After many positive comments at World of Geomatics 2006, we’ve decided to release our showreel animation for general download. The movie is encoded in AVI format with the DiVX4.12 codec (which can be downloaded for free for Windows and Mac). The filesize is 27.2Mb.

The animation can be downloaded from this link.

The animation shows datasets from:

1. Provan Hall, Glasgow (National Trust for Scotland, Terrestrial LiDAR scanning)
2. Avebury World Heritage Site (National Trust/English Heritage, Airborne LiDAR)
3. Knowlton Henge, Dorset (English Heritage, Terrestrial LiDAR scanning)
4. “Mephistopheles” Wedgewood Figurine (Potteries Museum and Art Gallery/Hothouse, Close-Range Scanning)
5. Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage, Terrestrial LiDAR)

Thanks to all our clients for permission to use the datasets and to Headland Archaeology for the illustration work on Provan Hall.

Avebury: Viewing south towards Silbury Hill and West Kennet Avenue

"Mephistopheles" Wedgewood Figurine

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Once again, Archaeoptics will be exhibiting at World of Geomatics at Stoneleigh Park, near Coventry on the 29th/30th March 2006.

We will be displaying our usual mind-blowing array of visuals generated from some of our latest 3D laser scanning work both at close-range, terrestrial and airborne LiDAR levels of detail.

Our Technical Director, Alistair Carty, is also presenting a paper on the use of 3D laser scanning technology within the cultural heritage and archaeology sectors at the M3 Conference which runs alongside the exhibition.

We will be at Stand #16, so please drop by and say hello!

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Artist Simon Watkinson and London Borough of Barking and Dagenham recently commissioned us to undertake scanning work on two iconic pieces of history from Barking and Dagenham forming part of his planned public sculpture, “The Ice Harvest”. The pieces in question were a section of Anglo-Saxon cross shaft from Barking Abbey and a replica of the famous Dagenham Idol, a Bronze Age wooden figure.

3D Scan of Barking Abbey cross shaft

3D Scan of the Dagenham Idol

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“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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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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