Museums Sheffield - Interactive 3D objects online

Museums Sheffield has an extensive collection of artefacts and artwork, but due to limited public space can only ever display a small proportion of it at any time.

Its metalwork collection is probably one of the finest of its kind in the world, containing the cutlery, flatware, tableware and personal objects that have made Sheffield famous, plus beautiful objects collected from every continent. 

We were asked to colloborate on a project, in association with JISC and Sheffield Hallam University, to trial 3D scanning of objects from the Museums' metalwork collection, and make them available on their website. The aim is to allow the public to interact with items which are normally kept behind glass, or kept in the archives and therefore not on public display.

We extended the collections area of the website to allow visitors to explore the 3D models, spinning and zooming them to view them from any angle. We also developed an HTML5-based WebGL viewer for the models - allowing visitors with the latest browsers to utilise their computer's 3D graphics card (of course with a Flash-based fallback for those without).

High resolution versions of the models are available to download under a Creative Commons license - truly putting priceless objects into the hands of the people.