Architectural Salvage Fragment

thingiverse

In downtown Sioux Falls, South Dakota, there's a fantastic gift shop called Zandbroz Variety that's full of amazing and intriguing things. Behind an authentic drug store soda counter in the back of the store lies a small area filled with antiques and vintage items. I always discover something to photograph at this store. Recently, I've found numerous objects that caught my eye and would make excellent subjects for 3D modeling. This architectural salvage piece is from a former Shrine Temple and features the Shriners logo. Although it was likely mass-produced, its exact material composition remains unclear (terra cotta or tinted concrete). Measuring about 12 inches on each side, this fragment is substantial and weighs a lot. To create this 3D model, I pulled out my trusty iPhone 6 Plus after carefully transporting the block to a spot with indirect lighting. I then snapped numerous photos of it from various angles, taking close-ups of its intricate details like the sphinx, star, and scimitar. In total, I took about 58 shots of the block from different directions and distances. Back home, I downloaded all the photos and reviewed them for sharpness, discarding any blurry images. Fortunately, none of my shots were out of focus. In Photoscan, I opened a folder containing all the JPEG photos I'd taken and used the 'High' setting throughout each step of the process. After exporting the completed mesh into Meshmixer to fine-tune a few areas with unexpected artifacts, I imported the corrected mesh back into Photoscan for texture mapping as a final step. For texture mapping, I chose 8192 along with color averaging to achieve a more balanced exposure without any unusual color shifts. To my surprise, this model only took about two hours to create!