Category: photogrammetry

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3D exhibition museum photogrammetry

New work: Photogrammetry for the new Medicine Galleries at the Science Museum!

The Science Museum recently released their Explore Museum Objects in 3D online resource and 20 new 3D models on Sketchfab to coincide with the opening of their new Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries.

In 2018, the museum approached us about the idea of scanning a set of objects for the upcoming galleries and we gladly accepted. Using photogrammetry we made a number of the 3D models in the final set. So let’s talk a little about the project and the awesome objects we were tasked with scanning!

The new Medicine Galleries include three thousand objects and showcase some truly amazing medical items. They’re all about ‘exploring our relationship with medicine and health through more than 500 years of history’ and include the world’s first MRI scanner and Alexander Fleming’s penicillin mould!

The process

We’ve created over 20 commissions now, and many of them have included 3D digitisation as a service. This was a little different because the resulting models were to be viewed digitally (and not printed), but we still used the same photogrammetry techniques.

We worked closely with Digital Learning Producers Emilia McKenzie and Josh Blair, whittling down a list of possible objects from the Medicine collection based on their ‘scan-ability’. We looked at material, reflectivity, and size while Josh and Emilia came at it from strength of curriculum links.

Seeing images of the objects in advance really helps with that initial selection, but seeing an object in the flesh is even better, so it was useful to arrange a site visit at Blythe House to preview the objects. There are two major steps to making 3D models: Photogrammetric capture, and making the digital models.

Photogrammetric capture

Inside the treasure trove that is Blythe House where we did the image capture. The parquet flooring proved surprisingly helpful for image alignment!

We set our gear up in a corner of the stores and did image capture over two weeks, averaging about 3 objects per day. The chosen objects varied massively in size and complexity from a large wooden 18th century barber-surgeon’s chair, to a box of matches, to a cast iron baby-weighing scale.

It was great to get up close with the objects and be surrounded by so many other wondrous artefacts in the Blythe House stores. We love going behind the scenes at different museums, in fact it’s a large part of why we started the company in the first place, so visiting was a real treat for us!

Charlie capturing photos of the beautiful Leeches jar, fortunately it’s not so beautiful content has long since been removed!

Making the digital models

Having captured high-res images of all the artefacts we began the job of processing them into models using Agisoft’s Photoscan (now Metashape). A couple of the objects proved challenging owing to their complexity. Manufactured objects are usually more complicated then sculptural/hand-made things, so our models of sculptures tend to be quite forgiving as they’re one mass, whereas machine-made objects like the baby weighing scales or carbolic sprayer are not.

With their uniform metallic parts like nuts and bolts and pressed sheet metal failing to mesh well, areas of the models looked a bit “crunchy”. Accuracy was key for these objects as the detail helped explain their function.

  • Image Capture
  • Agisoft Mesh
  • Remodelling
  • Final retextured model

To solve this we recreated the object topology and remodelled several of the objects using the exported meshes of the original scans, and the photos as additional reference. After remodelling the objects to a suitably detailed level we could then import those to Metashape again for retexturing. The result is a neat model that represented the original and load quickly online.

The remodelled steam sprayer which was later animated by artist Sophie Dixon

The new 3D models

We produced 13 models which you can see on the museum’s Sketchfab page. Our favourites include

The museum’s Sketchfab page. All the models are downloadable under a CC Attribution-NonCommercial license.

Object-based learning

The Science Museum has developed tons of online classroom resources for teachers and educators as part of the project, using 3D models as the base. It’s a great way to introduce object-based learning into the classroom and to help fuel a student’s curiosity. The resources can be browsed through different fields including key stage, curriculum links, and subject.

Emilia and Josh also worked on providing useful supporting material as well such as scale (which is often overlooked with 3D models). There are also loads of discussion prompt questions like is it OK to exploit or harm animals to make humans better?

The Science Museum’s new learning resource site.

At Museum in a Box we’re obviously massive advocates for object-based learning! Mostly because objects are a great way to prompt questions, stimulate discussion and improve people’s critical thinking. What’s more, having a digital model or 3D print means you can move the object around and view it from all angles, something that’s just not possible with objects in a gallery setting.

Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries

We’re proud to have made a small contribution to the brand new Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries space at the Science Museum. It’s brilliant!

