Researchers from the University of Southampton, the University of Warwick, and the Herculaneum Conservation Project are using the latest imaging techniques to digitally restore a 2,000-year-old Roman statue. They are using Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM) to determine the texture and color of the painted surfaces of the statue, which was found in the ruins of town of Herculaneum in 2006 and is believed to depict an Amazon warrior. The team has also developed a rig, camera structure, and custom software that allows for the fast acquisition of PTM data. The scanning process has given the team a series of images, and a single PTM file has been produced using the PTM fitter software. The researchers can move a virtual light source across the virtual scene, and also vary lighting intensity, add more lights, derive surface models, and perform edge detection and other image processing tasks. “Our work at Southampton bridges the gap between computing and archaeology in bringing the best that colleagues in engineering, electronics, and computer science have to offer to unique artifacts from our past,” says Graeme Earl of the university’s Archaeological Computing Research Group.
For more information please visit: http://www.cpccci.com
Tags: Digital
This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 7th, 2009 at 11:02 pm and is filed under Computer Science and Engineering News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.