Bek Hart
Hello, I am Bek. I volunteer at Bradford Visualisation and have helped a bit in this project.
Cast your mind back to this blog post by Eddy (http://visualisingheritage.org/blog/2016/11/11/your-heritage-needs-you/), when he made a model of the war memorial. The technique he used is called photogrammetry. As you may already know a large part of this project is asking for your photos. We need them to use so that we can do photogrammetry on heritage at risk.
Fig. 1: 3D-model of Bradford War memorial
I enjoy doing photogrammetry and so while on holiday I couldn’t resist doing some. While on Smiths Beach, Phillip Island (Australia) I did the archaeologists’ version of sandcastle building and built a sand-hillfort! I then took multiple photographs with the intention to run them through the photogrammetry software to see if it would be possible to create a 3D sandcastle! So on my return I did just that and here is the result! (https://sketchfab.com/models/b7acd6a9bc2a4249b59356341446b7e2)
Fig. 2: Bek’s sandcastle hillfort
You see, photogrammetry can be used for many different things on many different objects. It can be used on buildings such as the Temple of Bel (http://www.visualisingheritage.org/cwa.php) to a small object such as tie (https://sketchfab.com/models/4d0266d32ad34da38a4fe3ca9b1d94f1).
Fig. 3: Point cloud temple of bel with map underlay
Fig. 4: Sir John Harvey-Jones’ Tie
My sandcastle/hillfort was just a bit of fun but it can show just what can be done with photogrammetry. It also shows the range of materials it can be used on. In this instance it was sand and I was not sure if it would work. There are various things that can interfere with how well a model turns out when using photogrammetry. Is it too symmetrical, shiny or lacking in features that the software can match? Often the more photos of an object used the better the model, as the software has more chance of finding matches (or overlaps) in the images. This is why we are asking for people’s holiday photos to be donated – the more photos the better. Maybe the photo of that camel has a bit of the building in the background – it might be that bit of building that we need more pictures of (That and I’d love us to make a 3D camel!) so that we can get enough data to reconstruct that corner.
The Curious Travellers project is very grateful for any images you choose to share with us, and hope the contribution we are making to preserving heritage is worthy of them: get involved
A note from the Curious Travellers project:
Bek is a final year student who has been volunteering in Bradford Visualisation during a work placement in her third-year, and over the this summer and autumn. Amongst other work, she has been scanning photos, using structured-light scanning to digitise and model artefacts, and producing 3D models via photogrammetry. Bek has been a fantastic and invaluable addition to the project. We have really enjoyed having her work with us and are very grateful for all the hard work she has done.