elina.dorzhieva

by elina.dorzhieva - 19. December 202419. December 2024

Reproduction of Gloss, Color and Relief of Paintings using 3DScanning and 3D Printing

The Future of Art Reproduction: Capturing Every Detail with 3D Scanning and Printing

In the realm of art preservation and reproduction, achieving the perfect balance between technology and authenticity is a challenging endeavor. A research from 2017 (W.S. Elkhuizen, T.T.W. Essers, B. Lenseigne, C. Weijkamp, Y. Song, S.C. Pont, J.M.P. Geraedts, and J. Dik) presented in their groundbreaking paper, “Reproduction of Gloss, Color and Relief of Paintings using 3D Scanning and 3D Printing,” offers a revolutionary approach to this challenge. Their work integrates advanced methods to capture and replicate the color, relief, and gloss of paintings.

The Challenge of Authentic Reproductions

High-fidelity reproductions of artworks have long been a goal for museums and cultural institutions. While earlier technologies could reproduce color and surface relief with relative success, replicating gloss—a critical visual component of a painting’s appearance—remained elusive. Gloss plays a pivotal role in how viewers perceive the depth, texture, and overall aesthetic of an artwork. Traditional methods often fell short in accurately capturing the spatially varying gloss, which significantly contributes to a painting’s visual identity.

The Breakthrough: Integrated 3D Scanning and Printing

The research team introduced an innovative system that addresses these limitations. Their approach integrates:

Advanced Gloss Measurement: Using the principles of reflectance polarization, the system measures spatially varying gloss by sampling specular reflection at the Brewster angle. This method provides precise gloss data for every point on a painting’s surface.
Relief and Color Capture: In addition to gloss, the system employs high-resolution 3D scanning to capture the surface relief and advanced imaging techniques to record color details. Together, these components ensure a comprehensive digital representation of the artwork.
Data Processing and Optimization: One of the challenges addressed in this study is the presence of shadows in gloss measurements caused by surface relief. The team devised a technique to mask and interpolate surrounding gloss information, ensuring a seamless and accurate reproduction.

Validating the System

To demonstrate the efficacy of their system, the researchers reproduced a painting titled “Two Wrestling Figures in the Style of Van Gogh.” This reproduction served as a testbed for assessing the accuracy of the gloss, color, and relief measurements. The results showed remarkable fidelity, proving that the system could replicate the nuanced visual properties of the original artwork.

Implications for Museums and Cultural Institutions

This advancement holds transformative potential for art preservation and accessibility:

Preservation: High-quality reproductions reduce the need for handling original artworks, minimizing wear and tear. This is particularly vital for fragile or historically significant pieces.
Accessibility: Reproductions can be shared globally, allowing audiences to experience iconic artworks that might otherwise be inaccessible due to location or conservation concerns.
Educational Opportunities: Museums can use these replicas for educational programs, enabling hands-on interaction without risking damage to the originals.
Exhibitions: Institutions can display reproductions in interactive or immersive environments, enhancing visitor engagement while preserving the original artworks.

Conclusion

This technology stands to redefine how people interact with art in museums. By enabling the creation of high-fidelity reproductions, museums can provide more immersive and interactive experiences. Visitors could touch and closely examine replicas without fear of damaging the originals, fostering a deeper understanding of the artwork’s texture, relief, and gloss. Additionally, this technology can be used to create multisensory exhibits, where audiences engage with art through sight, touch, and even augmented reality overlays. Such innovations make art more accessible to diverse audiences, including those with visual impairments, and enrich the educational value of museum visits.

References:

https://diglib.eg.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/03f416a4-92bd-4a74-9d51-f1724f46994c/content

by elina.dorzhieva - 19. December 2024

The technology of 3D Scanning and Printing

Exploring Tim Zaman’s Revolutionary 3D Scanning of Paintings

In 2013, Tim Zaman embarked on a groundbreaking project that bridged the worlds of technology and art, developing a super-high-resolution, large-format 3D scanner tailored to capturing the intricate topography of paintings. This remarkable innovation brought new insights into the materiality of art and how we perceive it, focusing on iconic works by masters such as Rembrandt and Van Gogh.

