11 ms·

There’s Something Fishy About the Other Nefertiti

272 points by franzb 11y ago

dnautics 11y ago
Maybe they did both - start with a low res kinect model to seed the convergence of the photographic analysis algorithm.
- pavlov 11y ago
  Still, does it seem likely that the artists would have been able to capture good enough data covertly at the museum? They admitted that they "knew nothing about the device and that some hacker types had set up the hardware for them". Getting such a good scan with a Kinect + photogrammetry setup would definitely require a more experienced operator.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Problem is, it's under glass. Unless you use a polarizer you'll get a lot of false positives for points of correspondence. Photogrammetry would require a whole lot of very properly lit images as well. From a technical standpoint their story doesn't line up at all with my experiences with either photogrammetry or capturing 3d data with the Kinect. As Best I think they had somebody do a hand-sculpted 3d sculpt using z-brush, maybe nominally based on the photos and lot rez scan data.
Ono-Sendai 11y ago
I agree, it does seem suspicious. The other thing I noticed is that the top of the hat/headdress is scanned accurately, which would be difficult unless you held the scanner in an obvious manner above the statue.
- gr3yh47 11y ago
  the article addresses this directly as well > In order to get coverage of the top of the headdress, the scanner would have to be held high above the statue, and not at waist level as the video indicates.
Tunabrain 11y ago
The second version of the Kinect uses time-of-flight sensing rather than the projected grid of points, and is considerably more accurate. Whether or not this makes the scanning more plausible, I am not sure. However, some of the 3D models generated with the Kinect 2 [1] do seem to contain a decent amount of detail. [1] http://zugara.com/wp-content/uploads/Kinect-1-vs-Kinect-2-Visual-Comparison.jpg http://zugara.com/wp-content/uploads/Kinect-1-vs-Kinect-2-Vi...
- Tepix 11y ago
  I have a Kinect 2 and the scans still don't come close to sub-millimeter accuracy. There are some rumours that they scanned plaster cast instead: http://heise.de/-3117841 http://heise.de/-3117841
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Still a big issue with the artifact being behind glass. In a controlled environment where you can take all the time you need, I still don't think you could get a scan that's as good as the one released.
- joshvm 11y ago
  Except the device they showed was clearly a Kinect 1.
kriro 11y ago
Agree with the poster. We did some scanning experiments to do busts of ourselves with a 3d printer as a first test with various tools. It's pretty hard to scan a human and still get a lot of detail. Not sure how much time they had and if scanning a bust is easier (it's under glass though) but the quality seems too good at first glance.
- TrevorJ 11y ago
  Being under glass makes it a non-starter in my book. You could do it using polarizers potentially, but they didn't.
jbattle 11y ago
On the subject of ancient art, CBC radio did a interesting series on who should get to say where and how ancient art gets kept and displayed. It's a two-part series and covers a lot of ground ... http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-1-1.3106590 http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-1-1.... http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-2-1.3119029 http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-2-1....
sudhirj 11y ago
One possibility is that there were no 'hacker' types. The scan might have just been given to them by someone sympathetic to their cause, and the easiest way to avoid investigation while still getting press is to carry in an unplugged Kinect and claim to have made the scan yourself.
- syntheticnature 11y ago
  I'm surprised to see little thought along this line. I'd be more surprised if there weren't a number of sympathetic folks with access.
- mesozoic 11y ago
  I think this is really the Occam's razor answer.
- inanutshellus 11y ago
  FTA, they state this as "the prevailing theory", and that the scan file was stolen directly from the museum's servers or from the manufacturer of the gift-shop reproductions' servers.
  - 0xffff2 11y ago
    The article's claim isn't quite the same. It claims it's possible that "real hackers" broke into the museums servers and stole the data. It's a lot simpler to believe that an employee of the museum with access to the data simply stole the data they had access to in the course of their employment.
- samstave 11y ago
  Why would a museum not want to have art scanned? Especially antiquities. Whats the logic behind it?
  - shaftway 11y ago
    The museum already has a high-resolution scan. They sell 3d reproductions.
drzaiusapelord 11y ago
