THE SHROUD OF TURIN, THE HOLOGRAPHIC EXPERIENCE
BY DR. PETRUS SOONS

This is the text that comes with the POWERPOINT Presentation 3D

ABSTRACT

My presentation summarizes work connected with digitizing Shroud photographs taken by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931, enhancing the digitized images to improve details, translating the enhanced images “gray scale data into depth data”, generating a sequence of up to 625 images of each of these, and combining these images with a Holoprinter to produce holograms (3D images) of the Shroud. It also summarizes my study of these holograms and discovery of heretofore unseen details, which confirm many previous findings and reveal some surprises.

INTRODUCTION

In 2001, my wife and I moved to Panama, the country where she was born. Being retired, I started to make wood sculptures as a hobby. In 2004, I decided to sculpt a Pieta, but I had an accident and fractured a vertebra. For 5 months, I was unable to work, so I used this time to search the internet for the most original face of Jesus Christ and Mary, his mother, to use in the Pieta sculpture. My search found two images called “acheiropoeita”, or “not made with (human) hands” and they are, the image of the Man on the Shroud of Turin and the image on the Tilma of the Virgin of Guadalupe in Mexico. I later used both face images in the pieta.

OBSERVATIONS OF 3D INFORMATION IN THE SHROUD.

The Shroud of Turin is a textile made of linen (flax), measuring about 442cm in length and 113 cm in width. One side of the Shroud shows the front and the back image of a crucified and tortured man. The image is superficial, meaning, it is located on the surface of the uppermost fibers. Chemically speaking, it was formed by an unknown process that caused oxidation, dehydration and conjugation of the polysaccharide structure of the flax fibers, a kind of premature aging process of the linen. The inside of these image fibers, that are 10 to 20 times thinner than a human hair, does not show this process. The image itself shows some qualities that are important for the 3D investigations
The image displays the light and dark characteristics that you normally observe in a photographic negative and that was discovered in 1898, when Secondo Pia made the first photographs of the Shroud. After developing his negative glass plates, he found to his surprise that they showed a positive image of the Man on The Shroud, instead of the negative image that he expected.
Studying the image in the early part of the last century, Prof Paul Vignon made the observation, that the image on the Shroud varied inversely with the cloth-to-body distance, which means that the parts of the body that were close to the cloth, were imaged darker then the parts that were further away. The density in different parts of the image is proportional to the distance between the body and the cloth and is caused by the fact that more fibers per unit area are discolored. This translates to 3D information-encoding of the image in the grayscale of the photographs.
Drs. Jackson and Jumper confirmed the 3D information in 1977, by using the VP8 Image Analyzer.. Later work done by Prof. Tamburelli from the University of Turin confirmed this also.
Drs. Jackson and Jumper used a densitometer to extract the grayscale information and then with the help of the VP-8 Image Analyzer, translated this information into vertical relief, which resulted in the first three-tridimensional photos of the Shroud image. They were able to conclude that Vignon’s theory was correct. The work of Prof. Tamburelli (Italy) confirmed this also. It is important to note that if you use any regular photograph in the VP8 Image Analyzer, the result will be distortion and flattening of any three-dimensional features, because there is no photograph that contains the 3D information that we find in the image on the Shroud.

THE GRAYSCALE

A densitometer measures the differences in density in a photograph. In a black and white photograph, black areas are dense with information and white areas are void of information. The in-between areas are many shades of gray, from almost white to almost black. You can assign a different number, or value to each shade of gray, for example on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 represents black, and 10 white, all numbers between 1 and 10 represent various shades of grays. This is a grayscale or gray map, where different numbers represent different densities. Subsequently, these numbers are translated mathematically into vertical height on the Z axis.

HOLOGRAPHIC OBSERVATIONS

During the 5 months of rehabilitation, following my accident, I studied many books written about the Shroud of Turin.
I was familiar with the 3D concept because I founded and for many years worked in an Ultrasound Center in Curacao. I also studied the theory of a Holographic Universe (Dr. Susskind, Gerard van’t Hooft and Dr. Wheeler), so I was also familiar with Holography.
There were two observations in particular, that caught my attention
1) The image appears more distinct at a distance and fades when viewed at certain angles, particularly as one comes closer to the Shroud. The image is faint, without well-defined boundaries so the eye has no point of reference and it appears simply as variation of the background density.
2) After the fire in 1997, Aldo Guerreschi, a professional photographer who is familiar with the image, was asked to photo-document the examination of the Shroud. He observed the following: “Moving around the table, (with the Shroud laid out horizontally) I saw this image so faded as if to practically disappear, while from other angles, it seemed as if the figure were almost outside the sheet”.
These two observations hint at holographic qualities, indicating that apart from the grayscale with the built-in 3D information, there might be holographic information present in an interference pattern. In order to investigate this possibility, I decided to form a team of experts and to produce holograms, based on the scientifically proven 3D information in the grayscale of the image. That led us in a different direction of the 3D research with some unexpected results.

