3D modeling for rock art documentation using lightweight multispectral camera

Abstract

This paper discusses the use of the lightweight multispectral camera to acquire three-dimensional data for rock art documentation application. The camera consists of five discrete bands, used for taking the motifs of the rock art paintings on a big structure of a cave based on the close-range photogrammetry technique. The captured images then processed using commercial structure-from-motion photogrammetry software, which automatically extracts the tie point. The extracted tie points were then used as input to generate a dense point cloud based on the multi-view stereo (MVS) and produced the multispectral 3D model, and orthophotos in a different wavelength. For comparison, the paintings and the wall surface also observed by using terrestrial laser scanner which capable of recording thousands of points in a short period of time with high accuracy. The cloud-to-cloud comparison between multispectral and TLS 3D point cloud show a sub-cm discrepancy, considering the used of the natural features as control target during 3D construction. Nevertheless, the processing also provides photorealistic orthophoto, indicates the advantages of the multispectral camera in generating dense 3D point cloud as TLS, photorealistic 3D model as RGB optic camera, and also with the multiwavelength output.