Suramya's Blog : Welcome to my crazy life…

October 5, 2022

3D Scanning was used over 160 years ago to create photosculptures

Filed under: Interesting Sites,My Thoughts,Tech Related — Suramya @ 1:32 PM

When we talk about 3D scanning we all assume it is one of the emerging technologies and with the recent advances it has been growing more and more popular. A usecase that is becoming popular is to scan a sculpture or art installations so that the scans are published online and can be converted to VR or used to 3D print an exact replica. For example, The State Darwin Museum in Europe has been slowly digitizing / 3D scanning its collection. Other museums have been doing the same as well.

But interestingly, this is not a new technology and it was in use over 160 years ago to create what is known as photosculptures. A recent article on Hackaday.com talks about how in the late 19th century (1861) the art of creating realistic, 3-dimensional replicas using a series of 24 photos that were combined to create a 3D image was extremely popular. This process was called photosculpture and was invented by François Willème, a French painter, photographer and sculptor.


Example of a photosculpture created using this technique. (PC: University of Virginia: Department of Art)

He perfected the art of taking photos from 24 camera’s in a circle with the subject standing in the middle, synchronizing them to create a 3D model that could be projected on a screen. Then a pantograph was used to cut the layers of the picture into thin sheets of wood. The artist would then assemble the cuttings to create a rough 3D replica of the object. Once the base was created they would fill in the details using materials such as bronze, plaster of Paris and terra cotta to create a realistic result.


A visual overview of how Photosculptures were created

This whole process was a lot cheaper than having a sculpture created via the normal process and a lot faster so it became quite popular for a while with the public. But with other competitors patenting their own versions and the demand reducing he had to shutdown the studio by late 1868. Check out the following article for more details on the process More than 100 Years before 3D Printers, We had Photosculpture which is quite fascinating.

It made me think that we have this unspoken assumption that the previous generations were not as smart/advanced as we were and only in the modern world we have these amazing breakthroughs that wouldn’t have been possible earlier and then you read about these inventions and techniques that were there hundreds of years ago that does the same thing (albeit a bit more crudely) as our modern cutting edge technologies. There was a lot of scientific advances done historically that were lost due to various reasons and sometimes I dream about how the world would have been if we had not lost the Library of Alexandria or the Nalanda University which were amongst the many institutes destroyed by invaders and their staff & students slaughtered. Imagine how many advances were lost, how much wisdom was lost over the years due to this…

– Suramya

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