Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I 3D scanned the tunnels inside the Maya Pyramid Temples at Copan

mused.com

462 pointslukehollis96 comments

With these 3d captures, you can explore the 4km tunnel system that archaeologists created inside the temples at Copan that are closed to the public. The tunnels are often flooded by hurricanes and damaged by other natural forces--and collapsed on me and my Matterport scanner more than once--so this is a permanent record of how they appeared in 2022-23.

Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the Maya built their temples layer by layer outward, so to understand them, researchers tunneled into the structures to understand the earlier phases of construction. I arranged the guided versions of the virtual tours in a rough chronology, moving from the highest to the lowest and oldest areas: the hieroglyphic stairway composing the largest Maya inscription anywhere, the Rosalila temple that was buried fully intact, and finally the tomb of the Founder of the city, Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ.

I've been working to build on top of the Matterport SDK with Three.js--and then reusing the data in Unreal for a desktop experience or rendering for film (coming soon to PBS).

Blog about process: https://blog.mused.com/what-lies-beneath-digitally-recording...

Major thanks to the Matterport team for providing support with data alignment and merging tunnels while I was living in the village near site.

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Superb!

I expect whoever coated the remains with that red cinnabar stuff died rather early, probably with tooth and hair loss and severe mental issues. Perhaps this fate was expected but given that "mad hatters" were a thing until fairly recently, people can be a bit strange when it comes to dealing with poisons.

The guide notes point out that only the most sacred rituals involved this red mercurial stuff. I'm not surprised. It might be rare but rarer still will be people willing to deploy it unless that fate is considered a good way to go.

That tour is a remarkable use of the technology.

It's something we have to be careful of while working on site! We're really careful around the rooms that have mercury in them--there are few that I didn't put in the guide also.

I was wondering about this too: they've found high levels of mercury in the water supply at Maya cities and believe now it contributed to the eventual collapse: https://arstechnica.com/science/2020/06/mercury-and-algal-bl...

> “The drinking and cooking water for the Tikal rulers and their elite entourage almost certainly came from the Palace and Temple Reservoirs,” wrote Lentz and his colleagues. “As a result, the leading families of Tikal likely were fed foods laced with mercury at every meal.”

This makes me think: what if today's rulers are being poisoned by something making them act like idiots?

> This makes me think: what if today's rulers are being poisoned by something making them act like idiots?

Leaded gasoline! With how old politicians are in the US, they are almost certainly affected.

They're also old enough to have drank tap-water from lead pipes daily for decades (I learned on HN that it was mandatory for building companies in Chicago to install lead pipes until the 70s).

It could be that there is something making our leaders mentally ill, or it could be that only the mentally ill think that they should be leaders.

Greed is a poison. Has been recognized as such for at least 2,500 years.

https://tricycle.org/beginners/buddhism/three-poisons/

Claiming that today’s rulers are acting like idiots seems off topic. And subjective too; even if only because yesterday’s rulers weren’t different.

Or maybe the populace is being poisoned and their leaders need to behave like idiots to control a herd of dumb'ed down and stupid beings.

It's called "social media"

Ha! that's the best theory yet

Imagine people 100 years from now asking themselves "how did they not understand the effect that microplastics were having?"

Advanced civilizations get good at using unusual materials like lead and mercury. Some of these come with unforeseen consequences. Plastic and oil are the two substances most like these for us in present day.

I suspect that that stuff is far more contextually important than it might seem at first, despite it being noted as designated only for the most important rituals.

It's ever so hard to try and get inside the minds of people from long ago. I think it is fair to assume that we think in a compatible way with these people and if we can glean enough clues we can reasonably draw conclusions.

It might be informative to look for clues as to what the people who had to deploy this stuff actually thought about it. The amazing carvings, catacombs and so on tell a lot about the Maya people and it seems that they are well interpreted but I don't think that this red poison is particularly well interpreted. I think there is a lot more to be learned.