Interesting stuff. As a once kinect enthusiast I was completely blown away by the quality of this thing. Normally, the kinect is a pita to deal with, is very touchy, and gives a faily low quality/res return. I just assumed they were using some fancy image stabilization and some fuzzy logic/hand cleanup to make it not look terrible. Or that the Xbox One kinect was just much higher resolution than the original, but a quick google search tells me the difference is negligible. Hell, if the kinect could do resolutions at this level natively, everyone would buy one as it would exceed 3D laser scanners costing thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. The hacker theory is interesting, but I wonder if someone with access to this statue during off-hours performed this with a proper laser scanner and the kinect story is cover to make sure he doesn't get caught. Sounds like someone might be in trouble now. Of all the countries to have an intellectual freedom debate/trial, it seems that politically unstable Egypt would be one of the worst for any positive outcome here. Its all a shame. We should have good 3D scans of every museum item of note by now and available for free for the public. How can we sell this concept to the boards, trustees, curators, and bureaucrats who control these items? Wasn't there a big controversy when high-quality color film came out way back when about publishing photos of art pieces and museum pieces? Seems like we're destined to re-invent this conflict over and over as technology advances. edit: This bust is permanently housed in Germany, I just assumed it was on temporary loan. Thanks for the correction below.
- mcphage 11y ago
  > Of all the countries to have an intellectual freedom debate/trial, it seems that politically unstable Egypt would be one of the worst for any positive outcome here. Well, in this case, the original bust is in Germany, and it's Egypt that wants the copy (really, wants the original back, but). So in a case like this, (a) I don't think any trial would be in Egypt, but rather in Germany, and (b) if the trial were in Egypt, I don't think the court would rule against the scanners, who are merely trying to repatriate the object as best they can.
- anonymfus 11y ago
  >We should have good 3D scans of every museum item of note by now and available for free for the public. How can we sell this concept to the boards, trustees, curators, and bureaucrats who control these items? Why not convince legislators instead?
sly010 11y ago
This wouldn't be the first time artists taking credit to do one thing while actually doing something else. After all the truth is probably way too boring for it to be considered art.
- cmyr 11y ago
  This is a reality of conceptual art. The _art_, in this context, resides in the implicit criticism the artists are making about the ownership of antiquities. The actual objects/files/documentation involved is more akin to the artist's materials. Something that is still poorly understood in the broader world is that a huge proportion of contemporary art isn't about making things, but about exploring and expressing ideas.
ekianjo 11y ago
> stolen scan Erm, even if it's scanned, it's a scan of an object that is pretty much in public domain. Not sure the use of the word "stolen" is appropriate here (as usual) - it's more like they got access to it.
- Mithaldu 11y ago
  Copyright would apply to the scan, same as any photo you make of something is copyrighted to you.
  - Alex3917 11y ago
    > Copyright would apply to the scan Not if it's a slavish reproduction.
  - yig 11y ago
    In many jurisdictions, faithful reproductions are not copyrightable: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_photographs https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art...
    - consp 11y ago
      True, but it is if you have to actually create it yourself and if it costs considerable effort and is done with a new technique. As some people have already stated: The detail is much too high to be created as a self-created, new method, production (e.g. scanned with a kinect2 by walking around). And I also wonder what the effect of tempered glass is on the scan (as most glass will block near uv and ir, since they might want to keep the original in good condition. -- update to clarify
      - dredmorbius 11y ago
        Workfactor isn't a criterion of copyright (under US law). Authorship is. Composing, framing, and timing a shutter release is considered "authorship" so far as photography is concerned. Not sure a scan meant to be fully faithful to an original would be.
kordless 11y ago
> What do you think? Will we ever know? Of course we will know. If the data is from a scan the museum made, there exists a way to compare the two data sets and give a certainty one came from the other. That is the nature of entanglement, after all.
- frandroid 11y ago
  You mean of course we /could/ know. There's no certainty that even if the museum's scan was stolen, that they would publicly admit it.
  - kordless 11y ago
    If it's stolen and the museum decides to be public about it (again, if it's stolen), we would know. Math allows us to know this.
some1else 11y ago
Could it be a scan of a $39[1] or a $2,990[2] replica? 1: https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/nefertiti-small-sculpture.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/nefertiti-small-scul... 2: https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefertiti-bust-sculpture-identical-museum-reproduction.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefer...
