Serious CG: 3D Scan of Catacombs in Rome
It is not a virtual image, it is not animation – what you are seeing is real data
Source: BBC
Austrian and Italian scientists created the first 3D scan of the Saint Domitilla catacombs.
Laser scanners send out light pulses in every direction and a computer records the light bouncing back in a sparse cloud of point data.
360 degrees images are taken from the same sampling locations allowing to texture map the polygonal geometry derivated from the point cloud.
This allow to have an high-quality reproduction of the topology and the surface appeareance. While shooting a video would have been simpler and faster, having a 3D model of the rooms allow interactive navigation and making tests and comparison not possible in the traditional film medium.
What makes this research intersting is the precision the laser scanner should be capable of allowing to study a model, a 3D one in this case, very near to the real thing. Once you have a set of 3D point in space and associated texture maps you have just a 3D model that you can use and manage with any affordable computer graphics techonology. Even for real-time navigation if enough computational power is available.
It’s also interesting to learn from the article that the scientists, after a thorough study, will make the results publicly available.
What about playing a level of Half Life 2 or Unreal in the real catacombs?
Popularity: 1%