HOLOGRAHPY, FROM 3D TO 2D AND back to 3D AGAIN
A hologram is a light wave interference pattern of a 3D image, recorded on a special photographic film (2D) that, when illuminated properly, can reproduce the 3-dimensional image in light.

WHAT IS INTERFERENCE?
Interference means a mixing of two waves, as for example, when we throw two stones simultaneously from opposite sides of a pool into the water, the two resulting wave patterns will meet and intermix. We call this intermixing interference. The waves can be any waves, for example, water-waves, sound waves or light-waves etc. To produce a hologram, lasers are being used to create the interference pattern.

WHY DO WE USE LASERS?
A laser beam consists of photons of the same size, all moving in the same direction. The wave packets are aligned together and all of the same frequency. This is known as coherent light and has the ability to contain intelligent information.
The info wave has a precise mathematical form.

PRODUCING A HOLOGRAM THE TRADITIONAL WAY
To produce a hologram, a laser beam is split into two beams: a reference and an object-beam. The reference-beam is widened by a lens or curved mirror and aimed directly at the sheet of photographic film. The object-beam is also widened but aimed at a physical 3D object (the subject of the hologram) which reflects the light onto the same film. The two beams interact, forming an interference pattern that is recorded. This is the Master Hologram.
From the Master Hologram we can produce copies that, when illuminated with monochromatic light (e.g., a halogen lamp) from the same angle that the reference-beam hit the plate, can be seen in 3D again, in light.
The monochromatic light beam is a reversed reference beam that produces a real image of the 3D object.
Every area of the Master Hologram contains information about the whole image. If you break a Master hologram in multiple pieces, you have multiple holograms, each containing information about the whole image.

COMPUTER GENERATED SHROUD HOLOGRAMS
The different stages of the process that we followed to create the hologram of the Shroud of Turin:

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIAL
We used second and third generation copies of the original photographs made by Giuseppe Enrie in 1931. In those days, the most reliable light-sensitive material was an orthochromatic emulsion, which was sensitive to the blue and green elements of white light and insensitive to red and that resulted in an enhancement of the image.

DIGITALIZATION OF THE NEGATIVES
We digitized the Enrie negatives to facilitate translation of image density information into gray-scale numbers (result: 70-100 p.p.m.).

CONVERSION PROCESS FROM 2D to 3D
—Bernardo Galmarini, an Argentinean 3D expert, translated the gray- scale levels into depth-data on the Z-axis and, where necessary, repaired and softened existing image areas that were void of 3D information…perhaps the result of historic insult and damage. Bernardo then generated a sequence of 625 images, which were later integrated into a 3D Shroud image using a Holoprinter.
—In this process, Bernardo used a virtual camera, moving along a horizontal path over the 3D model from center to most left, and most right, and interpolated all other images. The result is a 3D image that contains all existing distance information recorded in the grayscale.

CREATING THE MASTER HOLOGRAM
1) The DFCH Holoprinter, developed by the Dutch Holographic Laboratory, employed a LcoS chip (1920 x 1080 pixels resolution) to create a computer generated “Master Hologram” from the sequence of 625 images. We first produced holograms of the face and body in smaller size, and subsequently, a Canadian company produced a 100cm x 200cm hologram from both the front- and the back-image, with each square mm built up of 1024 x 768 pixels. This was done after we improved the conversion from 2D to 3D in the Dutch Holographic Laboratory.

COPIES
2) Once you have produced the “Master Hologram” you can make copies.

3) You can also create other 3D images, like lenticulars or anaglyph photographs.
OBSERVATIONS IN THE HOLOGRAMS
The holograms provide a great opportunity to view the image on the Shroud in 3D. These observations confirmed many of the previous findings and revealed some new findings. Let us begin with observations on the dorsal image, then the frontal image, and finally the facial image.