We were delighted to work on this digitisation project and play a part in growing the museum’s offering of digital resources. The Education team were great to work with and the outcome is a really well rounded set of resources that encapsulate the spirit of the new galleries perfectly!

We can provide 3D digitisation through our commissions so if you’re considering making a collection through Museum in a Box but don’t have the ability to do 3D in-house, do get in touch.

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commission education photogrammetry

New Commission: The Scout Association!

We’re chuffed to share the work from our latest commission with The Scouts! In this post, we’ll share not only the brilliant collections we produced together but also talk a little about the steps involved in the commissioning process.

The finish scouts collections, including two sets of postcards, a replica 'Point-It-Out' book, a 3D print of a ARP warden's helmet and a 3D printed replica of a wooden hand-carved logbook.
The two finished collections: Home Front, and Moving Collections. The commission included postcards, a replica ‘Point-It-Out’ book, a 3D print of a ARP warden’s helmet and a 3D printed replica of a wooden hand-carved logbook.

In 2018, The Scouts Association received a National Lottery Heritage Fund grant to run a project, ‘Moving Connections: Scouting and Displaced People’. It centred on increasing awareness of refugees and migration and developing young people’s empathy skills, using the Scouts refugee and displaced person collection as a springboard.

The project included running workshops integrating objects, stories, creative writing and art to help children explore the topic of refugees and displaced people. These workshops were run in schools and in collaboration with author Jane Ray and charity EmpathyLab and proved a great success.

Caroline Hamson with pupils exploring items from the heritage collection during one of the workshops

Following the workshops, the Scouts’ Heritage Collections Officer, Caroline Hamson, approached us with the idea of commissioning collections that can be borrowed by Scout groups, allowing them to run a condensed version of the workshops. The Box could act as the perfect way to facilitate these outreach workshops, and we couldn’t wait to get started!

Caroline signs the guestbook

Following our initial communications, Caroline visited our Hoxton HQ to try out a Box, explore some existing collections and — with neither of us having any Scouting experience — tell us a little more about The Scout Association and its archive. We learned about all the different work Scouts did on the Home Front during the war as well as The Scout International Relief Service and discussed a little about the kinds of objects in the collection.

Following this meeting we kicked off the commission and arranged a visit for George and Charlie to visit the home of Scouting, the beautiful Gilwell Park.

Visit and Object Selection

It’s certainly one of our favourite aspects of a commission to visit the site of the commissioner and rummage about in the collection with the education or curatorial teams to figure out a good story for the collection.

  • Khaki green neckerchief, with embroidered Japanese symbol at point, handmade and worn by a Rover Scout in Changi Prisoner of War Camp, Singapore, c.1940.
  • “Point It Out” booklet, picture book featuring images for different scenarios, such as sport, health.

We ultimately decided to create two collections: ‘On the Home Front‘ which tells of what life was like during wartime and how Scouts contributed to the war effort at home, and ‘Moving Connections: The Scout International Relief Service‘ which documents the work of Scouts in Europe after the war had ended.

3D Digitisation

Each collection we made includes one 3D print and eight or nine postcards. As with most collections, much of the Scouts’ archival materials are 2D: photos, documents. but along with Caroline we were able to pick out two really nice objects that we knew would digitise well. The first was an ARP (Air Raid Precautions) warden’s helmet: a great symbol of the roles played during the war and was no doubt a comforting sight to see during a wartime bombing raid.

Charlie doing photogrammetry image capture of the ARP warden’s helmet at Gilwell Park near London

The second 3D object from the The Scout International Relief Service collection was a Prisoner of War camp logbook. This is a particularly special object because it belonged to scouts who were interned at Miranda de Ebro, a Spanish concentration camp. The book is made up of three intricately carved wooden panels.

Left: Hand-carved logbook from Camp Miranda in Spain. Right: 3D printed replica used to hold the collection.

Replica ‘Point It Out’ Book

As well as the postcards and 3D prints we wanted to create a replica of the ‘Point It Out’ book. Scouts would have used this book a means of communicating as they worked throughout post-way Europe; it features pages and pages of beautifully illustrated images that the user could point at in order to overcome any language barriers they may come up against.