- inanutshellus 11y ago
  They mention that as a possibility in the article.
- Ono-Sendai 11y ago
  Nope, both of those are different from the scanned data. I can upload some demonstration images if people are interested. Edit: render from artist's data, with crevice circled: https://www.dropbox.com/s/klu2yhupawg7bqf/right%20ear%20closeup_marked.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/klu2yhupawg7bqf/right%20ear%20clos... compare with right ear from first image from https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefertiti-bust-sculpture-identical-museum-reproduction.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefer... Regarding the first link, the smaller stone statue is completely different, note that the left ear is complete as opposed to the real thing.
  - notlisted 11y ago
    Isn't it more likely that they scanned one of these (in the comfort of their own home/studio)? http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=32781 http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=32781 (edit:ignore the scanning method outlined here, low resolution, focus on the source statue) In another article, a scanning professional mentioned a laser scan of that same bust was created in 2000/2001 http://3dprintingindustry.com/2016/02/26/3d-scanned-nefertiti-real-fake-or-real-fake/ http://3dprintingindustry.com/2016/02/26/3d-scanned-nefertit... PS The statue in link 1 does show the ear crevice. Crop from link [1] to save you the click: http://i.imgur.com/oUiAl24.png http://i.imgur.com/oUiAl24.png
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TrevorJ 11y ago
The long and short of it is this: if they got a scan of that detail from a Kinect, of an object under glass then they better release a SIGGRAPH white-paper because what they accomplished was better than the state of the art. Of course there's a much more likely explanation.
MiguelVieira 11y ago
I spent years working on algorithms for processing 3D scanner data, and the claim that you could get a scan of that resolution and quality - surreptitiously, through a glass enclosure, and with a Kinect - is absurd. Most likely it's a scan of a replica created under carefully controlled conditions, or they were able to acquire a scan created by the museum.
dekhn 11y ago
Most likely hypothesis to me is that they scanned the object, produced a low quality scan, then somebody rebuilt the scan using surface primitives from the low quality scan. The result is not accurate, but is very precise.
746F7475 11y ago
Power and laptop requirements are the easiest to solve here, she has a big trenchcoat. You can easily hide enough battery power to power kinect. And at the end of the day kinect just outputs signal so why can't you have something small like RPi or phone to take in the data and send it to a more powerful computer for processing.
- djrogers 11y ago
  >why can't you have something small like RPi or phone to take in the data Primarily because a Kinect isn't capable of producing the data in question
  - nitrogen 11y ago
    And an RPi (at least the first revision) USB isn't near fast enough for a Kinect. Other SBCs could work though, like a Beagle* or the guts of a SheevaPlug.
JustSomeNobody 11y ago
I got side tracked over the discussion of Germany "not being amused" by this. Wait, so this bust was made by Egyptians over 3000 years ago and the Germans are not happy someone made a scan of it!? It's almost disgusting that anyone can lay claim to this work of art! It should "belong" to ALL of us at this point.
- inanutshellus 11y ago
  Wouldn't it be fantastic to be sued for selling a Nefertiti bust replica for, say, copyright or trademark infringement? rm -rf /publicdomain
- neves 11y ago
  Ha! Now you want to close all the museums of the world? Louvre, Vatican, British Museum all of them is filled of stolen pieces. What kind of subversive are you?
  - riffraff 11y ago
    OT, but do the vatican museums have "stolen art"? It's been decades since I went, but I seem to recall mostly stuff made explicitly for (various incarnations of) The Church. There is stolen stuff appropriated and variously recycled in many cathedrals/chapels/basilicas, I just don't remember it in the vatican.
    - neves 11y ago
      http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MEZ/MEZ_Main.html http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MEZ/MEZ_Main.html
  - JustSomeNobody 11y ago
    No. That wouldn't have to happen.
- sageikosa 11y ago
  It wasn't even known about until about 100 years ago. It's not like it's a great treasure admired throughout the ages; more of a pop-culture curiosity from the past century that was created millennia before.
MrQuincle 11y ago
It's a great stunt if someone at the museum "leaked" this. If there is a person like that working there, his/her people skills are beyond believable/demagogic... Makes me think of the book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back
ablanton 11y ago
