Three-dimensional modeling for virtual relic restoration

Relics change in quality when excavated from ruins and exposed to air and/or sunlight. This is one reason why we developed a new computer-based method to record and preserve archaeological properties. We propose a new method of 3D modeling of a relic shard that achieves sufficient accuracy and efficiency. With this approach, a single relic shard is scanned twice with a laser range finder, once for the front face and another for the back face. After that, the two sets of shape data for the front and back faces are integrated using physical constraints of the shard shape. We also developed a virtual reality (VR) technology-based relic restoration environment. Since we can simulate the restoration of relics in the virtual relic restoration environment before bonding the original shards, we can reduce errors during the restoration of real relics that were unavoidable conventionally