Spectral Modeling and Virtual Restoration on a Polychrome Medieval Sculpture

The presented work is led in the framework of a general collaboration between three academic labs, industrial partners and Cultural institutions (Centre des Monuments Nationaux, Louvre museum). Such a pluridisciplinary work always in progress at Ecole Centrale Paris deals with 3D digitization, simulation, rapid prototyping, virtual restoration applied on a french medieval sculpture. The main purpose is to virtually represent a polychrome statue of the XIIIth century in high quality spectral rendering, to simulate its visual and original appearance at that period. The complete process used throughout all the phases of the project mainly involves optical devices that ensure no physical contact with the museum object. This article describes the complete chain of engineering resources and the main models we used for accomplishing our objective. From 3D capture without contact to plaster replica, the complete process will be described and illustrated with images and objects during the conference. Some sequences extracted from the didactic and scientific movies produced will also be presented.