The Vision Behind the Technology

Paintings, often treated as two-dimensional artworks, are deeply influenced by the physical properties of paint. Late Rembrandt self-portraits, for instance, achieve their dramatic effects through the interplay of light and shadow on textured surfaces. Similarly, Van Gogh’s bold, impasto strokes create a tangible depth. Tim Zaman’s work highlights how paint’s texture, glossiness, and transparency significantly shape a painting’s aesthetic—aspects often overlooked or underappreciated.

The 3D Scanning Process

To capture these details, Zaman’s 3D scanner used a hybrid system combining stereo vision (dual cameras) and fringe projection (a projector). This setup allowed for ultra-high-resolution imaging, capturing 40 million XYZ (3D space) and RGB (color) data points per scan. For large works like The Jewish Bride by Rembrandt, spanning 160×120 cm, the system gathered over a billion data points by merging multiple scans. This unparalleled level of detail was essential for faithfully documenting the subtle undulations and surface features of the paintings.

Scanning Equipment

“The scanning equipment is actually very straightforward, and only consists out of these parts. The rest of the parts is just cables and stuff to make the camera move in X and Y”.

Capture device	(2x) Nikon D800E
Lenses	Nikon 80mm PC-E scheimpflug & polarisation filters
Projector	Optoma PK301 Pico-Projector fitted with a crossed polarisation filter

Zaman’s project also delved into the realm of reproduction. Collaborating with Océ (a Canon Group company), the scanned data was used to create high-fidelity 3D prints of paintings. These reproductions—complete with textured surfaces—represented a significant leap beyond traditional flat posters. While impressive, they underscored the complexity of accurately replicating the originals, particularly when it came to glossiness and transparency—elements that remain elusive even with advanced technology.

Future Directions

Zaman’s work set the stage for ongoing research into the physicality of paintings. While the 3D prints captured the texture and color of the originals, they lacked the dynamic qualities imparted by brushstrokes and the interaction of light with varying paint properties. This gap highlighted the multifaceted nature of paintings, where factors like material reflectivity and translucency play critical roles in their visual impact. Current efforts aim to model glossiness, transparency, and other overlooked elements. By combining cutting-edge technology with a deep respect for artistic heritage, Zaman’s project serves as a powerful reminder of the endless possibilities at the intersection of science and art.

Tim Zaman’s innovative approach continues to inspire researchers and art enthusiasts alike, showcasing how technology can uncover new dimensions of creativity and history.

In the upcoming blog, I will explore the advancements in newer technologies aimed at addressing the missing elements like glossiness and transparency, building upon the foundation of Zaman’s work.

References:

http://www.timzaman.nl/3d-scanning-paintings

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxfNaZ2vUSE&ab_channel=TEDxDelft

https://delta.tudelft.nl/en/article/scanning-paintings-depth

by elina.dorzhieva - 9. December 2024

How We Spend Time and Space in Art Exhibitions

As promised, I would like to first dive a little bit into behavior of visitors in museums. To do so, I will review the article called “Art Perception in the Museum: How We Spend Time and Space in Art Exhibitions”, the present study aimed to replicate and expand on the study of Smith and Smith (2001).The main aim was to analyse museum visitors’ behaviour in terms of viewing duration and distance, how often people returned to a painting and how behaviour changed throughout such reassessments.

Keypoints of the “Smith and Smith” study

In their 2001 study, Smith and Smith provided foundational research into the impact of factors like age, gender, and group size on viewing times in museums. They discovered that museumgoers typically spend significantly more time observing artworks—27.2 seconds longer on average—than in controlled lab experiments, where viewing times are often under three seconds.

The study also brought attention to the role of viewing distance, noting that visitors intuitively adjust their proximity to artworks based on personal preferences, unlike the fixed distances common in lab studies. These insights underline the importance of replicating natural museum behavior in experimental settings to better understand art perception.

Lastly, Smith and Smith emphasized the social dynamics of museum visits, observing that a substantial portion of visitors attended in groups. Roughly 19.3% came with one other person, and 3.3% were in groups of three, transforming art observation into a collective social event. This group interaction was noted to influence the overall art experience, highlighting how social contexts can shift perception from individual to shared engagement.

