Polynomial Texture Mapping

Staff and MSc Virtual Pasts students from the Archaeological Computing Research Group used a novel form of photography on site at Herculaneum to provide an extremely detailed record of the texture and colour of the painted surfaces. The technique, known as polynomial texture mapping, was developed by HP Labs and has been pioneered on an archaeological excavation on Southampton University’s Portus Project.  The recording approach developed in Southampton, a collaboration with Dr Kirk Martinez in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, allows rapid capture of very high resolution images of surface details on artefacts such as coins, pottery stamps, carved inscriptions and of course painted surfaces such as frescoes and sculpture. 

An online example of the Amazon PTM dataset is available. (NOTE: This page requires Java and download of c. 1MB file)

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