I have just published a blog post on the Wessex Archaeology website entitled Interactive Landscape Relighting. It is about using Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) in a virtual environment, using LiDAR (airborne laser scanning) to create models of landscapes which can be illuminated by the viewer from any angle. The post uses part of the [...]
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Building Rome in a Day
The billions of photos taken in cities across the world and uploaded to places like Flickr, Photobucket et al might suddenly have a very interesting use. The University of Washington are experimenting with the creation of 3D “point clouds” similar to those created by terrestrial laser scanners, from downloaded images. By sourcing images and applying [...]
Bringing President Lincoln "back to life"
Combining laser scans of casts of Lincoln’s ‘life mask’, with photogrammetric techniques, specialists in the USA have created a highly accurate-looking computer generated model of President Lincoln for a documentary entitled “Stealing Lincoln’s Body”. Using photographs, they have created highly detailed texture maps to make his face look as natural as possible. The documentary explores [...]
Lasers and Light
Lasers and Light from Wessex Archaeology on Vimeo. This is an animation that I put together at Wessex Archaeology for the Society of Antiquaries‘ Making History exhibition at Salisbury and South Wiltshire Museum. I posted some more information about the animation over at the Wessex Archaeology Computing Blog, so I won’t repeat myself here!
A Virtual Stonehenge Landscape
Over the past few months I’ve been hard at work producing an animation of the Environment Agency LIDAR survey of the Stonehenge World Heritage site. The resulting video is currently playing on an HD plasma screen in the “Making History: Antiquaries In Britain, 1707–2007” exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. Read more about the [...]
Simulating the light of the past
Some years ago, when I was doing my MSc in archaeological computing, I heard about a curious project led by Alan Chalmers, then at the University of Bristol, that aimed to digitally recreate accurate simulations of different light sources. These would then be used to “light” 3D models to show more accurately they may have [...]
Realtime Photorealistic 3D Environments
As computer hardware gets ever faster, and as 3D software gets ever more powerful, new opportunities always present themselves. Crucially, as the ‘average’ home computer reaches a certain stage (where they generally have a 3D accelerated graphics card and a broadband connection) using 3D to explore and interpret the past – interactively – is ever [...]
Arun Visualisation image featured by E-On Software
One of the stills I produced as part of the Arun Visualisation has been used by E-On Software to showcase their excellent EcoSystems Generation II instancing feature. Vue was used extensively for the animation, as well as 3ds Max, AutoCAD, XFrog, and numerous GIS and imaging packages. It’s one of my favourite images, and I [...]
Visualising the past
One of the 3D animations I’ve been working on at Wessex Archaeology is now available online with an introduction to the project. It’s been along time in the making, and like any archaeological reconstruction/visualisation, it’ll never be perfect. So click the movie above (hosted on the rather excellent blip.tv) and delve back in time 8000 [...]
Google Sketchup: Free 3D modelling tool
I’ve been using Sketchup for a while now (demo version), initially seeing it at the MacExpo in London last year. It’s a brilliant tool, taking (in my opinion) a whole new approach to 3D modelling. It couldn’t be easier to use. Sketchup introduced a tool to export models straight into Google Earth, and the rest [...]
