The first presidential bust created from 3D scan data. (AP Photo/Smithsonian Institution)
With Obama, the Smithsonian creates
the first 3D image of a sitting president
By Soraya Nadia McDonald
The Washington Post
Would someone please give the president some pupils?
The Smithsonian has created a bust of the president from plastic resin using a 3D printer. Which is very cool and 21st century and completely fit for an era where the president is declaring that we’re going to do things like map the human brain.
Here was the old way: The president had to find time for someone to take a plaster cast of his face, which meant waiting, motionless, for the plaster to dry. It’s a funny image: the leader of the free world breathing through straws in his nose. But that’s how we got busts of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln.
The new way is much quicker and renders nasal straws unnecessary: A group of researchers from the University of Southern California scanned the president’s face with something called a “light-stage” face scanner, and then recorded him with 3D cameras and and more scanners. The whole process took five minutes.
Then they took the data from the scans, et voila! Forty hours later a bust was completed, and no one even had to source any marble from Italy. Lovely, yes, but with all this technology, could we maybe give the president some eyelids so he’s not giving us a spooky blank stare like a half-finished Madame Toussaud’s project?
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