Stela "M"

This is Stela "M" from the National Geographic Channel's "Sunken Treasures of the Nile" http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/episode/sunken-treasures-of-the-nile-5661/Overview#tab-Overview and Racines & Des Ailes "Le secret des Pharaons bâtisseurs" http://programmes.france3.fr/des-racines-et-des-ailes/index-fr.php?page=emission&id_article=539.

The stela is unique because it is the first clear description ever found of how the Egyptians moved the large monuments (i.e. 1000 ton stone obelisks) and loaded them onto boats to take them from the quarries where they were mined to the destination cities where they would be installed.

This was discovered in November of 2008 while filming a documentary for Racines & Des Ailes by Egyptologist Philippe Martinez and published in "Une commande royale pour le Ramesseum: une stèle inédite de Ramsès II au Gebel es Silsilah" xRez Studio was asked by Insight Digital (A Cultural Heritage Graphics and Documentation non-profit http://www.insightdigital.org/ ) to aid in the photogrammetric capture of multiple sites for the documentary that would be used to create the visual effects for the film.

Photosynth played an unexpected key role in the film. We initially were using Photosynth to recover the point clouds and camera poses for creating 3D models, however we found that from the extracted point clouds we were able to create models and test the theories that the Egyptologist Philippe Martinez, the director Frédéric Wilner, and Kevin Cain from Insight Digital came up with during the day. By photographing the sites while the film crew filmed these experts we were able to test some of their theories in 3d by the evening, Photosynth not only played a role in the post for the film but was used in the film directly.

More media and details are on http://www.xrez.com//case-studies/cultural-heritage/sunken-treasures-of-the-nile/

Special thanks to Bill Crow and the Photosynth team for making this happen!