The archaeology there is absolutely mind blowing. Thank you to everyone involved. Your work is phenomenal.

This is great use of the technology. There should be scans of all our national monuments, world wonders, etc. So much better a use for the tech than just Redfin.

Popping my comment cherry here!

I’m a 3D artist that is currently encountering staunch resistance of generating 3D models from drone captured photogrammetry of historically protected sites in Pennsylvania, USA.

I’ve had resistance from the state and county level in pursuing take off and landing permission at historical sites. Communicating my intentions of digital historic preservation with photogrammetry has been a difficult “sell”.

I’m a licensed commercial remote pilot - however I need property owner permission to take off and land. Many sites are in state/county owned property in my area.

Have you looked to see whether there is a local archaeology or social history society in your area that you could join? They will have individuals involved who are already used to dealing with property owners to arrange research projects, and you might be able to accompany them on the trips they organize. For reference, the archaeological society in my region serves around 400 square miles and typically organizes a low two-digit number of digs every year. There are also some other societies in the same region who focus on preserving and documenting recent history where excavation isn't required.

Another idea: if you don't already have any formal education in history, you could study for some qualifications in the subject. It would probably do much to reassure landowners that you are not going to harm the sites in any way (although I struggle to think of a way you could do so with a UAV!) In any case, good luck; I'd love to see the models!

I’ll have to look into regional historical societies. The county wide historical group has not been keen on allowing access to properties without a justified end goal other then “3D model”.

Which to be fair is a step I’ve still yet to figure out other then having models hosted on sketchfab.

I’m starting to visit in person farmer markets that exist on land with over 80+ year old histories and structures.

The personal educational avenue is another great option I haven’t considered. I’ll keep this in mind.

Here is a 3D model of a carriage house built in the late 1800s that I processed from drone photography. https://skfb.ly/oW8v7

This was from a public park so no permission was needed.

> digital historic preservation

When I hear "digital" I don't exactly associate long-term preservation with it. Do you also have a strategy for the "digital preservation" part? Websites don't live long. Storage media don't last long either.

Should such a program be made together with a partner that has a strategy for long-term (outlook of centuries) storage of digital content? Because otherwise I don't see the "preservation" aspect. The monuments will likely survive all the digitized data created from them, easily.

It's not just the data, but also ways to use it. Imagine this was done twenty years ago and it was all saved as Adobe Flash media.

I think preserving the digital media plus ensure that it will still be usable (hardware and digital format) is a monumental effort, in comparison creating the digital representation is not the hard part.

This is great feedback. I’m still at the content creation stage, aerial and terrestrial photogrammetry to produce 3D models. Hosted on sketchfab.

I really haven’t figured out a solution to host 3D models that isn’t tied to a web based private company. I.E sketchfab.

Curios if there could be an avenue of resin 3D prints of the 3D models. I always seem to loop back to “why does someone want/need this?” Which may in turn be the reason for state/county property owners refusing permission to access property.

The digital capture is indeed the easy part at the scale I’m working in - thanks again for this insight

I used to live in Pennsylvania across the street from a colonial era house and just a few miles from a national historic site. I love your idea of digital historic preservation but totally understand the skepticism and reluctance of those entrusted with protecting the sites.

Is there a way you could partner with the custodians of a historic site so they become part of the digital preservation effort? Maybe offer a way to embed the 3D model on an official webpage of the historic site? Getting the custodians onboard could smooth the process of getting the required permissions.

I definitely need to re-approach the county level historical society with a more thorough “pitch” for generating clean and detailed 3D models from drone photography.

The website embed is easy, I’d use sketchfab as the content host and embed platform. So long as sketchfab doesn’t disappear this is the best solution for embedding that I can utilize within my skill set as a 3D artist

I’ll need to see if I can have an in person meeting with larger historical societies so I can demo the 3D models and explain its significance.

