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[IbizaPocholo]

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-02-22-the-great-kinect-art-heist




In October 2015 Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles walked into the Neues Museum of Berlin and together stole one of the world's most priceless artefacts: the bust of Queen Nefertiti. And, incredibly, they claim to have used Kinect to do it. It was the older model too, for the Xbox 360.

Because, yes, although the bust itself remained safely in place behind a tall box of bulletproof glass in the museum, the pair managed to walk out with an incredibly detailed 3D scan with nobody the wiser.

More information in the link.

 

[Shifty]

That's a quality article for the history, but jesus if the title isn't some clickbait garbage. I was expecting some sort of juicy e-heist.

Using the Kinect to 3D scan a priceless egyptian artifact is as much theft as stealing someone's soul by taking a photo of them. That is to say, not at all.

 

[Alx]

Yeah and apparently their claim is very suspicious, and people suspect them from having used a stolen official 3D model instead of making their own.
The "thieves" have a point though, for something that belongs to all of humanity like historical work of art, things like 3D models should be more easily available (ideally it would be free, once the cost of the scan has been covered).

 

[llien]

One of my first thoughts when seeing the sculpture in Berlin's museum was how weakly it was protected for a priceless piece of work.

 

[McCheese]

One of my first thoughts when seeing the sculpture in Berlin's museum was how weakly it was protected for a priceless piece of work.

Most likely just an illusion of no security, the moment a finger gets near that thing I imagine steel shutters slam the building into lockdown.

 

[meirl]

Bullshit title

 

[Chairman Tickles]

Reminds me of those anti piracy commercials of the 90's and early 2000's.

You wouldn't steal a car...

 

[thelawof4]

They didn't steal anything and they didn't create the high-poly model from scans of the kincect.

Though, with a modern smartphone (2017+) you could create a pretty good model of something like a bust without anyone noticing you.

 

[FireCloud]

Click bait title....only thing that has been stolen is our collective time spent reading that article.

 

[Alx]

They didn't steal anything and they didn't create the high-poly model from scans of the kincect.

Though, with a modern smartphone (2017+) you could create a pretty good model of something like a bust without anyone noticing you.

As a matter of fact you can also do it with an old kinect and any device running a GPU.


Although in the case of the Nefertiti bust, the result seems a bit too detailed to have been scanned that way only.

 

[thelawof4]

Although in the case of the Nefertiti bust, the result seems a bit too detailed to have been scanned that way only.

I am sure it's possible to create really low-poly models from those scans. At some point you could argue that it would have so little detail (and the model of Nefertiti looks very detailed) that it's not representing the original anymore.

They most likely used the scan for rough dimensions and created a model from looking at high-res photos. Not really worth a discussion imho.

 

[Alx]

Nah you definitely can create high res models based on a bunch of low-res images, there are known algorithms for that (Kinect Fusion being one of the applications). Some can reveal details you wouldn't think were perceptible in each of the images.
But the result is never perfect, and when people show something that is very similar to a professionally scanned model, one can be suspicious.

 

[WaterAstro]

I'm pretty sure you don't need a kinect to do that. Just a good DSLR, shoot 360 shots at various angle, and that's enough to replicate a model.

Environment Modelers use this tech all the time for objects.

 

[1morerobot]

That's pretty interesting, but the title is bullshit.