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Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

cosmowenman.substack.com

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Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#51

Post by wiz21c »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #46
ACS_Solver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same person fought for years to get the Berlin Egyptian museum to release 3D scans of the famous Nefertiti bust. The museum also claimed it would undermine its revenue streams through the gift shop, but as the case progressed, that turned out to be very misleading - the museum had made less than 5000 EUR over ten years from 3D scans. https://reason.com/2019/11/13/a-german-museum-tried-to-hide-...

Why would they lie about it then? These museums are subsidized by tax payers, not only just local money but often with additional EU funding as well. The scans were paid for by the public. This seems comically evil for no apparent reason.

Although I agree(stuff bought with tax money should go to tax payers), you do realize that many people don't see it that way. Especially when their career rely on withholding the stuff in question.

Another example: if people have access to 3D scans, then they might come to the museum anymore because they can make a virtual tour... (I doubt of that, but well, it's an example)

But, of course, as a tax payer, I wanted these 3D scans (somebody voted for that at some point). So now the pandora's box is open.

The problem, I guess, is that a museum is not there to be profitable. Unfortunately, "modern management" crept in there and now they have to be somehow profitable or at least make an effort to be so. And so, information withholding is a way to achieve that goal.

As a society we have to choose: we keep museums so that everyone can enjoy art, or we think they have to be profitable first...

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#52

Post by gyomu »

myrmidon wrote: post #48

This is utterly puzzling to me. I just don't understand how you sit on the museums side of the trial on this, without seriously questioning your own position and conceding immediately. They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide those scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How can they even reconcile those arguments with preserving the artists legacy/serving the common good? I'm also surpri…

> pure stubbornness or some weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side

Little people fighting for their big egos are far from uncommon in those institutions.

> Is there no equivalent to "contempt of court" in french law? Is this typical?

The French legal system has been under extreme duress over the last decade or so.

https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2024/04/02/justice-la-c...

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#53

Post by mmooss »

diggan wrote: post #21
mmooss wrote: post #9

Anyone in the world with an internet connection can view, interact with, and download the British Museum’s 3D scan of the Rosetta Stone, for example. The public can freely access hundreds of scans of classical sculpture from the National Gallery of Denmark, and visitors to the Smithsonian’s website can view, navigate, and freely download thousands of high-quality scans of artifacts ranging from dinosaur fossils to th…

> Has anyone used these in games? No doubt someone has put some of them into games. However, most likely not in it's original shape/form, as the scans usually produce highly inefficiently (but high resolution, great for renders) meshes. The meshes from scans tend to be a mess, and when inserting a 3D model for games, you care a lot about how optimized the meshes are, and that the mesh has a low polygon count as other…

That makes a lot of sense, thanks.

Still, let's not forget that the detail, the last nuances, is what makes great art so powerful. Lots of people can paint sunflowers or a cathedral (or make a typical computer game).

Working that into a computer game is of course a big practical issue, as you say; also, unless the players will zoom way in for some reason, possibly the maximum effect is a resolution that's still less than what the museums provide. But maybe for the ultimate prize at the end, a close look in the treasure chest, when all the other on-screen action is done? It's hard to provide a visual reward that lives up to the moment, or exceeds it, after 100 hours of play.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#54

Post by BlueTemplar »

permo-w wrote: post #25
diggan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Has anyone used these in games? No doubt someone has put some of them into games. However, most likely not in it's original shape/form, as the scans usually produce highly inefficiently (but high resolution, great for renders) meshes. The meshes from scans tend to be a mess, and when inserting a 3D model for games, you care a lot about how optimized the meshes are, and that the mesh has a low polygon count as other…

so it wouldn't be easy because these scans are highly detailed and so would require too many polygons to be loaded at once would this remain true for modern higher end graphics cards?

Higher end graphics cards probably also mean more detailed scans being available.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#55

Post by Tarq0n »

krisoft wrote: post #45
permo-w wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so it wouldn't be easy because these scans are highly detailed and so would require too many polygons to be loaded at once would this remain true for modern higher end graphics cards?

