World-leading computer vision techniques used to create giant sculpture

SUNDAY, 6 MARCH 2011

The sculpture is called ‘Exposure’ and represents a man in a crouching position, who would be over 100m tall if standing upright. It is one of the largest and most adventurous pieces created by the sculptor, and he used a unique software program developed in Cambridge to help with its design.

To begin the process, Gormley himself was cast in plaster to make a life-size model, which was photographed from several angles using a standard single-lens camera. The pictures were used in the software developed by Roberto Cipolla and his team to create a fully-rotational 3D computer model ^[1]. Cipolla’s software uses the silhouette and texture in each photograph to guide the 'digital sculptor' to carve out the 3D shape. It allows the user to look at the structure from any viewpoint and manipulate textures and lighting effects, with results that are both technically impressive and visually stunning.

Gormley has used the program to create a sculpture that is highly complex and combines modern art with modern engineering. 2,000 steel components, fabricated by a pylon manufacturer in East Lothian, and over 5,000 bolts were used in its construction, which took over six years to complete. The finished sculpture is 5 metres taller than Gormley's Angel of the North and looks out to see from Zuiderzee, on the coast east of Amsterdam ^[2].

Written by Robert Jones

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