there is a lot of press around this work but seems derivative of material speculation ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6e-kEkur0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6e-kEkur0
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neves 11y ago
Wow! The museum sells the printed statue of Nefertiti (a replica) for 9.000,00 Euros! What a bargain for something stolen from Egypt.
derefr 11y ago
Re: everyone saying the Kinect can't scan that well—remember this paper (http://news.mit.edu/2015/algorithms-boost-3-d-imaging-resolution-1000-times-1201 http://news.mit.edu/2015/algorithms-boost-3-d-imaging-resolu...) posted on HN a few months back? That research was done by hacking a Kinect. From the news article: > The researchers’ experimental setup consisted of a Microsoft Kinect — which gauges depth using reflection time — with an ordinary polarizing photographic lens placed in front of its camera. In each experiment, the researchers took three photos of an object, rotating the polarizing filter each time, and their algorithms compared the light intensities of the resulting images. > On its own, at a distance of several meters, the Kinect can resolve physical features as small as a centimeter or so across. But with the addition of the polarization information, the researchers’ system could resolve features in the range of tens of micrometers, or one-thousandth the size. Not a hard hack to accomplish! It's just a piece of plastic, and then a compressed sensing algorithm (which you can run at your leisure on your scan data after leaving the building) to merge the UV maps. And it doesn't even require a thousand scans or anything—just three! ETA: and the 2015 paper isn't even novel. Here's a 2014 paper (PDF: http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5372&context=eispapers http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5372&contex...) on using multipolarized compressive sensing to enhance the resolution on through-wall radar. (I assume to target drone strikes or something.) This technique has been in the wild for a while. I assume archivists—those who would most benefit—are well-aware of it.
- rsp1984 11y ago
  No, it would require three scans -- per viewpoint. But it would require a lot more viewpoints to cover the whole surface area of the object. Also if you look closely at the video footage the capturers use an Xbox 360 Kinect, not an Xbox One Kinect (which is used in the paper you cite) which have entirely different working principles. One other thing that's very fishy: The Xbox 360 Kinect has an infrared projector that's very visible when running. What the activists show in their video is definitely a Kinect that's not running. Finally, keep in mind the paper you quoted is basically lab results. To get it to a level of reliability so it would work as you described a lot more research will have to be done.
ori_b 11y ago
They mention relatively high quality gift shop reproductions. It seems to me like scanning those is another possible explanation.
huuu 11y ago
Of course the Kinect does not offer such precision. But what about other pro hand held scanner? HandySCAN, Polhemus, Artec, all 3D scanner brands with a very good resolution. But then again it seems very unlikely that they took the time to scan an object without being noticed.
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eggy 11y ago
I too go for access to the museum's 3D scan data somehow. That being said, here are some thoughts on the Kinect 1 being used to produce a scan given the display glass, the power requirements, and resolution of the Kinect1. The Kinect1's power requirement goes way down once you cut the motor's power out. Second, perhaps the Kinect was used with the intention of helping the photogrammetry out, by giving precise distances to the glass for each shot taken by the Kinect1, and then secondary photos from cell phones could be correlated back at home. I doubt the use of a polarizing filter, since it would not lend much to this method. In addition, you can double the resolution of the Kinect1 by not streaming at a high rate. I believe from 640x480 VGA to 1280x1024 at a lower frame rate. If the display glass were not there, they could get at best 1.3mm per pixel at those distances. But it was there, so I vote for a file provided to them. I am just presenting the technical possibility of augmenting the Kinect1 with some hacks and cell phone photos to get close. I do think in any case mesh cleanup would allow the 1.3mm per pixel to be sub-surfaced to 0.01mm vs. 1.3mm stated above without any major infidelity to the original sans micro-scratches and pores on the original surface. I worked for 2 years using ultrasound, photos and video to digitize objects before the Kinect1 appeared, so I know what can be done to achieve reproducibility of a scanned object. NASA had researched 'shape from shading' algorithms in the 70s and 80s to try and get more data from their mono B&W satellite imagery. I had implemented these in my own products, and no, they are not simple height maps based on a greyscale image. They take into account the light source's position to extrapolate relief data on monotonous toned objects like asteroids and unpainted sculptures.