> it wouldn't be easy because these scans are highly detailed and so would require too many polygons to be loaded at once In practice a a 3d artist could very easily create low poly models for these objects. For that low poly replica the high poly model can serve as a useful reference. (But to be honest many artist can just look at images of the object and do the same.) This is not even hard, on the order of minutes…

Maybe I'm buying into the marketing too much, but it's my understanding that Unreal engine 5 can do this automatically.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#56

Post by mmooss »

Tarq0n wrote: post #47
mmooss wrote: post #9

Anyone in the world with an internet connection can view, interact with, and download the British Museum’s 3D scan of the Rosetta Stone, for example. The public can freely access hundreds of scans of classical sculpture from the National Gallery of Denmark, and visitors to the Smithsonian’s website can view, navigate, and freely download thousands of high-quality scans of artifacts ranging from dinosaur fossils to th…

Path of Exile has some fountains and sculptures in it that are based on publicaly available scans iirc. Edit: best source I can find on this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPy74M9FNpY&t=690s and here's one from the Louvre: https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8b6f54/nice_de...

The Louvre sculture is the sort of thing I mean. Wow.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#57

Post by bombcar »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #46
ACS_Solver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same person fought for years to get the Berlin Egyptian museum to release 3D scans of the famous Nefertiti bust. The museum also claimed it would undermine its revenue streams through the gift shop, but as the case progressed, that turned out to be very misleading - the museum had made less than 5000 EUR over ten years from 3D scans. https://reason.com/2019/11/13/a-german-museum-tried-to-hide-...

Why would they lie about it then? These museums are subsidized by tax payers, not only just local money but often with additional EU funding as well. The scans were paid for by the public. This seems comically evil for no apparent reason.

Bureaucracies always argue for the continuation of the bureaucracy and its funding, no matter how insane or small. It's what they naturally do and you have to explicitly fight against it.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#58

Post by newaccount74 »

myrmidon wrote: post #48

This is utterly puzzling to me. I just don't understand how you sit on the museums side of the trial on this, without seriously questioning your own position and conceding immediately. They were basically arguing that they are entitled to hide those scan artifacts to better protect their gift shop?! How can they even reconcile those arguments with preserving the artists legacy/serving the common good? I'm also surpri…

> weird, jealous hoarding mentality happening on the museums side

That's exactly it. I work on a website that makes ancient artefacts accessible. A lot of them are in museums. You wouldn't believe how many museums:

- don't want to show you their archive

- don't want to let you take pictures

- want you to share only low res pictures

- want you to get permission before you can "publish" their artefacts, etc.

It's extremely common for museums to have courtyards or basements with special "unpublished" pieces that they don't let anyone see. You have to be a special friend of the director or something to get to see them.

It's ridiculous. Fortunately, the people working on the website are relentless, and manage to eventually get collection after collection photographed and added mostly by being patient. For some collections it took 20 years before they got access -- but since everyone uses their website, and everyone apart from the local museum director wants the stuff to be in there, eventually they get access to most things.

(Museums in Italy are the worst, allegedly. They really think they own antiquity.)

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#59

Post by lupusreal »

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #46
ACS_Solver wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This same person fought for years to get the Berlin Egyptian museum to release 3D scans of the famous Nefertiti bust. The museum also claimed it would undermine its revenue streams through the gift shop, but as the case progressed, that turned out to be very misleading - the museum had made less than 5000 EUR over ten years from 3D scans. https://reason.com/2019/11/13/a-german-museum-tried-to-hide-...

Why would they lie about it then? These museums are subsidized by tax payers, not only just local money but often with additional EU funding as well. The scans were paid for by the public. This seems comically evil for no apparent reason.

Maintaining the status quo is almost always the path of least resistance for organizations like this. Saying no to something new is easy, to say yes puts you out on a limb with uncertain strength.

Re: Secret 3D scans in the French Supreme Court

#60

Post by bombcar »

DannyBee wrote: post #33
Jyaif wrote: post #7

> in private, RMN admits it won’t release its scans because it wants to protect its gift shops’ sales revenue from competition from the public making their own replicas. Sounds like a pretty good reason

Except it turns out they also make basically no money from this right now - it's not a meaningful portion of their funding or other monetary support. This is actually true of most large art museums. SF MoMa makes only 7% of revenue (not actual dollars in funding) from their gift shop and that number only goes in one direction over the years. Smaller art museums often depend more but that is also changing. So It's jus…

It's also an argument, that even if you granted all there premises - could be quantifiable.

If the gift shop makes $x per year in toto, and some percentage is (or could be) 3D scans, you now have a maximum dollar amount that they can possibly be worth (by calculating the cost of a perpetual annuity). Can't be more - and so even in the worst case you've changed it from a "we will never" to a "we want $x before we do" question.

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