3D scan portraits
For our first assignment, we had to make two 3D portraits, one of a person and one of an object, using the Polycam app. I don’t remember why that app didn’t work for me before, but now I use Scaniverse. Below are some screen shots of my portraits.
Kay
Okayyyy. So this portrait was kind of done in the spur of the moment. A “volumetric candid” if you will. But if I am being really honest, not much preparation of thought went into composing and posing this portrait. Kay and I sat next to each other on the ITP floor all Spring Break working through our stuff … and unfortunately this was kind of our vibe. Tired, burnt out, task-list oriented. Technically, tho, I think this turned out to be a pretty good scan!
Josh
Fail? Or portrait
Thinking of an object that might serve as a portrait, I was hoping to scan Josh’s phone and airpods. They are both “Josh yellow” and really personal items that allude to identity, personality, taste, etc.
When I tried scanning Josh’s phone and airpod case. My app refused to process the point cloud altogether, which has never happened to me before. My only guess is that it didn’t like the reflectivity of the phone screen? But that’s pretty weird because I’ve definitely scanned objects/spaces with mirrors before!
I tried again by scanning Josh’s water bottle this time. The scan came out way better than the previous one, except look at that weird bump! I think that this item serves as a much better portrait because I this object oozes Josh personality too.
[Reading] Sum of Profiles
physionotrace?!!?!
It is really crazy to think that artists found a way to make volumetric captures in the 1800’s! They developed a technology that works surprisingly similar to Polycam and Depthkit. They made sculptures using the photos of the different profiles of a subject and a master sculptor would carefully smooth the linear junctions between the carved profiles and unite them into a harmonious and just likeness of the subject. It was a “marriage of art and industry” and reminds me of the fact that portraiture wasn’t seen as a serious art form, only a craft, for a long time because of its mimetic nature.
Here are some technologies discussed in the paper:
Sequential construction - Rodin
Photo sculpture - Willeme
Mechanical sculpture/automatic sculpture - Willeme
Pantograph?
Physionotrace - Chrétien
“Gravure numismatique” - Collas
Smoke screen technology - Claudet
Advantages of this volumetric capture:
Microscopic subjects could be transformed into sculpture in very large proportions
Time saved and commensurate economic gain
“The advantage of the mechanical process was that it allowed the sculptor an amount of freedom to conceptualize and cultivate inspiration”
Realism
Resources
Sculpture as the Sum of Its Profiles: Fraincois Willeme and Photosculpture in France, 1859-1868