Photogrammetry and 3D models of heritage

Capability

What we can actually do

Not a statement of intent. Below is what the organisation works with and can carry out for a partner institution, museum or community.

High-precision photogrammetry

Processing in Reality Capture at LOD 400 detail — enough to read a half-worn carved inscription that cannot be read by eye on the monument itself.

3D-printed replicas

A physical copy can be printed from the model, to scale or at full size. For objects already destroyed, this is the only way to recover the form rather than just the image.

Academic grounding

The organisation works together with the cyber-physical systems laboratory of Ternopil Ivan Puluj National Technical University. Recording work feeds into published research, not only into an archive on a hard drive.

Fieldwork

Travel to villages across the Ternopil region and neighbouring areas, recording on site, and dealing with local councils and communities. Much of this heritage does not stand in a museum — it stands in a cemetery outside a village.

3D recording

What a finished model looks like

Sacred sculpture of the 18th and 19th centuries — saints, apostles, angels, the Mother of God — recorded photogrammetrically and processed as part of joint work with the National Reserve “Castles of Ternopil Region”, 2024–2025. The recording and the processing of the models were the organisation's contribution; the collection itself is held by the reserve.

3D model of a carved angel figure in green robes — An angel in the form of a young man

3D model of a sculpture of the Apostle Paul — Apostle Paul

3D model of a winged infant angel — A flying cherub

3D model of a sculpture of Saint Nicholas — Saint Nicholas

The models were recorded at a resolution fine enough to read the marks of the chisel and small losses in the surface — the same resolution that allows a full-size replica to be printed if the original is lost.

In the field

What recording on site looks like

Photographs from field trips in September 2026, Ternopil region. The order is the same every time: first the wide view — where the cemetery sits in relation to the church and the village — then every stone on its own, with its inscription and in raking light. One such series serves equally as source material for a 3D model and as evidence for checking against the archives.

An overgrown village cemetery, crosses in tall grass, a church on the horizon — An old cemetery below the church: left untended, the rows grow over until they cannot be seen from the road.

Stone grave markers stacked against a church wall — Grave markers stacked against the church wall — no longer where they were set.

A stone slab with a worn inscription covered in lichen — An inscription eaten away by lichen: the eye can no longer read it, only the relief is left.

A carved surname on a stone grave marker — A surname cut into stone. It emerges only at one particular angle of light.

A carved stone cross in a cemetery — A stone cross with carved ornament — the craft has gone from most villages.

A wrought-iron cross on a stone base: iron and stone decay at different speeds.

A grave mound with a cross in the middle of a village — a monument nobody has catalogued.

Stone figures of saints standing in the open air — Stone figures in the open air. These are exactly the objects a 3D model is made from.

Everything shown stands in publicly accessible places: village cemeteries, wayside crosses and figures. We do not publish precise coordinates, and we do not photograph private individuals.