Methods of the “Art Perception in the Museum” study

They tested a total of 225 visitors (126 female, M(age) = 43.3 years) attending the special exhibition on Gerhard Richter by unobtrusively observing them from a balcony above, which was barely detectable by typical visitors; 104 people visited the paintings on their own (category single), 100 visited them with one other person (category pair), 11 in a group (category group) of two or more, and 10 with their children (category family—here the children were not observed further, but a focus was set to the person who first attended the respective artwork). A total of four persons attended the exhibition with a wheelchair, two with a folding chair, and one with a walking stick; no other accessories in this respect were recorded. None of the participants detected the observers and so were naïve to the purpose of the study.

The six paintings which were utilized for the study were all positioned side by side on one wall of the only hall in the entire exhibition; the two observers assessing visitor behaviour were situated on a balcony above the hall overseeing the entire scene of interest. On the floor, the tile sizes were exactly 50 × 50 cm, allowing the easy assessment of viewing distance between visitor and painting with a resolution of 50 cm accordingly.

To record visitor behavior, the researchers used a custom Android app on Sony tablet PCs. This app enabled quick and precise data collection, such as viewing distance in 0.5-meter increments (aligned with the floor tiles), timing of observations, and demographic details like gender, age, and whether visitors were accompanied or used mobility aids. Observers could track individuals revisiting paintings, building a comprehensive history of their interactions. This method ensured accurate, intuitive data logging while maintaining naturalistic observations.

Two observers were located on the balcony, with Observer 2 assisting the experimenter Observer 1, who entered the data. This was done first of all to ensure objective data entry and was also used for tracing visitors who might potentially come back. The observers tried to focus on single visitors to capture their entire viewing behaviour with regard to the paintings under observation. This made it necessary to test single, randomly chosen persons in depth, so the duration of the total testing was considerably long as many visitors take quite a while to wander through the whole exhibition.

Results

Viewing Time of Artworks

People were found to spend very different amounts of time in front of different artworks, here between 25.7 s and 41.0 s on average—note: although the exact durations differed from the Smith and Smith study, they also documented such a various viewing behaviour with a range of viewing duration from 13.2 s to 44.6 s.

Visitors viewed the artworks quite selectively, omitting 2.5 out of the given range of six pictures—a clear sign of selective viewing behaviour even in a special art exhibition showing a very limited number of paintings.

In contrast to Smith and Smith, they did not find any substantial differences among group sizes. Category single visitors showed a mean viewing duration at first attendance of 35.6 s, category pair showed 31.4 s, group showed 36.5 s, and family showed 36.4 s. In accordance with the Smith and Smith study, we could not find any significant difference between female (M = 34.6 s) and male visitors (M = 32.7 s).

Given this total viewing time perspective, visitors spent 50.5 s on one artwork. In fact, visitors who viewed an artwork at least once showed a 51% probability of returning to it at least once more.

Viewing Distance From Artworks

Regarding the different viewing distances at which visitors choose to inspect the paintings, we again observed that conditions were very different to the typical ones employed in lab research. On average, the visitors in the present study distanced themselves from a painting M = 1.72 m across all viewings, which was not substantially different from the distance they used when only initial viewings were analysed (M = 1.75 m). First of all, the essential difference between a museum and a lab context is mainly that a museum offers enough space for visitors to choose their personal distance from an artwork. On what basis visitors choose their distance remains unclear, but it is seemingly done by intuition without any deeper rationale behind it. This intuition seems to have a basis in the extension of the artwork, here the canvas size: The larger the artwork the more viewing space is chosen.

Sociality factor

One great difference between a museum context and a lab setting is the typical presence of many people in the same hall, the sociality factor. We indeed detected an effect of group which was very compatible with the obtained effect of the Smith and Smith study: Pairs of visitors took longer viewing times, often because they debated on the painting, but more than two persons attending a painting together even outperformed pairs. The additional categorization of family showed the shortest viewing times—probably due to ongoing caretaking issues, especially for parents with small children.

