“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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We recently undertook high-resolution 3D laser scanning as part of the Northumberland and Durham Rock Art Project run by Dr. Tertia Barnett of Northumberland County Council and funded by English Heritage. We scanned three panels in Northumberland: Ketley Crag, Chatton Park 1, Huntersheugh and two in County Durham: Howgill and Cotherstone.

Minolta VI-900 at Huntersheugh

3D Laser Scan of Ketley Crag

This round of scanning will act in conjunction with high-accuracy GPS data as a baseline for monitoring any degradation to the surfaces of these irreplaceable works of art.

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We’re pleased to announce that the fieldwork for our mammoth 3D scanning project at Grimes Graves, Norfolk, is finally complete. Over 3800 scans have been acquired at 1mm resolution with our Minolta VI900 scanner resulting in a raw dataset of over 1,100,000,000 measurements! This is approaching being one of the single largest datasets ever acquired for a single context either in the commercial or research world.

Our data processing engines are now ready to crunch this dataset into the final deliverables of huge detailed triangle meshes. Watch this space…

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We are delighted to announce that in February 2006 Archaeoptics will be travelling through Libya to scan the famous “Fighting Cats” rock art panel. This work is being undertaken for TARA (The Trust for African Rock Art) and in conjunction with Dr. Tertia Barnett of Northumberland County Council.

We have been fortunate in being able to scan some of the finest Rock Art panels in Britain including the Ballochmyle Walls, Fylingdales Moor, Chatton Park and Ketley Crag and it will be our privilege to undertake this work in Libya.

More information is available on the TARA website.

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St. James from West Front, St. Paul’s Cathedral

Render of St. Peter from West Front, St. Paul’s Cathedral

The Herald have run a story about our massive 3D laser scanning project at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The article can be read here.

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Archaeoptics have completed the field work at Callanish stone circle, Isle of Lewis. The work, commissioned by Stewart and Emma Mitchell of the Callanish Blackhouse Tearoom, forms the core of a wide range of upcoming projects.

Mensi GS200 at Callanish

Scanning at Callanish

A recent article on the work is featured in The Hebridean.

Update 2nd August 2005: A new article on the work has been published in the Glasgow Herald. You can read the article on the Herald’s website.

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Scottish Technology News has a front page feature on Archaeoptics’ ground-breaking 3D laser scanning work at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Archaeoptics were commissioned to undertake high-resolution 3D scanning work on the primary sculptures on St. Paul’s West Front resulting in one of the most intensive 3D scanning surveys ever undertaken.

Read all about it in the article from Scottish Technology News (PDF format, 122Kb).

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