I’ve stressed I’m not trying to solicit this as paid work - framing it as a partnership that is beneficial to both parties could make headway however.

Hey I'm really sorry! It's really hard. My photo permissions at Giza took two years to secure. My only advice is to keep showing up in person and hang in there--I feel for you!

That’s some incredible perseverance from you! In person is the right move though. Getting FaceTime in with groups or people who are part of the process does seem to make the best headway.

> staunch resistance

Why?

PA restricts drone take/off and landing to only 6 parks in the whole state.

So for example, Washington’s crossing state park with its 3.7thousand acres, restricts drone/take off and landing by state law.

I’ve politely reached out to the park, and being a federally licensed commercial pilot with insurance coverage doesn’t pry that jar open.

The airspace classification is the limit, so I can fly over as much as I want - problem is all surrounding property is privately owned and I need to maintain 3 statue miles of visual line of site.

^ All of the above makes it impossible to capture up close aerial imagery of colonial period houses and barns for photogrammetry.

Smaller single structure county owned properties only hand out photography permits if events are being held, or the photography/videography is associated with a production company.

I may need to expand my municipal and county outreach further away from the county I reside in. Which is a shame since there are some beautiful historically preserved farmlands and structures in my home county.

A lot of people, myself included, find quadrotor drones in peaceful natural settings to be incredibly annoying. If anyone who isn't aware of the rules sees you breaking them, they will assume that they can do it too and will gleefully bring their loudest, most annoying quadrotor everywhere they can because "they saw someone else do it once." It also opens the floodgates to all kinds of permitting and other process questions for different kinds of activities and they have to justify why they let you do it but not someone else.

Yup, I get it. This aircraft is disruptive at anything under 100feet above ground level.

I thought there would have at least been an avenue to progress through as a federally licensed remote pilot, with an LLC and liability insurance.

I think if you could find a way to do it in a uniform or with a volunteer lanyard you'd probably be golden.

Tried approaching any of the adjacent private landowners, and seen if some of them are either sympathetic to your cause and/or the type who'd love a chance to stick a finger to the relevant authorities?

This has cross my mind multiple times. There are some beautiful residential properties overlooking some state parks. With clear 3 statue mile visibility into the park.

I’m not fond of solicitors entering my private property - I don’t feel confident knocking on doors asking for that type of permission.

What's the punishment for violating this? Is it civil? e.g. a fine? If so, can we just crowdfund all the fines you'd get and pay them all off for you?

100%! Eventually, one way or another, I think they'll be scanned every year to study the environmental effects of tourism and compare over time.

I'm glad to hear you're working on getting an Unreal environment for these scans. I find the movement in the web version to be incredibly clunky. This really needs to have a game like environment to do it justice.

In general we clearly have the technology to capture 4K-8K environments and turn them into very realistic virtual worlds. Is anybody even doing such work? For example capturing a neighborhood in San Francisco (or any city) as it looks in 2024 for historical reference? Seems like that should be a thing.

I've seen high quality environmental scans, even way back in the Silicon Graphics days when they showed an amazing scan of the Sistine Chapel. But it seems to me all such scans wind up in some proprietary player format which was designed by somebody who never played a decent open world game like Fallout 4, Cyberpunk, Battlefield, Red Dead Redemption. I have yet to see a museum environmental scan which gets anywhere near the immersive quality of those games. This is not so much a criticism of such work - it's awsome! - but maybe more of a call to arms for game people to help out the scholars.

You can download or test the Unreal version pixel streaming here: https://mused.com/netherworld-ancient-egyptian-afterlife-sim...

Or here's the trailer for the project in Unreal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlNgpG9X7mc

I have a lot of work keeping up with games, it's true--games are expensive to build and aiming at photorealism art style continually looks dated quickly while stylized graphics, less so. I'm trying to fundraise to build this game currently, but it's a tough sell. Educational games don't do well on Steam, so right now, I'm just distributing through my website as I build. The small income this provides helps me contribute back to the modern Egyptian Egyptologists that are excavating and documenting their own culture though.

