Replicator

Data, originally from Earth Sciences (?), supplied by Nick Holliman from the Interactive Media Technology Group, has finally been printed.  This took a bit of work to manipulate into a managable data-set ready for print. The original data is a LIDAR scan point cloud, originally given in VTK format. I had to write a tool to convert into point-cloud-only PLY.

Apparently, its a cliff face near the sea in the US. Large expensive houses ride on the fate of coastline erosion.

Courtesy of Dr. Chris Gerrard in the Dept. of Archaeology, I got hold of some geophysics data. Using paraview, I was able to mesh the data, and thickened it using 3DS Max. The print was straightforward from there:

Note that the colour information was added in paraview – by assigning a colour in the range blue to red depending on height, low to high.