3 ms·

Concept of 2D scanning an essentially 3D artifact tangentially brought to mind the problem of tens of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets that are waiting to be

by Jun8 7y ago

Concept of 2D scanning an essentially 3D artifact tangentially brought to mind the problem of tens of thousands of cuneiform clay tablets that are waiting to be deciphered. One good way to do this would be to 3D scan them and share the scans among academic institutions but for some reason this is not done at scale, e.g. see this recent post: http://persiababylonia.org/2018/07/31/3d-scanning-clay-tablets/ http://persiababylonia.org/2018/07/31/3d-scanning-clay-table.... Cost is an issue but my guess it's not the only one. Building a cheap hand scanner by using a cheap 3D sensor, e.g. https://www.adafruit.com/product/3316 https://www.adafruit.com/product/3316 is perennially on my project todo list. Anybody else finds this interesting?

gioele 7y ago
For clay tablets 3D scanning is too imprecise and too expensive (in terms of labor, equipment and time). RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) [1,2] is a much better alternative to these "flattish" artifacts. All you need is a decent camera, a flashlight and a small piece of freely available software. The result is an extremely high-res 2.5D scan of the surface of the object. Here is a (thumbnail-sized) example of an RTI'd Greek wax seal: http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RTIgif_xs.gif http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RTIgif_x... (from [3,4]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping [2] http://culturalheritageimaging.org/Technologies/RTI/index.html http://culturalheritageimaging.org/Technologies/RTI/index.ht... [3] http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/2019/04/26/rti-dome-am-cceh-erster-testlauf-erfolgreich-absolviert/ http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/2019/04/26/rti-dome-am-cceh-erster-... [4] http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/RTIBlogpostFiles/web-image/ http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/RTIBlogpostFiles/web-image/
- kitd 7y ago
  That's ingenious. One of the "obvious when you think about it" solutions.

by Jun8 7y ago

gioele 7y ago

For clay tablets 3D scanning is too imprecise and too expensive (in terms of labor, equipment and time). RTI (Reflectance Transformation Imaging) [1,2] is a much better alternative to these "flattish" artifacts. All you need is a decent camera, a flashlight and a small piece of freely available software. The result is an extremely high-res 2.5D scan of the surface of the object. Here is a (thumbnail-sized) example of an RTI'd Greek wax seal: http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RTIgif_xs.gif http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/RTIgif_x... (from [3,4]). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polynomial_texture_mapping [2] http://culturalheritageimaging.org/Technologies/RTI/index.html http://culturalheritageimaging.org/Technologies/RTI/index.ht... [3] http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/2019/04/26/rti-dome-am-cceh-erster-testlauf-erfolgreich-absolviert/ http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/2019/04/26/rti-dome-am-cceh-erster-... [4] http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/RTIBlogpostFiles/web-image/ http://cceh.uni-koeln.de/RTIBlogpostFiles/web-image/

kitd 7y ago
That's ingenious. One of the "obvious when you think about it" solutions.