272 points by franzb 11y ago

dnautics 11y ago

Maybe they did both - start with a low res kinect model to seed the convergence of the photographic analysis algorithm.

pavlov 11y ago
Still, does it seem likely that the artists would have been able to capture good enough data covertly at the museum? They admitted that they "knew nothing about the device and that some hacker types had set up the hardware for them". Getting such a good scan with a Kinect + photogrammetry setup would definitely require a more experienced operator.
TrevorJ 11y ago
Problem is, it's under glass. Unless you use a polarizer you'll get a lot of false positives for points of correspondence. Photogrammetry would require a whole lot of very properly lit images as well. From a technical standpoint their story doesn't line up at all with my experiences with either photogrammetry or capturing 3d data with the Kinect. As Best I think they had somebody do a hand-sculpted 3d sculpt using z-brush, maybe nominally based on the photos and lot rez scan data.

Ono-Sendai 11y ago

I agree, it does seem suspicious. The other thing I noticed is that the top of the hat/headdress is scanned accurately, which would be difficult unless you held the scanner in an obvious manner above the statue.

gr3yh47 11y ago
the article addresses this directly as well > In order to get coverage of the top of the headdress, the scanner would have to be held high above the statue, and not at waist level as the video indicates.

Tunabrain 11y ago

The second version of the Kinect uses time-of-flight sensing rather than the projected grid of points, and is considerably more accurate. Whether or not this makes the scanning more plausible, I am not sure. However, some of the 3D models generated with the Kinect 2 [1] do seem to contain a decent amount of detail. [1] http://zugara.com/wp-content/uploads/Kinect-1-vs-Kinect-2-Visual-Comparison.jpg http://zugara.com/wp-content/uploads/Kinect-1-vs-Kinect-2-Vi...

Tepix 11y ago
I have a Kinect 2 and the scans still don't come close to sub-millimeter accuracy. There are some rumours that they scanned plaster cast instead: http://heise.de/-3117841 http://heise.de/-3117841
TrevorJ 11y ago
Still a big issue with the artifact being behind glass. In a controlled environment where you can take all the time you need, I still don't think you could get a scan that's as good as the one released.
joshvm 11y ago
Except the device they showed was clearly a Kinect 1.

kriro 11y ago

Agree with the poster. We did some scanning experiments to do busts of ourselves with a 3d printer as a first test with various tools. It's pretty hard to scan a human and still get a lot of detail. Not sure how much time they had and if scanning a bust is easier (it's under glass though) but the quality seems too good at first glance.

TrevorJ 11y ago
Being under glass makes it a non-starter in my book. You could do it using polarizers potentially, but they didn't.

jbattle 11y ago

On the subject of ancient art, CBC radio did a interesting series on who should get to say where and how ancient art gets kept and displayed. It's a two-part series and covers a lot of ground ... http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-1-1.3106590 http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-1-1.... http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-2-1.3119029 http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/who-owns-ancient-art-part-2-1....

sudhirj 11y ago

One possibility is that there were no 'hacker' types. The scan might have just been given to them by someone sympathetic to their cause, and the easiest way to avoid investigation while still getting press is to carry in an unplugged Kinect and claim to have made the scan yourself.

syntheticnature 11y ago
I'm surprised to see little thought along this line. I'd be more surprised if there weren't a number of sympathetic folks with access.
mesozoic 11y ago
I think this is really the Occam's razor answer.
inanutshellus 11y ago
FTA, they state this as "the prevailing theory", and that the scan file was stolen directly from the museum's servers or from the manufacturer of the gift-shop reproductions' servers.
- 0xffff2 11y ago
  The article's claim isn't quite the same. It claims it's possible that "real hackers" broke into the museums servers and stole the data. It's a lot simpler to believe that an employee of the museum with access to the data simply stole the data they had access to in the course of their employment.
samstave 11y ago
Why would a museum not want to have art scanned? Especially antiquities. Whats the logic behind it?
- shaftway 11y ago
  The museum already has a high-resolution scan. They sell 3d reproductions.

