Dear Pablo, While I am unsure about lithic artifacts (as I don't have much experience in scanning these), I have personally succesfully used a NextEngine laser scanner to scan human crania. As you say, while it is not possible to get a complete scan in one go, it is usually possible to do it in two sittings. In the first instance, you place the cranium so that it is resting on its basicranium (more or less Frankfurt Horizontal) and complete a full 360 scan. Then, you fix the cranium in place so that its occipital bone is on the plateau and frontal bone upwards. Then you perform the second scan. Later down the line, you can stitch these two together quite easily using the software that comes with the scanner (ScanStudio), or use something like Meshlab. For this stitching, you just need to make sure that you have homologous landmarks that you can use to tell the software which structures should align.
Ofcourse, if you have a Breuckmann structured light scanner or similar with a wider field of view, it will be a bit easier to scan the crania, although you still need to do two sittings, since you are not capturing the area on which your specimen is resting- If it is available for you, I would advise looking into a handheld scanner, like the Artec Spider. The newer models are super fast, easy to use, and you scan in real time, meaning that you can quite easily turn your specimen around, continue scanning and stitch everything together with the accompanying software. Note that with all of these, it will still be quite difficult to get some of the more complex areas scanned. For example, the NextEngine sometimes has trouble in scanning the oribital roofs, as the lasers cannot reach this area easily. Something like the Artec has less issue with this, as you can move the scanner around more freely (as opposed to conventional scanners, where you move the specimen around and not the scanner). Lithic artifacts might be easier, but their reflective surfaces (think obisidian) might give you other issues since they can scatter the lasers projected by some of this hardware. Hope this helps and if you have any specific questions, please let me know. With kind regards, Abel Op wo 24 apr. 2019 om 05:44 schreef Murat Maga <m...@uw.edu>: > Dear Pablo, > > > > It has been a while I worked with surface scanners. When I was using a > Konica/Minolta system (15 years ago), we will do a rotational scan (using a > turntable), at specified interval (say every 20-30 degrees of rotation). > Then the software will stitch them together and then we would evaluate the > missed regions in 3D rendering, then reposition the specimen accordingly > and capture missing portions as individual snapshots and patch the 3D > reconstruction. So essentially it was a trial and error process. > > > > I think the quality of and the speed of the reconstruction software have > improved tremendously (almost to the point of real-time in some cases), but > I believe process is essentially the same. Perhaps someone with more recent > knowledge of this technology can chime in. > > > > M > > > > *From:* Pablo Fisichella <fisichellapa...@gmail.com> > *Sent:* Monday, April 22, 2019 7:29 AM > *To:* morphmet@morphometrics.org; morphmet_modera...@morphometrics.org > *Subject:* [MORPHMET] Help with surface scans > > > > Dear All > > I´m trying to obtain surface scans from human skulls and lithic artifacts > (projectile points). I wonder how can I get the most complete possible > scans, I mean usually is not possibly to obtain a complete scan at once. I > know that several post-scan processing software have functions to fuse > and/or align the different surfaces obtained and then create one surface > but perhaps several of you have some tips to obtain the most complete > possible surface scans. > > Any suggestion and advice is more than welcome > > All best, > > Pablo > > -- > MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MORPHMET" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org. > > -- > MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "MORPHMET" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org. > -- MORPHMET may be accessed via its webpage at http://www.morphometrics.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MORPHMET" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to morphmet+unsubscr...@morphometrics.org.
