Documentation of Seri Menanti palace using three-dimensional phase shift terrestrial laser scanner

Abstract

Generally, traditional documentation methods are time consuming, having limitation in collecting information and not able to provide re-visit of a historical building to present the artwork and design by the craftsman. The modern Geoinformation technology, laser scanning was used in this research and proven its effectiveness to record spatial data of Seri Menanti Palace, located in Negeri Sembilan, which was fully built by timber. The main goal of this research was to to digitally preserve and document heritage building by produce three-dimensional (3D) model of the historical building mentioned above with Level of Details 4 (LoD 4) as prescribed by CityGML. FARO Photon 120 laser scanner was integrated with high resolution Nikon DSLR D300s digital camera to collect 3D point clouds data and panoramic coloured image in full angular of 360°. A total of 165 scanning stations were required in data collection process which involves 120 stations for the interior and 45 stations for the exterior part of the palace. The collected point clouds data were registered by using the surveyed target and natural feature on the palace. The registered 3D point clouds that were geo-referenced with Cassini coordinate system and were integrated with panoramic images to produce 3D colourized point clouds which later rendered as animation aspect for “Fly Through” presentation purpose. Besides animation, this research also produce 3D surface model and floor plan of the palace. Several 3D measurements were taken from the generated 3D model and being compared with the measurement performed by the conventional method. Generally, this research had successfully proven that TLS technology can be used to record the palace data that built from timber. However, several parts of the palace cannot be recorded perfectly due to the cause of dark facade and the tall rooftop also is the limitation of the laser scanner used