3D scanning of exhibits of the museum's historical and artistic complex

Remote work with artifacts, increasing the speed of scientific information exchange and virtual museums, allowing you to get acquainted with collections "closed" in museum repositories without leaving home? All this is possible thanks to modern 3D technologies, which provide new opportunities for the preservation and study of cultural heritage.

3D scanning technologies have been used for a long time when working with historical values, and one of the directions is the creation of virtual expositions.

World museums already offer virtual tours that make it easy to learn about the history of a country or region from the comfort of your home or office. There are many reasons for a virtual visit: the lack of time for a trip, and the desire to get acquainted with the museum’s exposition in advance before visiting it, or to study individual exhibits in detail without haste at home. Some museums may be located in remote or hard-to-reach places, in such cases virtual visits become an alternative means of studying history.

Unlike physical space, virtual space allows you to exhibit any number of exhibits, which makes the technology attractive for museums with limited exhibition space.

In the modern world, the creation of virtual museums is becoming an important direction in the fields of education, science and culture.
At the invitation of the administration of the Balakhna Museum Historical and Art Complex, RangeVision specialists participated in the preparation of 3D models for their website: it was necessary to perform high-quality 3D scanning of several exhibits with the transfer of color, shape and the smallest details of objects.

All the 3D scanning work took place on the territory of the Balakhna complex. Balakhna is an ancient Russian city founded in 1474 and located on the right bank of the Volga River, 35 km from Nizhny Novgorod. In ancient Russia, this city was the center of industry and was famous for the production of stove and architectural tiles. The tiles were used in the construction of churches, the cladding of houses and the laying of stoves.

The first of the digitized exhibits was the tile of the Church of the Savior (18th century).

The tile consisted of four elements and was carefully moved and installed for scanning. The scan was performed in parts, and after shooting the frame from one angle, the scanner moved. Upon completion of the scan, all the frames were combined and combined into a single 3D model.

The second exhibit, for which a 3D three-dimensional model was made, was a steel helmet from the second half of the 16th century from the Sheremetev collection.

The dark surface of the helmet is decorated with floral ornaments and inscriptions in Arabic. This is a difficult object to 3D scan, because it was necessary to obtain a high-quality surface texture. Since special markers cannot be attached when scanning with textures to simplify the assembly of fragments, the subsequent stitching and merging of scans, as in the first case, was performed manually.

The next digitized exhibits were a badge "Balakhninsky mayor" and an inkwell from the 17th century. They had the same requirements as a helmet.

All the work on scanning the four exhibits took 4 hours, and it took about four more hours to combine the collected data and build models. The finished 3D models were transferred for subsequent posting on the museum’s website.
The administration of the Balakhna Museum Historical and Art Complex and the project participants were satisfied with the fruitful cooperation.