A lighting coordinate database for 3D art objects

Abstract

Artists making three-dimensional art objects have an idea in their minds about how to illuminate their creations. For museums and galleries to illuminate these objects successfully according to the ideas of the artist, the types of light sources and their locations must be known. To fulfil this requirement, we propose a lighting coordinate database (LCD) to establish the coordinates of light sources. We describe two possible methods of obtaining data for this database: a computer software method and a hardware method. The head of Michelangelo's David is used to test the applicability of the two methods. In the software method, the scanned image of David's head is illuminated on the computer screen and data for the location of light sources are created. In the hardware method, a second set of data is created by illuminating a scale model of David using light emitting diodes (LED).