State Library Bunyip 3D

Near the front lawn of the Victorian State Library is this little character:

… which I took a bunch of photos of and created a 3D model:

First some background. The statue is related to the the State Library’s Scholastic Dromkeen Children’s Literature Collection. The bronze statue is of the bunyip from The bunyip of Berkeley’s Creek, authored by Jenny Wagner. The statue itself was created by Ron Brooks back in 1994. On the other side of the lawn is a sister statue Mr Lizard and gumnut baby from May Gibbs’ Snugglepot and Cuddlepie and sculpted by Smiley Williams:

… again, in bronze. I’ve been experimenting with creating 3D models from a single set of images where two or more distinct objects exist, are physically separate and are similar to each other in some way that I can’t quite articulate (yet). Photographs of two statues made from the same material at opposite ends of a lawn are a good example of what I’m looking for. Shiny new C3PO and rusty old C3PO is another good example of the kind of droids I’m looking for.

Moving along...

As you can see from the triangles, I took photos from fairly close and concentrated on the face of the bunyip:

I started from far away, worked in and then tried for a nice coverage:

The procedure was able to make two distinct point clouds from two distinct yet similar statues and with great alacrity… which is exactly what I was after and was ready to move along. But late one night, for no particular reason, something stirred and I continued to process the data into a 3D model for the fun of it:

The fish were scared…

“What am I?”

Bunyip profile

“What do I look like? Am I handsome? Am I???”

Bunyip meshlab render

“… and looked straight through him. Bunyips simply do not exist.”

Bunyip meshlab xray shader