Leandro Gómez 3D Scan

Context and original piece

The sculpture depicts General Leandro Gómez, a central figure in the 1864–1865 Defence of Paysandú. Created by French sculptor Léon Pilet, the work forms part of the monument at the centre of Plaza Constitución.

The scan was produced in 2021 and therefore records the monument before the renovation and reconfiguration of the square completed in 2024.

Objective

The objective was to produce a recognisable digital replica through an accessible, non-contact capture method. Rather than reconstructing an idealised surface, the priority was to retain the form, material qualities and visible traces of the original sculpture.

Photogrammetric capture

The statue was photographed from multiple positions around its perimeter. Image overlap provided the matching features required to estimate the relative camera positions and reconstruct the volume without physical contact with the monument.

Working in an open square introduced conditions that were difficult to control: changing light, reflections, vegetation, sky and partially occluded areas. These variations remain visible in the model and account for some of its gaps and irregularities.

Reconstruction

The images were aligned to generate a point cloud, from which the three-dimensional mesh was built. Fragments of the surrounding environment were removed, floating geometry was corrected and the surface was prepared for texture projection.

The final texture is arranged as a UV atlas: a single image that consolidates hundreds of surface fragments and maps them back onto the 3D geometry.

Representation

Missing areas were not manually reconstructed as if they formed part of the captured data. Deformations, discontinuities and lower-resolution regions document both the sculpture and the technical limits of the survey.

The presentation uses two complementary formats. The interactive model preserves the spatial experience of moving around the sculpture, while the still renders establish viewpoints for examining its silhouette, uniform, sword and relationship to the base.

Result and digital archive

The result is a three-dimensional record that can be examined remotely and from any viewpoint. The source mesh contains approximately 1.5 million triangles; the interactive version was reduced to about 220,000, retaining the texture and overall silhouette in a 5.4 MB file.

The original FBX remains the high-resolution master. The web model is an optimised derivative.