Two is sometimes better than one
With the first snow starting to fall, it’s best to cuddle up in front of a fireplace. Recently, Artec employees found themselves in front of one but instead of cuddling, they scanned it. The idea was to replicate the masterpiece so that more people could warm up in front of beautiful fireplaces. Playing on the strength of Artec MH and S scanners, they produced an exact 3D model of the ornamented fireplace.
Some fireplaces are real pieces of art: always worth a second look. From a scanning point of view, though, they are a challenging object to capture. With an average height of about 1,50 m, they are often abundantly decorated with elaborate ornaments and intricate details.
Artec has developed various-sized scanners to capture a range of objects from a matchbook to a car. They mainly differ in relation to their size and depth of view: as the S scanner is designed to capture small items with a point accuracy of 0.05 mm, the L scanner is best to digitize large objects in a few seconds.
When it came to scanning the adorned fireplace above, a combination of the Artec MH and an S scanner turned out to be a perfect fit.
While the MH scanner fully captured the overall fireplace shape in less than 5 minutes, its S comrade was in charge of small ornamented details like the sculpture’s hair and dress embroidery.
Accurate scanning of these parts took about 10 minutes. With all Artec scanners being hand-held and fully portable, it was possible to get 3D data from all sides and angles. After having captured the object, all frames were loaded into Artec Studio™. Scans made with the MH were then aligned to surfaces captured with the S scanner to create one coherent 3D model of the fireplace’s décor.
Combining two different scanners allows increasing accuracy details, which is essential when the object is large, but contains a lot of small details. This 3D model might be used to recreate the fireplace’s design and produce a true copy using a stone cutting machine. Artec scanners are also employed when it comes to restoring ancient cathedrals and monuments, like in the case of the famous Transfiguration Cathedral in Moscow.