Conclusion

Once again, the present study made clear that viewing artworks in a museum context is very different to a typical lab setting: First of all, visitors of art museums invest money, time, and intellectual effort beforehand to get to the exhibition hall, they show more skills and motivation to deeply process artworks, and, screening the demographics of typical visitors, they are mostly older and possess more knowledge of art and so also show different heuristics in assessing the quality of art. Second, the whole social setting is very different with people walking around in a relatively silent and focused—but still communicative and interactive—way. Third, the viewing distances from paintings is very different, typically larger. Fourth, the viewing duration is also self-chosen and fundamentally (much) longer than in typical lab settings.

References:

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5347319

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20715763

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-10247-001

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1068/i0664

by elina.dorzhieva - 2. December 2024

Breaking the Glass: How Technology Can Deepen Our Understanding of Art

In this blog, I will research the ways of extending the perception of art in museums that can help emerge into art, understand the context and meaning of the work, and connect with the artwork, its time, and its artist on a deeper level. My initial idea of expanding interaction with art was only 3D scanning and printing in a way of presenting a reproduction of the original relief, color, and small details next to the original work. So that the audience could quite literally touch the art they consume and perceive it not only with sight but touch as well, that could be a way to open more interpretations, and emotions gained from art. However, I believe it could be not only touch but other senses involved. What if you could start hearing, feeling the temperature, tasting, and touching the already existing piece of art, that was previously only seen from far?

My motivation initially stemmed from my interest in visual art. As someone interested in painting, I find many small details of art fascinating, particularly the texture and relief of the paint. Usually, in galleries and museums, it is not allowed to approach a painting closely, let alone touch it. However, I believe it would be a truly wonderful experience to touch the artwork and feel the thick, rigid brushstrokes, droplets, and highlights with my own hands. This gave me the idea of recreating the relief of the original painting so that visitors could touch the art and feel a stronger connection with the artist who lived centuries ago. However, later I realised a bigger problem and respectively a bigger idea. It is not only about the interest in touching a piece of art but deeply immersed in the history and the context of art.

Studies have determined that the average time a person spends gandering at a piece in a museum is between 15 seconds and 30 seconds. That’s plenty of time to figure out what the image is attempting to represent (or not, if you’re looking at abstraction). But that’s not nearly enough time to fully experience the work. Given this fact, we should also consider the average attention span of the adult at this day and age, which is just 8. 25 seconds. Hence, it is not a rarity to see a person not willing to read a description of the art and to just look at it for a few seconds. Sometimes we can even see people not stopping once in a museum, sometimes we see bored public yawning while listening to a guide, sometimes there are no guides or descriptions at all, only art behind a barrier and glass.

In fact, a large number of people are interested in art and want to visit different cultural sites. Of course, the percentage depends on cultural, educational, and personal factors, but the study’s 2017 edition, based on answers from 27,969 respondents, found visual and performing arts attendance overall up by 3.6% since 2012, with 132.3 million U.S. adults (53.8% of all U.S. adults) attending a visual or performing arts activity at least once in the previous year. However, a deeper understanding of art is available for visitors who have formal art education or deep familiarity with art history, the majority engage at a surface level. One of the main problems of an existing barrier to understanding is a lack of accessible or engaging information. Thinking about a younger audience we can more prominently point out the fact that they need more interactivity and technology in museums.

So what are the existing tools in museums that help get into the history and the context of the specific artwork? Let’s start with the most trial and common ones: information panels, audio guides, guided tours, talks, brochures, and booklets. Relatively new ways to explore art in museums – online databases, interactive maps online on museum apps and websites, social media posts, quizzes, and treasure hunts. Also thematic installations and interactive technologies such as AR, VR, and Interactive displays. I would like to focus on the last two categories and start a deeper research on them.

In the upcoming posts, I would like to first understand a little bit about how people behave in museums and how they perceive art in museums. Later I need to learn about the existing experiences of museums incorporating interactive technologies and analyse their success or errors. I would like to understand the technology of 3D scanning and printing, in which museums is this embodied and how and what lessons can be learned from their experience. Apart from 3d, there are plenty of other ways to interact with the public that must be studied in this blog. The question is why these tools are not widespread in the museums, how can they be enhanced to bridge the gap between seeing and understanding art?