More information about laser scanning process and best practices can be found at: http://guides.archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/g2gp/LaserScan_Toc
Members of the Digital Antiquity can access some sample materials at: \\itfs1.asurite.ad.asu.edu\library$\shares\Project\tDAR\sample data\laser scans
This document covers strategies for how tDAR might handle 3D-scanned materials. Including audience, user workflow, and the potential tDAR modifications necessary to accommodate these types of resources.
3D scanners record and measure precise three dimensional information of a real world object or environment. The informaton is output from the scanner as a 3D point cloud where each point is assigned an X,Y, and Z coordinate. Some scanners also record intensity information (I) and/or color information (RGB). A number of additional datasets can be derived from point clouds including polygonal meshes, CAD files, and others. The recommended format for archiving polygonal meshes is the Wavefront OBJ format. The OBJ format inlcudes 3 files: the object file (.obj) which contain the 3d point data of the resource and material files (.jpg and .mtl) which map to the color of the resource at each point described in the object file). Additional information on other derivative datasets can be pulled from ADS Guide. It is also recommended to archive any images/photographs from a project survey.
CAST uses an excel spreadsheet for defining project-level metadata, as well as documenting details of the scanning and post-processing. It also contains a variable number of records describing the contents of the zip file containing the scanning derivative files.
The audience for these resources would be split between:
We imagine the data-entry workflow for a tDAR user to work something like this:
Once uploaded, tDAR would display a normal record with the technical metadata and display image for the object