OBSERVATIONS IN 3D DORSAL IMAGE
1) The upper part of the back of the head fades out, indicating that the head is bent forward.
2) The hair falls down along the neck and the back and looks like “wet”. It appears “rope-like” in the middle, similar to a ponytail as mentioned in the literature.
3) The buttocks do not look flattened, but rather tensed as in rigor mortis.
4) The images of the flagellation wounds follow the curved surfaces of the buttocks, legs and thorax, while on the photographs they look straight.
5) The legs in the dorsal image look quite confusing. The upper part of the anatomical right leg contains very little 3D-data and the left leg contains areas void of any 3D data that, after conversion from 2D to 3D show up as “holes”. Note: to appreciate the degree of bending of the legs, we will have to rely on data from the frontal image.
6) The sole of the anatomical right foot is clearly visible, as is the tip of the left foot that seems to be crossed over the right foot.

OBSERVATIONS IN 3D FRONTAL IMAGE
1) In the depth-map, the chest appears inclined in an upward position with respect to the pelvis area, as if inclined towards the viewer. The chest also appears to be expanded.
2) The arms appear to be rigid and oriented in an almost horizontal plane. The elbows are not inclined downwards; they rather seem to lie in a plane together with the lower and missing upper arms. The anatomical left lower arm shows the elbow higher than the left hand, which is crossed over the right hand in a natural bending. The right wrist is under the left hand, over the space between the two legs. The right hand angles upwards following the curvature of the upper left leg, with the fingers bent downward along the left leg curvature. The left hand is bent at the wrist and fingers in a downward direction.
3) We can better appreciate the position of the legs in this frontal view. Both legs are bent, with the anatomical left leg bent a little more than the right leg and partly covering it.
4) The anatomical left foot crosses over the right foot in the form of an X, and the tips of the toes of the left foot are visible.
5) To show difficulties in the interpretation of these 3D images, I refer to a ropelike 3D shape crossing the left hand/wrist and an unknown little 3D object on the fingers of this hand (flower, ampulla?). The question what this means remains open.

OBSERVATIONS IN 3D FACIAL IMAGE

1) In conventional Shroud photographs of the face, we observe a bloodspot seemingly hovering above the head. In the 3D image, however, this bloodspot appears to rest on top of the head. The blood images result from actual blood contact. There are multiple bloodspots on the top and the back of the head area, suggesting that this was not caused by only a crown of thorns, but a “helmet” of thorns.

2) During the 2D to 3D conversion process, image areas that were void of 3D information in the gray map showed up as “holes”. Looking at the face there were multiple, little “holes” on the forehead, the right and left sides of the face, the anatomical right side of the moustache and beard, and the middle of the lower part of the beard. When we saw this, I remembered photographs of the face and middle part of the body, in the book by Dr. Alan and Mary Whanger, where Prof. Avinoam Danin, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, had drawn in images of flowers and plants that he had discovered in the Enrie photographs. In November 2007 I teamed up with Prof.Danin and we had an opportunity to study the UV photographs taken by STURP´S official (technical) photographer, Vernon Miller, of the Brooks Institute, during the STURP team investigations in 1978. In 2007-2008, Prof. Danin discovered that the “holes” found during the 2D and 3D conversion process of the face all contained images of little flowers. It seems that these flowers blocked the formation of the body-image-information of these areas (“holes”) of the face, and the body around the arms and hands. We know that there is no image under the bloodspots. Whatever the image formation process was, it seemingly did not penetrate solid objects, such as bloodspots or flowers. Two flowers also appear in the middle of the tip of the beard. This part of the beard does not seem to have been ripped out, because you can follow the contour of the underside of the beard that seems intact in the 3D image.
3) The 3D frontal and dorsal view of the body image are like 2 bas reliefs. When you join them together, however, you find that a “layer” of about 10 cm is missing from the middle of the body. This coincides with similar measurements of the distance between the frontal and dorsal top of the head images.
4) Under the beard in the area of the neck we found an oval-shaped solid object of about 11.5 x 5 cm, showing on the surface in relief, what appears to be three Hebrew or Aramaic letters. The letters used in both alphabets are similar. Pursuant to this finding, we did two follow-up studies:
5) First, we researched photographs of the 3D studies of Dr. Jackson and Prof. Tamburelli. They all contained the vertical relief properties observed in the hologram, confirming the presence of an object under the beard.
6) Then, we researched many photographs of the face taken by different photographers during the last 50 years. As an example, in November 2007, we had access to the extensive collection of the 1978 photographs of Vernon Miller. Many of these photographs showed the oval outline of the object and several of them the shape of the 3 letters. According to photographic experts, that we consulted, the reason the letters are visible in some photos and not others could be due to differences in depths-of-field resulting from different lighting conditions and aperture settings and lens focusing chosen by the photographer(s) when they produced the photographs. (the image is very superficial).

