Shockwave

I got somewhat fascinated by the Shroud of Turin since I watched a documentary suggesting that this shroud was created by Leonardo da Vinci. As a practical joke he would have painted Jesus after his own image. Just the idea gives me a grin from ear to ear.

From the notebooks of Leonardo you can conclude (as he speaks about the soul) that he was a religious person. He also was a real scientist and had a different concept about religion than the institution of the Roman Church. Nature was the only God to Leonardo.

On the origin of the Soul
by Leonardo da Vinci

" [...] and the rest of the definition of the soul I leave to the imaginations of friars, those fathers of the people who know all secrets by inspiration.
I leave alone the sacred books; for they are supreme truth."

(treatise on Anatomy, W. An. I, Royal Library Windsor, 1489)

Experiment : 3D Mesh: Shoud3D (2003)

To create this relief I build a 3d model using a grid of vertices. For the height information of vertices a grayscale image is scanned pixel by pixel. The lighter the color of the pixel the higher the vertex is placed in space. This is a common method used to generate 3D terrain with hills and mountains.
For this experiment I took a picture of the Shroud of Turin and used it for height information. The picture was inverted and converted to a grayscale image. Then several filters were applied to it (despeckle, median blur).
When you select an area of the shroud that you want to view in 3D then a 3D relief is created by scanning the pixels of the schroud image. Then a texture is created from the shroud image. This textures is mapped on the the 3D relief using the #wrapPlanar texture mode.