The Nefertiti bust

Two German artists covertly scanned the bust of Nefertiti, which is located in the Neues Mueseum in Berlin, and posted the scanned data online: http://nefertitihack.alloversky.com/. The quality is quite impressive given that this was apparently scanned with a Kinect sensor surreptitiously!

The format of the data is STL, which is a common format for models for 3d-printing. It's also actually very simple - so I added native STL support for Indigo so I could load the Nefertiti data directly.

I made these renders using the data, which illustrate some of the strengths of the upcoming Indigo 4 - the pure GPU rendering renders these 2000x2000 images in one or two minutes. Additionally the improved Oren-Nayar material gives a convincing clay look to the bust.

Click the images for full resolution!