“Northumberlandia is a landmark feature designed by world renowned artist Charles Jencks, which celebrates the earth’s natural power and the human ability to reshape landscape into a dramatic form.”

We provided 170 micron resolution 3D scanning of the original maquette by Charles Jencks and this was used by HJ Banks to generate the virtual reality models seen on the Northumberlandia website and brochure.

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A Solid Terrain Model(TM) produced for Snowdonia National Park has been completed. The project was undertaken by Touch the Earth Ltd..

Solid Terrain Model(TM) of Snowdonia National Park

We produced the digital terrain model from an original airborne LiDAR dataset of 28 million points and aerial photography at 25cm in ECW format. The dataset needed to be rotated by an arbitrary amount to ensure the panel was exactly rectangular and that the terrain data and texture matched after rotation.

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Able Minds and Practised Hands: Scotland’s Early Medieval Sculpture in the 21st Century” (Monograph 23 of The Society for Medieval Archaeology) has been published.

An essay of the use of 3D laser scanning technology to record, analyse and replicate Pictish sculpture written by Alistair Carty, our technical director, is included alongside experts such as Martin Carver and Sally Foster.

From Maney Publishing:
“One hundred years on from J Romilly Allen and Joseph Anderson’s 1903 landmark publication, The Early Christian Monuments of Scotland, twenty six essays explore the current state of knowledge of early medieval sculpture in Scotland. They demonstrate the unique value of this material in contributing to our understanding of the society and people that created it between 1000 to 1500 years ago. Today’s approaches and techniques offer new insights, as well as great hope, for what might be learnt from future study of ‘familiar’ and new material alike.”

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Standing to a height of 20 feet, Sueno’s Stone is the pinnacle of Pictish sculpture. We have now completed processing of the sub-millimetre resolution dataset acquired for The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS).

Front and back of Sueno’s Stone 3D laser scan

The dataset comprised over 900 individual scans totalling over 250 million measurements (or 0.5 billion triangles) and forms a highly-accurate tool that can be used to aid interpretation of the sculptural details.

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In 2003, we undertook a little experiment with a Callidus 3D laser scanner and attempted, in a single day, to completely scan Knowlton Henge and church. This was generally regarded as being a bit of a foolish thing to try, but, as usual with all things Archaeoptics, we managed it quite comfortably (apart from the sunburn).

Perspective view of the Knowlton Henge 3D laser scan

Ably assisted by Tom Goskar of Wessex Archaeology, we collected just under 20 million points from the henge and church and produced a highly accurate fully-meshed 3D model.

Read the paper for more information and pictures (PDF, 420Kb).

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