THE LETTERS

The three letters were identified, reading from right to left as one does in Hebrew or Aramaic, as:
TSADE- ALEPH- NUN this is the Hebrew word TS’ON
Calligraphy used to be my hobby, and as the letters of these alphabets are written in calligraphic form, I used them many times to exercise my calligraphic skills, so I was very familiar with the shape of the letters. However, I do not read Hebrew or Aramaic, so I consulted experts in old Hebrew and Aramaic. They showed me the two most consulted Hebrew and Aramaic dictionaries: “A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the Hebrew Language for Readers of English”, by Ernest Klein, and, “A Dictionary of the Targum, The Talmud Babli and Yerushalmi and the Midrashic Literature”, by Marcus Jastrow.
Here the Hebrew word TS’ON is translated as: “small cattle, sheep, goats”. This word is a plural.

Now, here we have the Shroud of Turin with the image of a tortured and crucified man, who according to tradition was Jesus Christ, and under the beard a solid oval object upon whose surface is written in relief and in Hebrew the word: “Sheep and goats”.
If you look at the Gospel of John, the chapter of the Good Shepherd, you can see a strong connection between the sheep and Our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the Good Shepherd. Jesus Christ himself is telling here, that the sheep follow him, the ones of his flock (Jews), and also the ones from other flocks (non-Jews). He will sacrifice His life for his sheep, and in concordance with the will of His Father, he will take up His life again, so talking about His crucifixion, and also His Resurrection.
So, the word TS’ON is always used as small cattle, sheep, goats. There is however one exception and that is in Exodus 12:21. When the Israelites are ordered by God to prepare a lamb for sacrifice, then in the original text the word that is used for lamb is SEH (Exodus 12:3). However, in Exodus 12:21 it says: “Then Moses summoned all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go at once and select the animals for your families and slaughter the Passover lamb”. The word for lamb in this text is TS’ON and it is specifically translated as sacrificial lamb for this special occasion.
In the Jewish tradition this sentence is also translated as.: “make a sign with the lamb” (by putting the blood on the doorpost). This is because of the very close relationship of the word TS’ON with the word TS”IOEN and this word means “sign”.

The Church Fathers were clear in their opinion, that Our Lord Jesus Christ WAS the Passover lamb.
This makes sense because:
A) In the Gospels is mentioned, that Jesus Christ approaches the river Jordan where John the Baptist was teaching and baptizing people. When John sees Jesus, he tells the people: “Behold, there comes THE LAMB OF GOD, that takes away the sins of this world”.
B) During the Catholic Eucharist, when the priest shows the bread, he says: “This is the Body of Jesus Christ, THE LAMB OF GOD, that takes away the sins of this world”.
C) In the book of the Apocalypse by John, the word LAMB is mentioned 28 times and always means Jesus Christ.
D) During the Last Supper, where according to the Jewish tradition of the Pesach- meal, wine, bread and lamb should have been present, the Gospels only mention bread and wine. The reason is that Jesus Christ himself is THE LAMB and is going to be sacrificed the next day. That was obviously clear to the authors of the Gospels.
E) Jesus is crucified on Friday at the same moment that in the Temple the lambs were being sacrified for the Passover, making Him also the Passover lamb, because from the moment of the sunset on Friday , the festival of Passover started.

I believe that this finding on the image of The Shroud of Turin is important. An oval shaped solid object under the beard of The Man on The Shroud, containing three letters that form the word TS’ON and show a very direct link with Jesus Christ, as if saying: “Here is Jesus Christ”.
“THE LAMB OF GOD IS THE SACRIFICIAL LAMB (TS’ON)”.

CLICK TO SEE THE POWER POINT PRESENTATION 3D

SUMMARY OF THE CONVERSION OF 2D TO 3D

The first conversion from 2D to 3D was done in 2005 with photographs of Barrie Schwortz, which Barrie took during the STURP investigations in 1978 (© 1978-2010 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA Inc.) and resulted in the first holograms of the face of 30 x 40 cm and the front and the back of the body, 30 x 60 cm. These holograms were used in the Grizzly Adams documentaries: “The Fabric of Time” and “The Case of Christ’s Resurrection”. The first series of conversions were based ONLY on the visible gray scale of the image, and showed many imperfections in the image, or image-less areas, specifically on the sides of the face and the front of the head, regions around the underarms and the hands and in the back image the sides of the upper legs and parts of the lower legs. These showed up in the converted material as “holes” and in the holograms as black areas without 3D information.

