During Week 6, we ventured to gain more practice in 3D modeling on a larger scale, focusing on objects such as buildings. I chose Chaney House for the building I wanted to model for this project. Chaney is an interest house on campus, also known as Culinary House, and was formerly home to CANOE House. Chaney is located at the corner of 2nd St and Maple St near Faculty Club and Watson Hall on the east side of campus.
Image of Chaney House, Courtesy of Carleton College Office of Residential Life
My first attempt to model this building was through the app Polycam, which allows you to digitally scan and capture objects, rendering them into full models. Attempting to build the model through this app was harder than I thought it would be at first. I used the tool that turns photos into objects and took around 100 captures, going around the house to try and get as much data as possible. In the end, I got the model below, which is fairly good but lacking many details, which may be due to not getting enough close-up pictures on my part. While it isn’t perfect, it is still a very good initial model of the house, accounting for factors such as the house’s height, which prevents me from capturing many parts of the roof.
I used the same images captured for the Polycam model to create a model in MetashapePro. The MetashapePro model had similar issues with the roof but showed the windows in greater detail. I assumed that building models would be extremely difficult at first. While they were not easy to create, modern tools offer many ways to do impressive modeling with fewer resources. The process also helped me reflect on what I have learned so far about photogrammetry in our class explorations and readings.
Attempting to model a building is vastly different from viewing it through photographs or maps, as it offers a perspective easily digestible to the human mind, allowing assumptions about size, appearance, and scale. While photographs and maps can convey a lot about a building’s overall appearance and location, a model can highlight the structural design and unique features of all sides of a building. The process of photogrammetry also encourages attention to details, such as the signs near Chaney House’s front door. While they are so small that it would be easy to ignore them, it is important to pay attention to even the finest details to create an accurate representation of a building at a specific point in time, especially if you hope to use it for historic preservation.
Moving from a passive observer to an active modeler changes my thinking about communicating about campus in the context of lived experience and history, reminding me that oral history can be expanded upon through visual historical work. As a resident of CANOE, also known as Wade House, it would have been interesting to see these processes used when the house was used as the CANOE house rather than Culinary. Preservation can be done on even larger scales, so I would love to see it given more attention in conversations about historical practices.
I liked how you linked the technical aspects of photo processing to concepts of history and personal experience. I could strongly relate to your description of changing from being a passive observer to an active modeler, particularly when it came to preserving areas on campus that change over time. Your observation regarding small details, such as the signs near the front entrance, got me to consider how much significance may be found in things we normally take for granted. I also wish more campus buildings had been recorded in this manner prior to modifications or repairs.