Repainting

We have begun to develop physically accurate digital comparators to the real pigments, although this is an extremely complex process, as is the generation of physically accurate lighting and architectural environments.

The appearance of pigment is a function of a great many factors and our first step has been to create a digital copy of the painting as it survives today. Having perfected this we are considering, with expert guidance, the possible original painted surfaces. At its simplest computer graphics enables the 'mapping' of photographs of pigment onto the laser scanned model. However, such an approach has very little in common with the physical realities. Instead we build up the textured model in a layered approach. This enables the resulting model to account for aspects such as sub-surface scattering within the marble, interactions between the pigment and marble surface, BRDF and other functions relating to orientation, surface normals, accessibility and colour shaders. Such an approach allows an object to be perceived in a physically accurate, quantifiable way.