After much comment from fellow 3D modelers, legal scholars and tech reporters, I felt that it was safe to repost a cleaned-up version of the bronze Moses on display at the campus of Augustana College. Augustana College had initially expressed concerns about possible copyright issues and fears of me sharing a model created from photos of the precise bronze cast of Moses. Their representative requested that I remove Moses and try to persuade anyone that had downloaded a copy to delete it. As it turns out, their copyright argument was baseless and issues about me sharing my photogrammetry-created Moses were outside their legal control. So, it is with great pleasure that I present Moses by Michelangelo.
The bronze reproduction that I created this model from was cast from a mold lifted off the original marble masterpiece. It was a special commission by Mr. & Mrs. Thomas Fawick, a wealthy millionaire couple who wanted to give a gift of appreciation to the City of Sioux Falls and Augustana College. It was set up at the campus at Augustana College and is still on display near the end of the cul-de-sac on Commons Drive, off S. Grange Ave.
This model was created from several hundred photos shot over what would total a long few days. Moses is presently displayed with his back sitting close to a massive aggregate slab. His pedestal is rather tall too. This made getting enough photographic coverage of the bronze copy difficult. It is for this reason that the top of Moses' head, shoulders and much of his back is sketchy and rudimentary at best. There were large gaps and holes in the model and my skills in MeshMixer are still undeveloped at this point. The file is waterproof and ready to print, but you might want to use MeshMixer or the modeling program of your choice to resize it as I kept it at about the same scale as the original, which would be over two meters in height!
| Moses_full_sized.obj |
| Moses_full_sized.ply |
| Moses_full_sized.stl |