drzaiusapelord 11y ago

Interesting stuff. As a once kinect enthusiast I was completely blown away by the quality of this thing. Normally, the kinect is a pita to deal with, is very touchy, and gives a faily low quality/res return. I just assumed they were using some fancy image stabilization and some fuzzy logic/hand cleanup to make it not look terrible. Or that the Xbox One kinect was just much higher resolution than the original, but a quick google search tells me the difference is negligible. Hell, if the kinect could do resolutions at this level natively, everyone would buy one as it would exceed 3D laser scanners costing thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars. The hacker theory is interesting, but I wonder if someone with access to this statue during off-hours performed this with a proper laser scanner and the kinect story is cover to make sure he doesn't get caught. Sounds like someone might be in trouble now. Of all the countries to have an intellectual freedom debate/trial, it seems that politically unstable Egypt would be one of the worst for any positive outcome here. Its all a shame. We should have good 3D scans of every museum item of note by now and available for free for the public. How can we sell this concept to the boards, trustees, curators, and bureaucrats who control these items? Wasn't there a big controversy when high-quality color film came out way back when about publishing photos of art pieces and museum pieces? Seems like we're destined to re-invent this conflict over and over as technology advances. edit: This bust is permanently housed in Germany, I just assumed it was on temporary loan. Thanks for the correction below.

mcphage 11y ago
> Of all the countries to have an intellectual freedom debate/trial, it seems that politically unstable Egypt would be one of the worst for any positive outcome here. Well, in this case, the original bust is in Germany, and it's Egypt that wants the copy (really, wants the original back, but). So in a case like this, (a) I don't think any trial would be in Egypt, but rather in Germany, and (b) if the trial were in Egypt, I don't think the court would rule against the scanners, who are merely trying to repatriate the object as best they can.
anonymfus 11y ago
>We should have good 3D scans of every museum item of note by now and available for free for the public. How can we sell this concept to the boards, trustees, curators, and bureaucrats who control these items? Why not convince legislators instead?

sly010 11y ago

This wouldn't be the first time artists taking credit to do one thing while actually doing something else. After all the truth is probably way too boring for it to be considered art.

cmyr 11y ago
This is a reality of conceptual art. The _art_, in this context, resides in the implicit criticism the artists are making about the ownership of antiquities. The actual objects/files/documentation involved is more akin to the artist's materials. Something that is still poorly understood in the broader world is that a huge proportion of contemporary art isn't about making things, but about exploring and expressing ideas.

ekianjo 11y ago

> stolen scan Erm, even if it's scanned, it's a scan of an object that is pretty much in public domain. Not sure the use of the word "stolen" is appropriate here (as usual) - it's more like they got access to it.

Mithaldu 11y ago
Copyright would apply to the scan, same as any photo you make of something is copyrighted to you.
- Alex3917 11y ago
  > Copyright would apply to the scan Not if it's a slavish reproduction.
- yig 11y ago
  In many jurisdictions, faithful reproductions are not copyrightable: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art_photographs https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Reuse_of_PD-Art...
  - consp 11y ago
    True, but it is if you have to actually create it yourself and if it costs considerable effort and is done with a new technique. As some people have already stated: The detail is much too high to be created as a self-created, new method, production (e.g. scanned with a kinect2 by walking around). And I also wonder what the effect of tempered glass is on the scan (as most glass will block near uv and ir, since they might want to keep the original in good condition. -- update to clarify
    - dredmorbius 11y ago
      Workfactor isn't a criterion of copyright (under US law). Authorship is. Composing, framing, and timing a shutter release is considered "authorship" so far as photography is concerned. Not sure a scan meant to be fully faithful to an original would be.

kordless 11y ago

> What do you think? Will we ever know? Of course we will know. If the data is from a scan the museum made, there exists a way to compare the two data sets and give a certainty one came from the other. That is the nature of entanglement, after all.

frandroid 11y ago
You mean of course we /could/ know. There's no certainty that even if the museum's scan was stolen, that they would publicly admit it.
- kordless 11y ago
  If it's stolen and the museum decides to be public about it (again, if it's stolen), we would know. Math allows us to know this.

some1else 11y ago

Could it be a scan of a $39[1] or a $2,990[2] replica? 1: https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/nefertiti-small-sculpture.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/nefertiti-small-scul... 2: https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefertiti-bust-sculpture-identical-museum-reproduction.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefer...