Replica Point It Out booklet given to Scouts in Europe

We worked with printmaker Takako Copeland (who made the beautiful container for our Bata box back in May) to create the replica of the book. Each page was scanned-in, cleaned up and printed out before being wrapped in a nice thick cover featuring all of the original artwork. The book also has one of our metal stickers on it so it can be booped along with the other items in the collections.

The finished article…

The collections have already been used at an event, the Gilwell Reunion at Gilwell Park, and we’ve already had a note from Simon, a Scout leader in London, who’s interested to help his charges attain their Digital Maker badge by making a Box! We’re excited about visiting with him, and hearing more about the recent Scouts & Raspberry Pi partnership, which we’d love to be involved with somehow.

Categories
3D commission company news museum photogrammetry

New Commission: International Slavery Museum

Photo of the 3D prints and postcards that make up the collection
The Transatlantic Slavery and Its Contemporary Significance Collection

We’ve been busy working on many exciting commissions recently and plan to share a few more detailed insights into these over the coming weeks.

One such commission is with the International Slavery Museum in Liverpool, a collection we produced along with staff at the museum that explores transatlantic slavery, and its contemporary significance. 

The collection consists of two 3D models and seven postcards and encompasses a range of artefacts from the museum’s collection.  These include objects that would have been touched by African slaves, street signs connecting Liverpool to the slave trade, and contemporary art pieces.

Photo of lighting rig and sculpture being scanned
Our rig for doing 3D photogrammetric capture

After settling on an object list, Charlie travelled up to the museum to 3D scan the two objects that were to be 3D printed. These were the Olaudah Equiano sculpture – a brilliant sculpture of writer, abolitionist and a former enslaved African, Olaudah Equiano by sculptor Christy Symington, and a Bamana mask – a type of mask used in Bamana culture used in traditional initiation societies in order to pass into adulthood. We printed them out in some brilliant bright yellow PLA, and were glad that so much detail of the original, including the shape of Africa on Olaudah’s back, broken shackles, and an enslaved female figure from the Brookes slave ship diagram were all visible on the print!

A photograph of the 3D printed bust of Equiano

The audio in the collection incorporates narration from staff members including education demonstrators, curators, volunteers, and youth ambassadors. It’s great to hear such a variety of expert voices talk about the objects in such depth. Here’s a sample of one object in the collection, a ‘Talking Drum’, described by Yaz, one of the museum’s education demonstrators:

Drum, 20th Century, Akan, Ghana
‘The Talking Drum’

An important distinction the collection highlights is the range of material held at the museum. This includes not only original objects but contemporary artworks too such as the Olaudah Equiano sculpture and The Cockle Pickers’ Tea Service.

‘Made in 2007 to commemorate 200 years since Britain enacted a law to outlaw the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The artwork references the original African victims, whilst also remembering twenty-one Chinese cockle pickers drowned in Morecambe Bay Lancashire in 2004. These people were contemporary slaves. A reminder that the slave trade is still alive in the twenty first century.’

Paul Scott’s ‘Cumbrian Blue(s), The Cockle Pickers’ Tea Service’ (2007)

We’re chuffed with how the set neatly encapsulate the museum’s broad collection, and that the box will be used to help increase awareness and understanding of the important stories it has to tell.

We can’t wait to hear how they get on with the box in the coming months!

Categories
3D AR competition museum photogrammetry

Ramesses in a Ramesses #DesignByCapture

MyMiniFactory, Autodesk ReMake, and Autodesk® Fusion 360 recently hosted a competition aimed at demonstrating the potential of their platforms to integrate photogrammetry into the design process.

The competition asked entrants to capture and modify an object that they use for their ‘favourite hobby’. We considered adapting a piece of our photography kit used for photogrammetry but opted instead for a more playful approach and hacked a scan of Ramesses II, one of the largest sculptures in the British Museum:

Next we were required to customise it to best suit our needs, it may seem surprising but we have quite a few 3D prints hanging around our Bloomsbury HQ yet few cool places to store them. Cue light bulb moment, why not make a giant Ramesses and use him to store a bunch of smaller prints!

We identified six scans that we could place within niches inside the big Ramesses including a smaller Ramesses bust (Ramception) and then got to work using Fusion 360 to modify the original scan.

First we had to reduce the polycount in order to open and edit the sculpture in Fusion which was then swiftly sliced in half. A hinge was then created by extruding a circle into a cylinder and splitting it into five parts which were then alternately combined to the front and back bodies. We also modelled a simple pin to lock the two halves together completing the hinge that would enable the secret stash of models to be opened and closed.

