3D Modelling of Geological Fossils and Ores by Combining High-resolution Textures with 3D Scanning Data

Remote 3D virtual reality systems for visualizing fossils and ores are a kind of efficient tools to facilitate communication and research in geology and palaeontology community. During the visualization procedure, we must keep not only the geometrical data but also the surface textures and color information. They are very important for the specialists to analyse the forming time and environments of the fossils and ores. In this paper, we describe a modelling procedure for generating 3D models of the fossils and ores based on 3D scanning data and color images. We analyse key problems that we encountered during the modelling procedure, and propose some new methods to solve them. The methods include scanning path planning, panoramic texture generation and texture mapping. Finally, some models for rare fossils and ores are presented.