inanutshellus 11y ago
They mention that as a possibility in the article.
Ono-Sendai 11y ago
Nope, both of those are different from the scanned data. I can upload some demonstration images if people are interested. Edit: render from artist's data, with crevice circled: https://www.dropbox.com/s/klu2yhupawg7bqf/right%20ear%20closeup_marked.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/klu2yhupawg7bqf/right%20ear%20clos... compare with right ear from first image from https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefertiti-bust-sculpture-identical-museum-reproduction.html https://www.ancientsculpturegallery.com/egyptian-queen-nefer... Regarding the first link, the smaller stone statue is completely different, note that the left ear is complete as opposed to the real thing.
- notlisted 11y ago
  Isn't it more likely that they scanned one of these (in the comfort of their own home/studio)? http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=32781 http://forum.david-3d.com/viewtopic.php?p=32781 (edit:ignore the scanning method outlined here, low resolution, focus on the source statue) In another article, a scanning professional mentioned a laser scan of that same bust was created in 2000/2001 http://3dprintingindustry.com/2016/02/26/3d-scanned-nefertiti-real-fake-or-real-fake/ http://3dprintingindustry.com/2016/02/26/3d-scanned-nefertit... PS The statue in link 1 does show the ear crevice. Crop from link [1] to save you the click: http://i.imgur.com/oUiAl24.png http://i.imgur.com/oUiAl24.png
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TrevorJ 11y ago

The long and short of it is this: if they got a scan of that detail from a Kinect, of an object under glass then they better release a SIGGRAPH white-paper because what they accomplished was better than the state of the art. Of course there's a much more likely explanation.

MiguelVieira 11y ago

I spent years working on algorithms for processing 3D scanner data, and the claim that you could get a scan of that resolution and quality - surreptitiously, through a glass enclosure, and with a Kinect - is absurd. Most likely it's a scan of a replica created under carefully controlled conditions, or they were able to acquire a scan created by the museum.

dekhn 11y ago

Most likely hypothesis to me is that they scanned the object, produced a low quality scan, then somebody rebuilt the scan using surface primitives from the low quality scan. The result is not accurate, but is very precise.

746F7475 11y ago

Power and laptop requirements are the easiest to solve here, she has a big trenchcoat. You can easily hide enough battery power to power kinect. And at the end of the day kinect just outputs signal so why can't you have something small like RPi or phone to take in the data and send it to a more powerful computer for processing.

djrogers 11y ago
>why can't you have something small like RPi or phone to take in the data Primarily because a Kinect isn't capable of producing the data in question
- nitrogen 11y ago
  And an RPi (at least the first revision) USB isn't near fast enough for a Kinect. Other SBCs could work though, like a Beagle* or the guts of a SheevaPlug.

JustSomeNobody 11y ago

I got side tracked over the discussion of Germany "not being amused" by this. Wait, so this bust was made by Egyptians over 3000 years ago and the Germans are not happy someone made a scan of it!? It's almost disgusting that anyone can lay claim to this work of art! It should "belong" to ALL of us at this point.

inanutshellus 11y ago
Wouldn't it be fantastic to be sued for selling a Nefertiti bust replica for, say, copyright or trademark infringement? rm -rf /publicdomain
neves 11y ago
Ha! Now you want to close all the museums of the world? Louvre, Vatican, British Museum all of them is filled of stolen pieces. What kind of subversive are you?
- riffraff 11y ago
  OT, but do the vatican museums have "stolen art"? It's been decades since I went, but I seem to recall mostly stuff made explicitly for (various incarnations of) The Church. There is stolen stuff appropriated and variously recycled in many cathedrals/chapels/basilicas, I just don't remember it in the vatican.
  - neves 11y ago
    http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MEZ/MEZ_Main.html http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/MEZ/MEZ_Main.html
- JustSomeNobody 11y ago
  No. That wouldn't have to happen.
sageikosa 11y ago
It wasn't even known about until about 100 years ago. It's not like it's a great treasure admired throughout the ages; more of a pop-culture curiosity from the past century that was created millennia before.

