Our archaeology technician Lloyd Bosworth has been very busy creating the 3D models of the hoard containers. The creation of these models is a very time-consuming project from start to finish but Lloyd is making excellent progress and has managed to complete five models so far. In this post, we wanted to tell you a little bit more about the process behind the construction of these models.
As we’ve mentioned before, Lloyd has travelled to several museums with the rest of the team to carry out photogrammetry on the surviving containers. For those unfamiliar with the process, photogrammetry is a technique that uses 2D photographs to create a 3D digital model of an object.
Lloyd is assisted in his work by his trusty Lazy Susan (a turntable) on which the container is carefully placed. The turntable is incrementally rotated through 360 degrees with images taken at every step. To create a good 3D model, it is important that the images have an overlap of between 50-80% and the number of images needed depends on the overall shape, size, and complexity of the object. For the hoard containers, this has typically been between thirty to sixty images. The photographs are loaded into specialist software that is then used to process the images and create the final 3D model.
The photographs provide the high-resolution colour texture for the 3D models, so the lighting conditions are also very important. Lloyd uses a large light tent which allows him to ensure the object is well lit and to reduce any hard shadows.
Producing these models is an important aim of our project as they will be a useful interactive resource for museum education and display.