Decapitated Dante

It’s not often I blog about my proper work related stuff here. I do post onto Instagram things I’m doing or find of interest.

Today, I’ve been “playing” or “investing my time with practical research,” with the latest version of Realityscan by Epic Games / Unreal Engine.

It’s free and so easy to use.

The team were recently asked to digitise this small plaster bust of Dante Alighieri. It had been found in the library in the condition you see here.

I thought it would make a great test piece for trying the app. I used maybe a third of the allowed images needed to make the model. Max is 250 I think. It gets uploaded and processed as you shoot. A quick crop and it’s uploaded automatically to Sketchfab.

From there I downloaded the models separately and combined them in Blender.

I’m always amazed by Blender. There are so many settings, menus and sub menus that I’m awestruck by those that create fantastic work in this software. One day I’ll find time time to delve into it. For now, I just pick the tools and functions I need.

Basically, this was to combine both head and torso into the one scene and export directly again to Sketchfab.

If viewing on a mobile device, you can use one, two, and three finger screen interactions to rotate, pan, and move a light source around the model.

Decapitated Dante by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library on Sketchfab

And for a bit of fun, I thought I’d have a look at Gravity and Collision settings in Blender. So the head fall off the torso onto the ground. Again, it’s a case of finding the right YouTube videos and picking out bits that might be helpful.

Decapitated Dante: Animated by The John Rylands Research Institute and Library on Sketchfab

I had loads of issues getting this to work, and I’ve sort of achieved what I wanted. There are some limitations for what Sketchfab will accept from Blender? Or there is the way I do it…

So the Realityscan app is well worth a look. It would be great if it could capture all around the object. The underneath surface is still missing from the scan. Maybe in the near future an update will help with that.

Download it and give it a go.