Questions
Short answers to the questions we are asked before a first digitisation campaign.
What is a digital twin?
A digital twin is a double of the work obtained by ultra-high-fidelity digitisation: its three-dimensional shape, its colours and its textures, recorded at the level of precision defined during the study. It can be viewed, handled and passed on without ever exposing the original, which stays safe.
Is the work touched during digitisation?
No. Capture is optical: no instrument comes into contact with the material. The work stays on its support, in the care of its conservators, under the handling conditions agreed with them before capture. It is the laboratory's first rule, and it applies to every piece.
What do you receive at the end?
The digital twin of the work, delivered in open formats readable by study, archiving and museography software, without depending on a proprietary tool. The exact formats are agreed during the study, according to your uses: viewing, virtual exhibition, conservation or transmission.
Who do you work for?
First with artists' foundations and estates, whose body of work becomes lasting, transmissible digital heritage. With museums and institutions, to preserve, document and pass on. With private collectors, to keep the memory of a collection and the identity of each of its works.
Where do you operate?
The laboratory is based in Vallauris, on the Côte d'Azur. We operate in France first, and in Europe case by case. Capture takes place where the work is, in the storeroom, the gallery or the studio: our infrastructure travels, not the piece.
How do we begin?
Write to us describing the piece or the collection, its material and its condition. We agree on a first conversation, then on a study of the work with its experts: material complexity, level of precision, handling constraints. That study yields a bespoke acquisition plan, before any capture.
What do reflectance and PBR mean?
Reflectance describes how a surface returns light: glossy, matte, translucent, and its study comes before any capture. PBR, for physically based rendering, is the rendering of materials from those physical measurements, so that the digital twin responds to light as the work itself does.
What do SHA-256, USDz, OBJ and PLY mean?
SHA-256 is a fingerprint computed from a file: if the file changes, the fingerprint changes, which proves it has remained intact. USDz, OBJ and PLY are open three-dimensional file formats, readable by many applications, without depending on a single vendor.