The latest Game Science title, Black Myth Wukong, does an awesome job with 3d captures of Chinese monuments and bringing the mythology and history to life.

lukehollis, it's true 3D gales are so long-and-didfucult to build. Maybe you get in xontact with me : I'm testing a tool that generate 3D Orlds easilly and fast. Mytoo is called free-visit thierry.milard@gmail.com

https://free-visit.net

I was working towards that aiming at the medieval city of Rothenburg o.d.T. in Germany.

Unfortunately it's a lot of code writing to support rolling shutter cameras strapped to multicopters, where you capture video with short enough exposure to prevent blur. The 3D recovery has to respect the fact that the rows of the image are taken from different positions and angles, causing this up infiltrate basically the entire pipeline.

And global shutter cameras are barely accessible.

If there's some group with the man power and funding to actually pull this off, please get in touch, I would like to pick back up!

See: https://quixel.com/

This reminds me of a recent Lex Fridman podcast with an expert in ancient American civilizations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzzE7GOvYz8

I don't know which is cooler. The 3D scan itself or the 3D map in the browser.

This is amazing. Thank you for sharing.

Thanks for visiting! It was so many tunnels.. I feel bad that I don't build faster sometimes, but this took awhile.

Get used to slowing down, it’s inevitable and you shouldn’t hold yourself to an unreasonable standard. Biology’s first principles make this clear.

It was specifically the time in the tunnels from 6:00 AM - noon every day that was an out-of-the-ordinary time and energy investment. It was necessary to be there, so I evaluated as "do things at dont scale."

This is very cool!

Can you share the technical background you've used for creating the 3D reconstruction? Like software packages, or algorithms used.

Are we looking at the result of packages like OpenSfM here, or COLMAP?

Onsite I used the Matterport capture app and Matterport Pro 2 and BLK 360. For the web version linked here, I built on top of the Matterport SDK with Three.js https://matterport.github.io/showcase-sdk/sdkbundle_home.htm...

So in the virtual tour, you're seeing 360 imagery from the cameras and a lower resolution version of the 3d capture data, optimized for web. The lower res mesh from the scanner is transparent in first-person view mode so users get cursor effects on top of the 360 image.

For film, PBS sent out a documentary crew, and they wanted me to render some footage of the full tunnel system, so I exported the e57 pointcloud data from Matterport and rendered the clips they needed in Unreal. It should be coming out soon with "In the Americas."

Fantastic work! Just a small suggestion, I didn't realize that you could free explore the entire area until coming back and reading the comments on this site, I realized you could look around and there was one point in the guides tour where it mentioned you can explore but at least for me I didn't realize you could explore everywhere (especially the tunnels afterwards)

Maybe it's just that I'm on mobile, and when I went back I then saw the "free explore" button on the top... But maybe would be nice to add a couple prompts like you have at that one point which say something like "feel free to explore around the tunnels and then click next when you're ready to continue" or something (also for the ball court)...

Thanks for letting me know! That makes good sense, and I did this in other tours. I'll see what I can do.

The fact that people carved this tunnels with simple tools and their bare hands into the underground is so freaking amazing i cant find better words for it

Edit: also very nice tool :)!

> The fact that people carved this tunnels with simple tools and their bare hands

I'm confused, mate: why and how would 21st-century professional archaeologists avoid using modern powered tools and techniques? That's absurd, dangerous, and not cost-effective.

I think you misunderstood that comment a bit

I think the commenter misunderstood the article a bit. I was trying to give benefit of the doubt.

This is great. I think you shared 3d scan of some other pyramid sometime ago here on HN. I think you should try processing this data through a Guassian Splatting software. I have no idea how many images Guassian Splats require to work well or the CPU/GPU requirements but I have seen very very cool Guassian Splatting demos on twitter where you can absolutely freely fly around the scene and view it from any angle.

