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Temple Team Captures 3D Data to Craft Traditional Hindu Sculpture
13 Oct, 2011 By: Isabelle RoyUsing laser scanning to create a CAD model of a sacred bull makes a mammoth custom manufacturing project more manageable.
VectraFORM Engineering and Solutions is a Creaform Handyscan 3D distributor based in Coimbatore, in the southern part of India. In 2008, the company came across the opportunity to help create a nandi — a sacred bull sculpture — for the Shiva temple of a well-known spiritual foundation. In Hindu mythology, a nandi is a bull that carries the god Shiva and serves as the gatekeeper of Shiva and Parvati. Traditionally, every Shiva temple has a nandi facing the main shrine, and worshippers pray to the nandi first before attending to Lord Shiva.
The Sadhguru, or chief priest of the temple, was keen on the idea of having a sacred bull different from those in existence across India, and wanted it to last more than 500 years. A stone or rock nandi was the first option considered, but the spiritual foundation had previously been disappointed when attempting to build three stone sculptures of Lord Shiva. Those figures were hand-sculpted from drawings and pictures, without the aid of any 3D scanning or CAD technology. The sculptures did not fulfill the original design intent, and furthermore, working in stone consumed a great deal of time and effort.
Because of this experience, the foundation was seeking a more reliable alternative. At this point, the temple project leader visited VectraFORM, and selected the company's services after viewing a demonstration of the Handyscan 3D technology.
True to Life
To obtain the 3D shape of the sacred bull, the team considered scanning live bulls. After weighing the inevitable difficulties of dealing with live animals, however, they settled on taking pictures of bulls of various ages and studying their characteristics. The best details from various photographs were combined to create an ideal specimen.
Within a month, the temple sculpting crew created a plaster of paris model from the pictures, striving to imitate the position when a bull begins to stand up. This position, with one foreleg extended, indicates that the bull is "recognizing the master before him." The model was built at 1:6 scale, and measured approximately 2' x 3' x 4'.
Artisans crafted the first model of the bull sculpture from plaster of paris,
then scanned it with a Handyscan 3D laser scanner.
Once the concept was approved, the project moved to its next phase: 3D scanning of the model. The plaster model was scanned using a Handyscan 3D scanner. The CAD model obtained — once enlarged by six times to its actual size — was used to calculate information such as the weight of the bull when built with various wall thicknesses.
The CAD model of the bull was created by laser-scanning
a physical model.
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