Comparative Analysis of Digital Models of Objects of Cultural Heritage Obtained by the “3D SLS” and “SfM” Methods

In the era of the global pandemic caused by the COVID-19 virus, 3D digitisation of selected museum artefacts is becoming more and more frequent practice, but the vast majority is performed by specialised teams. The paper presents the results of comparative studies of 3D digital models of the same museum artefacts from the Silk Road area generated by two completely different technologies: Structure from Motion (SfM)—a method belonging to the so-called low-cost technologies—and by Structured-light 3D Scanning (3D SLS). Moreover, procedural differences in data acquisition and their processing to generate three-dimensional models are presented. Models built using a point cloud were created from data collected in the Afrasiyab museum in Samarkand (Uzbekistan) during “The 1st Scientific Expedition of the Lublin University of Technology to Central Asia” in 2017. Photos for creating 3D models in SfM technology were taken during a virtual expedition carried out under the “3D Digital Silk Road” program in 2021. The obtained results show that the quality of the 3D models generated with SfM differs from the models from the technology (3D SLS), but they may be placed in the galleries of the vitrual museum. The obtained models from SfM do not have information about their size, which means that they are not fully suitable for archiving purposes of cultural heritage, unlike the models from SLS.