Hey, yeah that was me. I spent quite a bit of time last year using pre-existing scanner positions to train nerfs/splats and didn't get anything that was usable, unfortunately. I ended up shifting to Unreal for a higher graphics tier, so if you want to see the Great Pyramid of Giza interior in the highest quality level, you can here: https://mused.com/netherworld-ancient-egyptian-afterlife-sim...

For Unreal I used a few methods but mostly conventional photogrammetry incorporating the lidar.

Ultimately, I'm hoping that downloading the file or some type of pixel streaming for web until the nerfs or splats -- or whatever follows them -- works out.

Really appreciate the use of technology to make sites like these accessible to the world at large.

Just wanted to share that I am in the middle of a very similar project with a high profile client & the workflow we settled on has loosely been Lidar scans -> Postshot -> Supersplat (web optimization) -> Babylon.js. Of course we have video/image fallbacks & an unreal pixel streaming version as well - but the web performance and results on a modern mobile device have been spectacular so far!

So excited for the future of gaussian splatting :)

Wow, thanks for writing -- would love to see what you're building when you have a link to share! My emails in my profile or just will keep an eye out in general for this workflow.

Definitely one of the better implementations I've seen using Matterport's SDK, nice work.

Did you use the Pro3 as the capture device? Before the collapse anyway!

Thanks, and I was still on Pro 2 + BLK 360 unfortunately. Haha, thankfully all the cameras survived and made it home, just muddier.

Oh man, the BLK360 can be a frustrating (albeit incredible) device even in the best of conditions, let alone this. Glad to hear everything survived!

I mostly use the Pro3 now but did a big chunk of this Georgia Tech scan with the BLK: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=PB8FgAyyjHx

Haha, yeah I know what you mean. I had to do the exterior with the BLK for only a few hours each morning before it overheated.

That's an impressive huge capture!

Luke I'm so happy to see you here on HN. What you and the Mused team are doing is incredible.

Wow, thanks so much! I don't recognize your un, who is this? But thanks again!

I'm a nobody, but I've stumbled across your site before. Kudos and be sure to let the HN community know how we can help.

That is so cool.

Is it hard to avoid integrator error in long tunnels?

It is so hard! The long tunnel sections were the worst, but thankfully most of them had multiple join points, like in the Temple 16 / Rosalila temple excavations.

I love all these Maya inscriptions. I hope more are discovered (and hopefully some manuscripts) - the little we do have of Maya text is amazing. What are your top 3 things to tell people at parties that no little about Maya?

I love the inscriptions too--the stela only get more meaningful the more you learn about them. But it's kind of like Egypt, the iconography is harder to understand because we inherited from a different culture.

For me, the Maya have always been important because they're our history and our stories in the Americas (I'm from the US) -- more than the greco-roman mythology I grew up with. They grew corn and love ball games. Their stories are more directly our stories, and their struggles are our struggles.

Not to be political, but they also kind of wiped themselves out by large scale environmental collapse, and the jungle is filled with their undiscovered monuments. There's still so much to learn.

People really geek out on how much the Maya knew about astronomy too -- they shot archaeoastronomy docs twice while I was working on site. Richard Feynman even helped decipher Maya glyphs and writes about it in "Surely you're joking Mr Feynman". He gave a lecture also if the audio file can be checked out somehow: https://collections.archives.caltech.edu/repositories/2/acce...

Feynman was very interested in Maya writing, but made no useful contribution to its interpretation. Credit for that goes to Knorozov and many others (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_script#Decipherment); Feynman's approach followed Thompson's, which we know now to be incorrect.

Thanks for the correction!

Were the tombs and other structures originally sealed in with no path to the outside world? Were there other rooms accessible for rituals without archaeologists having to excavate tunnels in the modern day?