Ramesses Fusion 360 development

The final steps involved scaling-down and reducing the polycount of the six smaller models and positioning them where best, then all that remained was to trace a rough outline of each onto the flat plane, cut away each niche and insert the models.

We were fairly chuffed with the outcome especially when we threw on a jade material layer and rendered it through Fusion’s cloud rendering service. Content, we uploaded the model to MyMiniFactory and entered the competition.

Shiny jade render of Ramesses II

Unfortunately we didn’t win the competition otherwise we would almost certainly have our heads buried in VR right now but nevertheless we’re very happy with the outcome and the awesome job MyMiniFactory did of printing it!

ramsses-museum
3D Printed with a working hinge!

Ramesses opens up…
…to reveal egyptian treasures.
Printed by My Mini Factory
Miniature artefacts!

(Print images by MyMiniFactory)

It may not be jade but it’s still pretty swanky

C

Categories
3D conference photogrammetry

#3D4ever

Last week, whilst George and Tom were attempting to reach #VHNIreland I was having slightly more luck arriving at the Wellcome Collection for the ‘3D4ever: building three dimensional models to last’ conference.

The conference focused around the long-term durability and accessibility of 3D models and scan data for future uses, uses which as we discovered in some of the talks may not be immediately obvious. I thought I’d take a moment to reflect on a few thoughts and favourite take-aways.

Having a good understanding of photogrammetry (primarily by probing Tom for tips and tricks) I opted to skip the workshops and stick with talks for the whole day, it was intense but informative and an eye-opener into a community that I didn’t even know really existed! So… a few highlights:

Stuart Jeffrey from the Glasgow School of Art (GSA) discussed a use-case where an old 3D model of the GSA Mackintosh Building which suffered severe fire damage in 2014 provided evidence that a substantial lean on the West gable wall was historic and had not come about as a result of the fire. Members of the GSA Digital Design Studio produced a second model the day after the fire to compare the lean and save a large portion of the building from demolition an impressive feat and one which illustrated the importance of making good data accessible in the long-term.

Stuart Jeffrey from GSA

Anthony Corns from the Discovery Programme talked about his experiences of archiving and reusing 3D data as well as the steps and software involved in the creation of a model. One slide showed a standard software stack consisting of about 12 programmes which was somewhat surprising, working with Tom to process various models I am slowly but surely becoming aware and familiar with the wide range of tools out there.

Anthony also spoke about using scan data to asses pressure on different sites his example being Skellig Michael which has witnessed a surge in tourist numbers since Luke Skywalker decided to hang there in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. This also demonstrated when are where it may be appropriate to sell 3D data such as to film/production crews.

Skellig Michael by The Discovery Programme on Sketchfab

 

Chris Moran who heads the Wellcome Trust legal team gave an insightful talk on Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) an area where people often become a little tangled. I was listening from a design perspective so it was interesting to see examples where cases had been argued and won based on the potentially loose definitions of what constitutes something as an ‘original creation’ or even a database, his example being a newspaper’s website. Star Wars references were also utilised here in the form of the IP rights of a Stormtrooper’s helmet… I sense a pattern developing.

IP Rights with Chris Moran

Vincent Rossi and Jon Blundell of the Smithsonian appeared via Skype to discuss their work on digitisation and also show off their amazing work on the Apollo 11 command module ‘Columbia’ check it out here.

Vincent Rossi and Jon Blundell all the way from America

I had the opportunity to ask a question to our speakers from across the pond which was kinda cool!

Finally perhaps the most insightful moment was the final ‘Round-up chat’. Here following a panel chat the audience were invited to reflect on: what is to be done and how to address the gaps in our knowledge?

A final panel chat

It was clear there was a desire for good collaborative practise and several rousing speeches were made, there was a great deal to get off the chest! A key agreement was that to work with better tools and formats, instead of trying to create new ones, complain about a lack of essential features, and live in fear of formats going extinct, why not establish a line of communication with the developers and those behind the existing platforms. The software stack slide that Anthony showed sprung to mind and it became apparent there was a need for openness and better communication between all parties involved in 3D work not just in the short term and not just for individuals and independent organisations but the community as a whole.

What a day, mind blown!

C