Great Buddha of Nara
Great Buddha of Nara
Great Buddha of Nara belongs to the Todai-ji Temple. This temple is located
in the ancient capital of Nara, which is in Nara Prefecture, just south
of Kyoto. The construction of Todai-ji, was completed in 752 with the aim,
not only to house.
Great Buddha image, but also to consolidate the position of the city as
the capital and powerful center of Buddhism. The Great Buddha Hall, called
“Daibutsu-Den”, the main hall of Todai-ji, was rebuilt several times.
The current structure, completed in 1709, is only two-thirds of the original
size, but is still the largest wooden building in the world. The seated
figure inside is the world’s largest bronze image of Buddha. The Historic
Monuments of Ancient Nara were registered as UNESCO World Cultural Heritage
properties.
Scanning
In Nov.2000 and May.2001, we scanned the Great Buddha of Todaiji Temple by a Cyrax2500 laser range finder. The Cyrax2500 applies a time of flight and accurately measures the geometric model of visible surface on the static object. Therefore, the surface geometry of the Great Buddha is well preserved in the range data. Because the laser range finder captures only the visible surface, in order to obtain the entire surface, it is necessary to take range images from different directions. 114 range images were captured to create the complete model of the Great Buddha.
Result
NAll range images are aligned into a common coordinate system and merged into a unified mesh model. The results are shown in the following images. The complete model of the Great Buddha contains approximately 1,560,000 vertices and 3,000,000 meshes.