Barrie Schwortz

Avinoam Danin

In November of 2005 I visited Barrie Schwortz in Los Angeles and showed him the holograms. His professional comment was that the 3D did not show up better than in the VP-8 Analyzer and that we had to improve a lot the 3D. But he also showed us a way of finding “hidden” information in the so-called image-less areas by employing the magnetic lasso tool in Photoshop and enhancing the image. That resulted in the discovery, that in the Enrie photographs that we used later, we could find indeed a lot more of information, for example on the anatomical left side of the face, the front of the head and other areas on the body itself, the legs and around the lower part of the arms and hands, and that resulted in the fact that we now had about 85 % of the image that contained from very good till low intensity image information. The image-less areas were now reduced to about 15 % of the total body image. In 2007, when we started to cooperate with Prof. Avinoam Danin of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, we found also a solution why there was no information in certain areas, specifically on the front of the head, the right anatomical side of the face and around the hands and lower parts of the arms. He found flower and plant images in these areas and the presence of these flowers and plants seemingly blocked the formation of the image of the body in these areas. Identical basically to the blood images, because under the blood there is no body image either. It is good to remember, that there are 3 image-formation processes involved:
1) The blood that is visible on the Shroud of Turin was caused by direct contact (?) between the blood and the surface of the linen cloth.

2) The flower- and plant images on the Shroud. According to Avinoam Danin, these images show characteristics in the image that you also see in images formed by corona discharge.

3) The image of the body itself. Until now, science has not come up with a satisfactory explanation how the body-image was formed. Until now it is unexplainable.

In 2006 and 2007 Bernardo Galmarini produced new and much more sophisticated conversions of 2D to 3D of the face and the front and the back of the body, which resulted in a new series of holograms, anaglyph photographs and lenticular 3D images. He also produced movies where the image of the face and the body are moving from the left to the right side of the screen and they are very impressive indeed. The 3D, which was achieved now, was very impressive and the images now also showed much more detail. The technicians in the Dutch Holographic Laboratory did also very professional and good work improving the 3D qualities of the image in the years that followed.

Quite some people had seen the holograms and we found that they got very confused looking at these images, which was caused by the absence of the upper arms and these areas showed up as big holes in the holograms. As is known, the Shroud was severely damaged and the images of the upper arms were burnt during the fire in the Chapel in Chambery, France, on December 4 of the year 1532 and in 1534 patched in places that had burn damage, with pieces of 16th century altar cloth to cover where it was scorched and holed. These patches are also very disturbing in the holograms.

Father Hector Guerra L.C.

Since 2007 we were also helping Father Hector Guerra of the Legionairs of Christ, who had already opened up two exhibitions of the Shroud of Turin in Rome and Jerusalem, and he wanted to use the life size holograms in these exhibitions. We decided then to make an ARTFICIAL reconstruction of the missing upper arms but ONLY for these exhibitions, so people would not get confused looking at the big holes where the upper arms were supposed to be and the correlation with the areas where the patches on the side of the upper arms were visible.
So basically, there are three versions of all the 3D materials:

1) The scientific version, which is the one that is solely based on the gray scale information in the digitized photographic materials that we used. They clearly show the image-less areas as “holes” and these are the ones that we use and have used for scientific research. They are what we call the “SCIENTIFIC-3D version”.

2) On the other hand, we have the version that we talked about with the ARTIFICIAL reconstruction of the upper arms that are being used ONLY for exhibitions. We call this the “ARTISTIC- version”.

3) When we encountered the image less areas, Bernardo Galmarini decided to “restore” these areas. He filled in the areas with a very thin layer that was taken from the direct surroundings around these areas, but did it in such a way that an expert would always be able to see where and how this had been done. This resulted in the most perfect images of the Man on the Shroud and comes the nearest to an anatomical correct representation of the body. We call this the “SCIENTIFIC-artistic” version, as the 3D is based on 85 % gray-scale information and 15% on “softened” areas where we found the image-less areas.

This also answers already many of the questions that have been asked to me during the Q&A after presentations and also mails with questions that people have sent to me.

