Lion fountain head

thingiverse

In 1907, the Humane Society installed a fountain in downtown Sioux Falls, designed specifically for horses and animals to use at the corner of 8th & N Phillips Ave. The fountain features a circular pool with a large central bowl and a tall square block on top. Each face of the block is adorned with a bronze lion head featuring a water tap that pours from its mouth. This iconic landmark has become a beloved fixture in the community and a popular spot for photos. How I Created This I used an LG G4 phone equipped with the native camera app to capture 14 photographs from various angles, showcasing as much of the lion's face as possible. Although there were some small areas that remained unexplored, it wasn't until after completing the model that I became aware of these omissions. When taking the photos, the late-day sun cast a gentle shadow on the lion's face, preventing harsh shadows or highlights from forming. Once back home, I imported the raw files into Adobe Lightroom and used a custom camera profile to correct distortions and vignetting. Next, I carefully adjusted the exposures and tones to achieve uniformity among the photos, then checked each image for clarity and sharpness before exporting them as 8-bit TIF files. I imported the photo set into Agisoft Photoscan and selected the 'High' setting for each step. After creating the sparse cloud, I adjusted the bounding box to focus only on the lion's face, excluding surrounding stonework. Once Photoscan had completed the mesh, I found it still had some noise and small holes at the top of the mane. I exported the model as an OBJ file and opened it in Meshmixer, where I carefully smoothed out the most problematic areas along the edges of the lion's face before filling the holes. Despite my efforts, I wasn't fully satisfied with the model, so I reopened it in Remake to refine its details. As a final step, I reduced the mesh size to approximately 125K while preserving the essential details. I then imported the cleaned OBJ back into Photoscan and completed the model by adding the texture layer.