Historical sites throughout the world may also benefit from the technology by adding on-site virtual representations of objects and locations to their tours, lessening the direct impacts of tourism and/or allowing those with disabilities to experience the past as well. And perhaps most importantly, cultural resource specialists can use this new 3D technology to conserve and protect the past, recording it in fine detail in almost no time at all.
Fig 3 The project area where scanning has been done
Methodology
The entire project area (Fig 3) was covered with large number of trees with very less visibility of the structure. Hence it was very important to plan the scanning location in advance. The entire survey was divided into four steps with each step covering an enclosure.
The entire laser scanning survey is based on a control point which was set-up using TCR 307 and GPS on the northwest corner of the temple complex. This was done in order to orient all the scanworlds into a single control.
The survey commenced with the scanning of third enclosure where most of the fallen members are there. At first the western side (Fig 4) of the third enclosure was scanned which includes the central pavilion, which was in fact the entrance of the temple. It took almost four days to scan the entire western side of the third enclosure, both from inside and outside. Scans were taken from inside, in order to provide sectional drawings to the client. The northern and southern side of enclosure III took a day each to scan all the details whereas the eastern side took almost two days to scan, as 70 per cent of the structure on the eastern side were damaged, which is critical for reconstruction.
Most of the scans were taken using high resolution of 1000 x 1000. Prior to the actual scans, scanner locations were marked on the map to ensure smooth survey. Digital pictures were taken all around the scanner location to mark-up the drawings on the map. The scanning was done phase-by-phase. It took more than five days to cover the western pavilion where scanning from both the sides of the wall was done, along with scans inside the elevation.
Registrations of the scans were done in the field itself to correlate all the scans. The control points were shifted all around the temple with the help of TCR 307. The registrations of the scans were done in the field itself in order to minimize the number of field visits to the site. Cyra targets as well as natural targets were used for registration purposes.
In order to create cross sections it was important to scan the structures from the inside also and then register it to the same grid. Placing the targets plays a key role in this kind of registration. The entire western wall was scanned from inside. Due to unavailability of power at the site, spare laptop batteries were used for continuous scanning. Two spare laptops with loaded Cyclone software were also used for scanning.
