Elephant figurine

This hand-painted elephant figurine, dubbed Ellie Luxembourg, commemorates the Elephant Parade, held in Luxembourg in 2021. An open-air exhibition of life-size colored sculptures of elephant calves, the event was organized to raise awareness of the extinction threat Asian elephants are facing and raise funds for their conservation. In the run-up to the parade, a team of artists from across the world transformed hundreds of white elephant figurines into vibrantly colored works of art. These went on sale at souvenir shops in Luxembourg, with proceeds donated to a charity.

One such figurine ended up in the Artec 3D office in Luxembourg, becoming a perfect sample object to showcase the resolution and color capture capabilities of the Artec Spider II 3D scanner, which made its debut at the end of 2024.

Scanned within a mere three minutes at a blazing rate of 30 frames per second, Ellie Luxembourg now has a digital twin that replicates her exterior down to minute details. A feast for the eyes, the 20-cm-tall figurine features several of the iconic sites and symbols of Luxembourg, painted in a facetious manner. Take a rooster and a hen sipping sparkling wine casually, or the Golden Lady memorial, towering above the city so high only the elephant’s long trunk could do justice to its height.

Give this model a spin to see for yourself that all of the elements of the original design – even those on the inner sides of the elephant’s legs – are rendered crisp and sharp, with colors bright and saturated. Despite the figurine’s ceramic finish causing some glare during the scanning session, Spider II picked up all parts of the surface with ease. The quality of the scans was so high that data processing in Artec Studio took a swift five minutes.

From art schools to video game studios, lifelike digital twins such as one of Ellie Luxembourg save you hours on manual 3D modeling and texturing and enable you to create that many more high-quality assets.