Using High Quality Structure from Motion 3D Models for Petroglyph Visualization

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Structure from motion (SfM) photogrammetry models can be used to visualize petroglyphs that are otherwise difficult to see in photographs. Three techniques require a high-quality model that has captured the surface geometry in the point cloud and mesh. 1) Online and free software permit viewing a model surface with user-controlled oblique illumination. 2) Free Meshlab provides a powerful tool, radiance scaling, that produces false color and/or gray-scale images based upon surface curvature. 3) Another technique, which I have called "Digital Rubbing", uses free CloudCompare to produce an image based upon local differences between the point cloud and a generalized fit to the surface.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Technique and Interpretation in the Archaeology of Rock Art   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22935