.