As the lamps group, we thought we were lucky. The museum provided us with a leaflet with information about eight lamps: exactly two lamps per person. I translated all information to English for my group mates, which meant we already had context and metadata for our objects.

Then photographing day came. We started photographing and we decided to process the photos in Metashape immediately. That was when we found out we actually were not that lucky…

Most of the lamps had characteristics which made them hard to process for Metashape. Almost all lamps had a reflective part made out of glass. As we learned, that causes difficulties, and creates holes in the model. Also, the lamps had details that were hard to process. The hooks which were used to carry them, for instance, generally did not process well.

Petrol Lamp with Chatter Igniter by 3dnederlandsmijnmuseum on Sketchfab

Already in the alignment phase we experienced difficulties in the museum. From most lamps we took two sets of pictures, hoping that we could fix the problems later. Masking turned out to be our savior. Although that was a boring and time-consuming job, from the results it appeared it was worth it.

Even though masking helped a lot, I still had to remove noise manually in my lamps, especially in the glass parts of the lamps. Those parts still are not perfect, however through annotations I could explain the cause of the noise and the holes, and show the viewer with how the original object looks.

Uploading in Sketchfab caused new challenges. Apparently, it processes the models differently from Metashape, especially in terms of texture. In the mesh caps of the lamps, the mesh-texture did not turn out very truthful. Again, the annotations turned out to be useful here, to show the viewer how these parts should have looked.

Petrol Lamp with Electric Igniter by 3dnederlandsmijnmuseum on Sketchfab

All in all, I improved my technical skills during the 3D-modelling process. Besides, I experienced that it is impossible to create an exact replica in the form of a 3D-model. The importance of transparency via annotations became clear to me as well. I have taken this into account in my models. I hope they help the viewers of my models understanding the Dutch mining past.