Zhang Fei Temple Digitally Remastered

gtaylor writes: "The Globe and Mail reports that the Three Gorges Zhang Fei Temple in China will be disassembled before the Three Gorges dam is completed (which will flood the area where the temple stands now), and reassembled somewhere drier. Meanwhile, the Canadian National Research Council has sent over some techs who have scanned the whole complex into super-accurate 3-D models as to be sure of rebuilding the temples precisely as they were."

Comments

three gorges

[RestiffBard]

be nice if they could just scan the whole damn and build that somewhere else.

project politics

[Alien54]

I suppose you could call this a momentary lucid act in an ongoing period of questionable policy. There are many folks that feel that the Three Gorges Dam Project is quite insane.

Although they had to do something as far as their river control problem, this might not have been the best solution

internet version

[mliu]

Sure would be nice if that Canadian National Research Council could make a copy of whatever format they're storing their 3D digital copy of into something that I could browse on my computer over the Internet. Off hand, I don't know about this domain enough to suggest anything, but maybe VRML or even a Quake 3 map would work?

I dunno, I sure don't have the time or means right now to be making a trip to the original Zhang Fei Temple in China, but it sure would neat to be able to do it virtually and walk around in the temple over the Internet on my computer.........plus this way I'd be able to see the temple in its original location like it was built, instead of moved to wherever is convenient after its reconstruction...

(heh, and if they released a Quake 3 map or something like that, that precisely modeled and displayed the original temple, it sure would be hilarious if they served it up too, even though I can't see that actually happening. You'd have the tourists walking around to look at the temple, when campers would jump out with whatever the default weapon is in Quake 3 and start hacking away at them)

(or how about this. They just open sourced Quake 2 right? Maybe that would make it a better medium to be releasing this on than Quake 3, seeing as it's free and all)

They should put the 3D Info online

[A Commentor]

Imagine if they had all this available online, and anyone could explore the ancient cities/structures without all the traveling and expense. It would be incredible if someone could see ancient Eygptian, Maya, Inca, Greek, etc... all though some sites on the internet...

So it would show the current conditions of the sites, and if some archeologist(sp?) could create models of what they think it looked like in ancient times. Just like some of the books that have the clear pages that show original and current conditions of the sites.

Re:Abu Simbel

[Krelnik]

> They did the same thing some 40 years ago in Egypt, at the temple of Abu Simbel built
> by Ramses the Great. When the Aswan High Dam was about to be built, engineers realized
> the temple would be buried under all of the water flow. So, it was moved to a higher
> location that would be safer. Of course, they did that without the use of
> supercomputers and 3D modelling

I was gonna mention that but you beat me to it. I remember being fascinated as a kid reading the National Geographic article where they showed the whole project in detail. Each block was carefully sliced out of the mountain and numbered for reassembly.

Here's a good link with lots of pictures of Abu Simbel.

3D art scanning

[Animats]

Marc Levoy's group at Stanford has been making 3D scans of artwork since 1992. They've now done Michaelangelo's David sculpture, several other major Italian statutes, and some famous buildings.