Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan

With these 3d captures, you can explore the 4km tunnel system that archaeologists created inside the temples at Copan that are closed to the public. The tunnels are often flooded by hurricanes and damaged by other natural forces--and collapsed on me and my Matterport scanner more than once--so this is a permanent record of how they appeared in 2022-23.

Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the Maya built their temples layer by layer outward, so to understand them, researchers tunneled into the structures to understand the earlier phases of construction. I arranged the guided versions of the virtual tours in a rough chronology, moving from the highest to the lowest and oldest areas: the hieroglyphic stairway composing the largest Maya inscription anywhere, the Rosalila temple that was buried fully intact, and finally the tomb of the Founder of the city, Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ.

I've been working to build on top of the Matterport SDK with Three.js--and then reusing the data in Unreal for a desktop experience or rendering for film (coming soon to PBS).

Blog about process: https://blog.mused.com/what-lies-beneath-digitally-recording...

Major thanks to the Matterport team for providing support with data alignment and merging tunnels while I was living in the village near site.

Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan
mused.com

Luke I'm so happy to see you here on HN. What you and the Mused team are doing is incredible.

The transitions are much smoother than Google street view

Matterport works special magic on the transition between 360 images in their SDK. As far as I understand it, they render 360 cube camera onto the material of the mesh of the environment as you move so it looks like you're moving in the real mesh but only seeing the 360 image. I tried to approximate this myself in Three.js but didn't get anywhere near the quality or performance of their work. Homage.

I love all these Maya inscriptions. I hope more are discovered (and hopefully some manuscripts) - the little we do have of Maya text is amazing. What are your top 3 things to tell people at parties that no little about Maya?