Thomas Flynn shared a guide on how to recreate a historical map in 3D with data from NASA and set up the project on Sketchfab.

I’m Thomas Flynn, a specialist in 3D for cultural heritage and the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives & Museums). I’m also Cultural Heritage Lead at sketchfab.com, a role that straddles the Community and Business Teams. I’m originally from the UK but currently, live and work in New York. I go by the handle nebulousflynn online because my name is fairly commonplace.

My work at Sketchfab is very varied and includes among other things giving presentations on 3D at international conferences, delivering workshops in photogrammetry, consulting services and of course making interesting things in 3D to post on my Sketchfab profile.

Digitization & 3D for Museums

by Thomas Flynn

on Sketchfab

I began working with 3D while I was at the British Museum, creating and publishing the museum’s first online collection of 3D scans. This was received so well by staff, audience, and the press that it got me thinking that there was some good work to be explored in this area. After that, I founded museuminabox.org with George Oates & Adrian McEwan and continued working with the British Museum alongside Dan Pett, Jennifer Wexler, Neil Wilkin and lots of other clever and awesome people. I joined Sketchfab full time at the beginning of 2017 and love it – I get to work with amazingly talented people in the team as well as cultural organizations all over the world.

I’m not trained in 3D, everything I know I’ve picked up through practical work and self-education. I’m a big believer in the power of the web: if you’re looking to learn something new, everything you need is out there online thanks to generous people are sharing their knowledge.

Making 3D from 2D Data

One niche area that I’m interested in is the 3D re-interpretation and re-use of Creative Commons and Public Domain 2D imagery. There are many amazing collections of source material for this kind of work including data releases from cultural organizations like the New York Public Library, Cleveland Museum of Art, and The Met but also governmental organizations like the US Geological Survey (USGS) and NASA. Which brings me to the subject of this article, my recent upload New York Phoenicia Quadrangle.

I had used some USGS data before (a heightmap plus a ‘Global Colorized Hillshade’ image) to create a 3D model of the planet Mars but it wasn’t until I started following Joshua Stevens, Data Visualization and Cartography lead at NASA Earth on Twitter that I learned about a couple of other sources of data from USGS and how to combine data from 1900 land surveys with the data from the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission of 2000.