Blog Post 5: Photogrammetry, Questions, and Software Problems

Margie
Thu, 13 Oct 2022 19:09:48 +0000
Week 5, 3D modeling, art, photo recap, reflection

This week we have begun our process of 3D modeling a piece of Carleton’s museum collection. While we chose mostly randomly, my group ended up with a ceramic well. We don’t know much about it yet, but modeling it has already helped me learn quite a bit about it.

The well!

Our process for modeling has so far looked like:

1. Taking many, many high quality photos of our object. Specifically avoiding shadows, and getting consistent and overlapping photos.

2. Uploading our photos to Photo Recap, which took quite some time since we had taken so many photos.

3. Having Photo Recap create a model and then cleaning it up.

So far I have been unable to create a model on my computer, since it is a dinosaur. That has been the most frustrating part of this process. All the software downloads and getting it to correctly upload and read photos has been quite frustrating. But luckily one of my group members has been successful, so we at least have one model to look at so far!

Modeling has been a fun experience to help look at historical objects in a different light. It especially made me look at and appreciate features I might not have otherwise looked at. The best example is that on the Well there was a pottery shard that seemed a bit out of place. If I had been a casual viewer I maybe would not have noticed this shard. But when I got to photographing this part, I wanted to make sure I got that part in detail so I could be reflected well in our model.

The shard

The well also had lots of other intricacies that I maybe wouldn’t have noticed if I had just been viewing. For example there is a little bucket on the side of the well. Photographing it made me pay more attention to it, but it also raised some questions. These questions were especially about the making and purpose of these details. How did they get such an intricate detail here? Why would the makers include such and intricate detail? And many other questions.

Little pot

Overall, the processing of transferring the photos to Photo Recap was quite frustrating. But the process of photographing the well told me more things about it that I might not have known before and raised more questions that could be fun to look into!