Usuki Stone Buddhas
Usuki Stone Buddhas, National Treasures
The Stone Buddhas in Usuki city, located in the western island of Kyushu, were designated as National Treasures in April, 1995, the first stone Buddhas to be named as such. They are called "Usuki Magai-Butsu," and consist of 59 individual Buddhas in total. These images are sculpted on soft cliffs made from lava or sand stone that abound in this area because of volcanic activities. Historians say that they were carved during the 12th to 14th centuries.
Scanning
In Dec. 2001, we tried to model these images with the cooperation of NARIPT and USUKI City. The purpose of this scanning is to detect the degradations or the progress of cracks by 3D range measurement techologies.
Cyrax2400 and MINOLTA VIVID 900 range scanner ware used to model large
area (eoarse model), and small area (detail model), respectively. The latter
was mainly used for one of the Buddha images that has been very damaged
by so many cracks and exfoliations.
| Cyrax 2400 (640000 points) | 7 scans |
| MINOLTA VIVID900 (300000 points) | 224 scans |
Result
Acquired range images ware aligned to the same co-ordinate. They ware merged to from a complete model. The model was then manually refined. Follows are the samples of the final model.
Resulting Geometrical Model
| Size (in VRML file) | 160,596KB |
| Polygons | 3,285,809 |