MrQuincle 11y ago

It's a great stunt if someone at the museum "leaked" this. If there is a person like that working there, his/her people skills are beyond believable/demagogic... Makes me think of the book https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Look_Who%27s_Back

ablanton 11y ago

there is a lot of press around this work but seems derivative of material speculation ISIS: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6e-kEkur0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NL6e-kEkur0

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neves 11y ago

Wow! The museum sells the printed statue of Nefertiti (a replica) for 9.000,00 Euros! What a bargain for something stolen from Egypt.

derefr 11y ago

Re: everyone saying the Kinect can't scan that well—remember this paper (http://news.mit.edu/2015/algorithms-boost-3-d-imaging-resolution-1000-times-1201 http://news.mit.edu/2015/algorithms-boost-3-d-imaging-resolu...) posted on HN a few months back? That research was done by hacking a Kinect. From the news article: > The researchers’ experimental setup consisted of a Microsoft Kinect — which gauges depth using reflection time — with an ordinary polarizing photographic lens placed in front of its camera. In each experiment, the researchers took three photos of an object, rotating the polarizing filter each time, and their algorithms compared the light intensities of the resulting images. > On its own, at a distance of several meters, the Kinect can resolve physical features as small as a centimeter or so across. But with the addition of the polarization information, the researchers’ system could resolve features in the range of tens of micrometers, or one-thousandth the size. Not a hard hack to accomplish! It's just a piece of plastic, and then a compressed sensing algorithm (which you can run at your leisure on your scan data after leaving the building) to merge the UV maps. And it doesn't even require a thousand scans or anything—just three! ETA: and the 2015 paper isn't even novel. Here's a 2014 paper (PDF: http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5372&context=eispapers http://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5372&contex...) on using multipolarized compressive sensing to enhance the resolution on through-wall radar. (I assume to target drone strikes or something.) This technique has been in the wild for a while. I assume archivists—those who would most benefit—are well-aware of it.

rsp1984 11y ago
No, it would require three scans -- per viewpoint. But it would require a lot more viewpoints to cover the whole surface area of the object. Also if you look closely at the video footage the capturers use an Xbox 360 Kinect, not an Xbox One Kinect (which is used in the paper you cite) which have entirely different working principles. One other thing that's very fishy: The Xbox 360 Kinect has an infrared projector that's very visible when running. What the activists show in their video is definitely a Kinect that's not running. Finally, keep in mind the paper you quoted is basically lab results. To get it to a level of reliability so it would work as you described a lot more research will have to be done.

ori_b 11y ago

They mention relatively high quality gift shop reproductions. It seems to me like scanning those is another possible explanation.

huuu 11y ago

Of course the Kinect does not offer such precision. But what about other pro hand held scanner? HandySCAN, Polhemus, Artec, all 3D scanner brands with a very good resolution. But then again it seems very unlikely that they took the time to scan an object without being noticed.

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eggy 11y ago

I too go for access to the museum's 3D scan data somehow. That being said, here are some thoughts on the Kinect 1 being used to produce a scan given the display glass, the power requirements, and resolution of the Kinect1. The Kinect1's power requirement goes way down once you cut the motor's power out. Second, perhaps the Kinect was used with the intention of helping the photogrammetry out, by giving precise distances to the glass for each shot taken by the Kinect1, and then secondary photos from cell phones could be correlated back at home. I doubt the use of a polarizing filter, since it would not lend much to this method. In addition, you can double the resolution of the Kinect1 by not streaming at a high rate. I believe from 640x480 VGA to 1280x1024 at a lower frame rate. If the display glass were not there, they could get at best 1.3mm per pixel at those distances. But it was there, so I vote for a file provided to them. I am just presenting the technical possibility of augmenting the Kinect1 with some hacks and cell phone photos to get close. I do think in any case mesh cleanup would allow the 1.3mm per pixel to be sub-surfaced to 0.01mm vs. 1.3mm stated above without any major infidelity to the original sans micro-scratches and pores on the original surface. I worked for 2 years using ultrasound, photos and video to digitize objects before the Kinect1 appeared, so I know what can be done to achieve reproducibility of a scanned object. NASA had researched 'shape from shading' algorithms in the 70s and 80s to try and get more data from their mono B&W satellite imagery. I had implemented these in my own products, and no, they are not simple height maps based on a greyscale image. They take into account the light source's position to extrapolate relief data on monotonous toned objects like asteroids and unpainted sculptures.