Aphrodite Underwater: a statue recovered from underwater ruins off the coast of Alexandria, part of the submerged Ptolemaic-era city

Collection · 13 records

The Wall

No projected catalogue and no filler count. This grows one real capture at a time.

Viewing

What you are looking at

Aphrodite Underwater: a statue recovered from underwater ruins off the coast of Alexandria, part of the submerged Ptolemaic-era city

01 · Objects

Turn the object.

These are photogrammetry meshes from real photographs. Drag to orbit; the slow spin stops when you touch it. Lighting is a daylight studio so colour and surface stay readable. Wireframe shows the triangles; use it when a hole is still there.

Field log

Capture days, and what's been learned

The capture fix wasn't the mapper, it was the walk speedWeeks of tuning the reconstruction software for a scene that kept fragmenting turned out to be solving the wrong problem. The fix was in how the video was shot, not how it was processed.ProcessThe last batch from NMEC, and what its lighting did to a few of the meshesA closing capture session at the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization, and why some of that batch reconstructed with gaps photogrammetry usually shouldn't leave.Case StudyWhy Wikimedia Commons only takes STL, for nowCommons currently accepts 3D uploads only as binary STL: geometry only, no color or texture. What that means for a capture meant to end up there.Process

Read the full field log

About the archive

I'm Omar Atabany, a 3D scanning and photogrammetry practitioner based in Cairo. I run Fabricode, a small 3D printing and fabrication studio, and this practice grew out of that: turning physical objects and spaces into accurate, lasting digital records, using structured photography, photogrammetry, and laser or LiDAR scanning where a site calls for it.

I have no formal training in archaeology or conservation. What I bring is the capture and processing side: getting a faithful, measurable 3D record out of something fragile, hard to access, or at risk of being lost, with the same rigour as any commercial scanning job, just pointed somewhere that can't normally afford one.

I volunteer this capacity, free and on my own time, to museums, archaeological missions, and heritage or architecture studios in and around Cairo, separate from my day-to-day paid work. My first real collaboration is with the Egypt Wikimedians User Group, feeding a pilot capture into Wikimedia Commons and Wiki Loves Monuments Egypt. I'm in conversation with a few other institutions, and this page updates as those become real, not before.

A note on cost: when I do charge for a model or splat, the fee isn't for the object. It is compensation for the effort of capturing it: gaining access, the hours behind the camera, and the processing that turns raw images into a usable file. Paying doesn't mean I keep it forever; it's better understood as early access. Everything here is meant to reach Creative Commons and Wikimedia eventually, and "Released" on this site means exactly that: no longer paywalled, no longer held only on my own systems. I rarely charge at all, and only for captures complex or time-consuming enough that doing them for free isn't sustainable. Even then, only the download is ever behind that gate. Viewing a model here, in full, is never locked.

For institutions: if you manage a site, collection, or artifact that could use a documented 3D record, get in touch about what a first pilot capture could look like. omar@atabany.com

Aphrodite Underwater: a statue recovered from underwater ruins off the coast of Alexandria, part of the submerged Ptolemaic-era city

Who this is, and why

Capture
Structured coverageSystematic photo sets and, where appropriate, laser or LiDAR passes.
Process
AlignmentPhotogrammetry software resolves a dense point cloud into a textured mesh.
Archive
Built to lastFormats and metadata chosen for longevity, not convenience.
Share
Back, and outReturned to the institution, and public where appropriate.