Aquis Querquennis

How was the Aquis Querquennis 3D Scan? - AquisQuerquennis 3D

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Aquis3D 15 May, 2020 No Comments

In recent years, 3D digistation scan has become an indispensable tool in archaeological work, both for sites located on the Earth’s surface and for those underground.

This new way of working provides accurate and detailed documentation of the different parts of an object or place of study to obtain reliable information in accordance with reality, as well as to identify the different pathologies that may affect the object or, as in in this case, use all that information for other even more interesting purposes.

One of the first phases of the Aquis Querquennis 3D project consisted of 3D digitisation of the entire site, which would serve as the basis for the subsequent virtual recreation of the complex.

In the case of “Aquis”, the digitisation required 30 hours of work, using 120 scanning points that included the entire area of the Via Nova, the accesses and the military camp and later the Aquae Querquennae museum (for possibly turning the location into a museum). These scans were scheduled with an average time for high resolution and HDR imaging.

Carrying out data collection at one of the 120 points with the FARO Focus S150
Carrying out data collection at one of the 120 points with the FARO Focus S150

The operation of the 3D Scanner is easy to understand. A FARO Focus terrestrial laser scanner was used, which scans a surface and captures thousands of points per second with a fan laser beam (totally harmless for the scanned object). The end result is a 3D point cloud, made up of hundreds of thousands of individual measurements in an (x, y, z) coordinate system to form a 3-dimensional model of the objects found. This “point cloud” is of high quality and realistic since these points can reflect the colour of the recorded surface regardless of sunlight. This is possible thanks to the latest updates in which neither the cloud nor the images have been burned.

Subsequent work carried out over several weeks consisted of processing all the information obtained through the FARO. Two well-differentiated point clouds were separated. The first will be used as a base for the virtual recreation of the camp since, in each of the videos, the virtual image of the space will appear as it was at that time. The second cloud is obtained by digitisation using a pulsed light hand scanner, Artec EVA, of the model that exists in the museum, built from the work of experts basing it on the studied and discovered evidence of the site. This cloud will be very useful as an added extra to the first in the virtualisation phase.

Point cloud of one of the Aquis Querquennis areas obtained after laser scanning of the complex.
Point cloud of one of the Aquis Querquennis areas obtained after laser scanning of the complex.

Following this whole process, the work of virtualisation and reconstruction will be much simpler and more accurate, since highly accurate, detailed documentation and a digital file from this process have been obtained that can be consulted and worked on. If required, this register can also be used to obtain more detailed information on items which have not needed to be studied at this moment in the project, but which could be very useful in the future.