Behind the Scenes- the 3D in Archaeological Illustration

3D Model of later Richmond castle provided by English Heritage and below my paint over of earlier Richmond castle with later features in 3D model removed

3D Model of Scollands Hall provided by English Heritage and my paint over

Putton Lane- 3D model provided by Context One archaeology and my paint over

In archaeology, accuracy is of paramount importance, so much so that some clients I work with make a 3D model inhouse, some more detailed than others, and give it to me to paint over.

This is such an important part that usually when my clients dont do this stage themselves, I do it myself by building a model, these days in blender. Sometimes if they have extra detail like scans of the wider landscape, I even make displacement maps for the ground plane to get the contours of the landscape correct. For those of you who dont know, displacement maps are greyscale (a scale of greys between and white) images which you can paint, and then put that ontop of a 3D model to change the models geometry without having to model, great for natural landscapes.

I then take these 3D models and add the light, texture and figures. I start usually by drawing over the model to work out the  perspective of the camera lens, sometimes even going as far as getting the wider cone of vision. This allows me to tweak the model to a better perspective if the image requires it. I then do a paint over of this to get the colour and light and general feel, and then this is finished up with textures and figures to give it more life and realism.