I have taken up the hobby of digitally scanning many of pieces of art, architecture, and cultural novelties of the Basque Country, then building 3D models from these photographic scans to add realistic artifacts to my own projects. This page includes several of my favorites, along with links to view or download the models on SketchFab. Click the “Play” button on any model to allow you to rotate, pan, or zoom the model, or expand to full screen.
Puppy
The Puppy sculpture is one of the most famous landmarks in Bilbao, Páis Vasco, Spain. It is located outside of the Guggenheim art museum, a well-known hub of contemporary art and architecture in the Basque Country.
This particular model was created using a combination of photogrammetry and manual cleanup in Blender3D. In the spring season, Puppy has a green colored coat while waiting for its flowers to bloom, then later has a colorful floral coat for the summer season.
Puppy also provides the header graphic for our blog, which is a Blender render of of the March 2024 variant with the Basque flag (“Ikurriña”) in the background. I have also written a couple of blog posts discussing the process used to generate the Puppy models:
Juego de la Rana
The Basque “Juego de la Rana” (“Igel Jokoa” in Euskera, or simply “Frog Game”) is a popular tavern game where one must attempt to throw a metal disc into the mouth of a brass frog statue. Similar games exist elsewhere, replacing the word rana (frog) with sapo (toad) in South America, or the similarly-named “Toad in the Hole” in England.
The real-world game and the scanned frog statue are the basis of an augmented reality game for iOS, which you can download for free:
You may also visit the official website: https://www.dc-engineer.com/juego-de-la-rana/
Gilda (Antxoa, Aceituna, y Piparra)
The Gilda is one of the classic Pintxos of the Basque Country. Consisting of antxoa or boquerone (anchovies, either salt cured or vinegar marinated, respectively), aceituna (olives), and piparra (a specific type of local, semi-spicy green pepper), the Gilda derives its name from the Rita Hayworth film of the same name.
I created this model from a set of 48 images that I took of a plate of Gildas at Bilbao Basquefest 2024. I cleaned up the skewers by creating new cylinders, and added an animation in Blender. More on my my blog: https://www.dc-engineer.com/mas-photogrammetry-gildas-from-bilbao-basquefest/
I wrote more about this model on the blog: https://www.dc-engineer.com/mas-photogrammetry-gildas-from-bilbao-basquefest/
Gaussian Splatting
Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF’s) and Gaussian Splatting are two of the newest methods of 3D scene construction, with the latter especially becoming popular in the past year in commercial applications such as PolyCam and Scaniverse. These take a novel approach where instead of building a model with surface elements, it creates a radiance field; I think of it a bit like a cloud of fog that absorbs or reflects light in just the right way to produce a perfectly photorealistic 3D rendering, as long as your viewing point and angle is contained within the family of points that the model was trained with. Going outside of that range can look a bit weird though…
Below are a few scenes that I captured using PolyCam that you can explore. Try using WASD and arrow keys if the mouse controls are a bit difficult. Also, the appearance will be best if you get a view that is “street level,” meaning around the same frame of reference that created photos and videos from to create the models.
My Neighborhood
This first scene is taken along the Ría Bilbao (or Río Nervión, depending on the tide), directly across from the neighborhood of our current apartment.
Puppy
My Gaussian splat of Puppy was created around the same time as the photogrammetry model I referenced above. In this case, the source material was about a minute long video in which I walked a single lap around Puppy. I’m impressed by how accurate the rendering is given how simple it was to create, but some of the distant artifacts can throw me off a bit.
Cruces Plaza
The model of Cruces Plaza and the adjoining hospital was created from about a six minute video as I walked across the Plaza and the front of the building from the left to right side. This is on the very last day that Rachel was in the hospital, as she wrote in the blog. I only wish I had remembered to point my camera at the ground!