For the majority of the monuments that I worked on, they were ritually destroyed, buried, and built on top of -- with the Rosalila temple being the main exception. The tombs typically have some type of arch and the temple area and staircases are kind of built around or on top of them.

Does anyone know if there’s a simple solution to generating NeRFs from a continuous all directional camera (like a GoPro Max). It would be fun to make an explorable universe like that.

You should be able to do this with nerfstudio: https://github.com/nerfstudio-project/nerfstudio/ I've done it a few times, you can test 3d Gaussian Splatting also instead.

Hadn't seen this comment before. Why is this one not Guassian Splats or nerfs?

Thank you! That's terrific.

Is there any plans to support a WebXR interface in the future?

Yes, these scans also work in WebXR using Matterport's default VR viewer -- I have a basic page setup at https://mused.com/vr/ -- but I'll get the Copan tours added there.

Very well done! I was pleasantly surprised how well this works on a phone.

Did you take any scans after sections collapsed? Would love to hear more about what happened.

Matterport's SDK is so good -- I'm so impressed with the details like mobile performance the more time I spend building with it.

I did take some scans after the collapse! After we'd dug ourselves out and crawled out on our bellies, I went back with Polycam. The collapsed section we dug through was comparatively small, maybe 4-5 meters: Section 1: https://poly.cam/capture/4BB863F2-1CC3-46E3-8BDB-232EE3057BD...? (you can see where we crawled out to the intersection here -- the whole intersection had ceiling collapse, but only the section we dug out through was fully covered). Section 2: https://poly.cam/capture/3C5BB7BD-5FC9-4C00-AE1C-84E0544C51C...

We're just lucky it wasn't a rocky ceiling that fell, that would've been much worse.

The team taking care of the tunnels is doing an amazing job with the resources they have, and they're continually backfilling tunnels now and maintaining the ones that are there. It took us about an hour to dig out.

You can compare to the intersection in the matterport version in the same vicinity: https://my.matterport.com/show/?m=r5BR6K6Qxix&ss=338&sr=-.21...

I don't want to editorialize too much, but at that moment we were totally brothers--I was still early with Spanish, and the language, country, age differences fell away, and we dug ourselves out.

Wow! That sure brings back memories. I've been there twice, 2011 & 2012. Congratulations. I'm very impressed.

Thanks so much! Does it look very different / did you go in the tunnels?

I was allowed to go down two short tunnels, one led to part of the underground drainage (the end of it was blocked so I didn't get to look at the drainage itself). Overall it seems the same. From the top of the pyramids in the back, we could look at the remains of the palace area, but it was roped off and I was told that the government was gearing up for archeological work there.The guide I was with talked a lot about how precise the courts were leveled to drain rainwater away and how after all these centuries the drainage still works perfectly.

The transitions are much smoother than Google street view

If you like smooth transitions, check my startup's:

https://benaco.com/go/k4-green-hn-2024

These look great! What strategy did you use to do the transitions?

It works as you described: Texturing the mesh "live" as you move through it. It does use Three.js as a base, but needs custom shaders to make it 60 FPS.

Very cool.. bravo -- it looks so good

Matterport works special magic on the transition between 360 images in their SDK. As far as I understand it, they render 360 cube camera onto the material of the mesh of the environment as you move so it looks like you're moving in the real mesh but only seeing the 360 image. I tried to approximate this myself in Three.js but didn't get anywhere near the quality or performance of their work. Homage.

Very cool. Any other Maya sites in the pipeline to do?

Yes, I 3d captured the murals at San Bartolo, and they're somewhere in the pipeline of being ready to be made public soon.

This is beyond cool, thank you for sharing!

This is great! Great job!

Thanks!

Very nice. Small improvement idea: Move the camera along paths in such a way that it does not glitch through solid earth.

Thanks, I always wonder if it'll be too slow for people to follow the whole pathway--this will definitely be fixed in the desktop version.

Amazing. So inspiring!

Thanks so much!

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