Isabel Piczek, Tom D´Muhala, Mike Minor, Mr. and Mrs. Soons

Cardenal Severino Poletto, Susy Philips, Paul and Dr. Soons

In November of 2006 MIKE MINOR, in cooperation with TOM D’MUHALA and ISABEL PICZEK of AMSTAR organized an audience with the Shroud Custodian, Cardenal SEVERINO POLETTO. Suzy Philips and Don Giuseppe Ghiberti in Turin set the date and we showed there, in the presence of a group of about 15 Italian Shroud scientists the results of our work, holograms of 200 x 100 cm (life-size) of the front and the back of the body each, and different holograms of the face. Cardenal Severino Poletto decided then that a set of the life-size holograms would be placed in the Museo della Sindone in Turin and many people have seen these holograms during the exhibition of the real Shroud in May/June of the year,2010.

Museo della Sindone

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The next 4 photos shown here are some of the converted materials which were used in the Dutch Holographic Laboratory, to create some of the holograms.

Photo 1

Photo 1) is a photograph of Barrie Schwortz of the face (© 1978-2010 Barrie M. Schwortz Collection, STERA Inc.). This was the first conversion and shows very clearly the image-less areas on the right and the left side of the face, following downwards the band in the linen.
(The next photographs 2 and 4 are Anaglyph, use 3D glasses).

Photo 2

Photo 4

Photo 2) and Photo 4) are based on photographic material of Giuseppe Enrie, and show the improved versions where we can see that on the left anatomical side of the face there is much more gray-scale information and also “softer” details in the face.

Photo 3 ANAGLYPH USE 3D GLASSES

Photo 3) shows the gray-scale of the image with the different densities.(Anaglyph).
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To show the difference between the series of 2005 and 2007 we will show some photographs of different face holograms and holograms of the front and the back of the body of 2005, compared with anaglyph photographs of part of the improved work of 2007. It is not possible to make photographs of the holograms and show the 3D, because a camera lens cannot see stereoscopically.

THE PHOTOGRAPHS 6, 7, 9 and 11 ARE ANAGLYPH, SO YOU NEED 3D GLASSES !

Figure 5 – hologram

Figure 6 ANAGLYPH USE 3D GLASSES

Figure 7 ANAGLYPH USE 3D GLASSES

Figure 8 – hologram

Figure 9 ANAGLYPH USE 3D GLASSES

Figure 10 – hologram

Figure 11 ANAGLYPH USE 3D GLASSES

Figure 5) 2005–Face with obvious image-less areas on the sides of the face. Figure 6) 2006– Face with less image-less areas, especially on the anatomical left side. (use 3D glasses).
Figure 7) 2007– Face with less image-less areas and now also more detail.(use 3D-glasses).
Figure 8) 2005—Hologram of the front of the body, with obvious image-less areas around the face, parts of the lower legs, around the lower arms and hands etc. showing up as black image-less areas
Figure 9) 2007—Anaglyph photograph of the front of the body with more information in the previously image-less areas and also in the whole image of the body. (use 3D glasses).
Figure 10) 2005—Hologram of the back of the body, showing again the image-less areas in black in the body image, see lower parts of the legs etc. Figure 11) 2007—Anaglyph photograph of the back of the body with more information in the previous image-less areas, and also more detail in the whole image of the body (use 3D glasses).

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2D to 3D Conversion of the FACE on the SHROUD

BY BERNARDO GALMARINI

ANALYSIS OF THE HEAD
Methodology of adaptation of the process of 2D to 3D conversion, to parameters that are based on grayscale data in the image.

INTRODUCTION

In the process of the stereoscopic conversion from 2D to 3D of the Enrie–photographs of the Shroud of Turin, I have used my vast experience of 2D to 3D conversions of photographs. The idea behind this project was, to adapt this kind of sculpting of a photograph, to more precise scientific parameters, present in the Shroud-image. These limits mark the boundaries of the artistic subjectivity, transforming the whole process into a more objective one. The Shroud image contains gray-scale information and there is a correlation between the gray values and the depth values, which means that the image intensity varies inversely with the cloth-to-body distance (if we suppose that the image was produced by some kind of radiation into a fabric that lays perpendicularly to the body, and completely “flat”). But, in any case, no matter how the image was formed, the perfect correlation between the gray values and the position of the body in the Z axis exists, and that is a fact.
This information is unique to this photographic image. There is no other photograph about real world subjects that has this 3D information.
The 3D image, based only on the grayscale information is an approximation of how the Man in the image on the Shroud looked like, due to interference of the grayscale information by “extraneous information”, e.g. blood contaminants, greases, aging and damage to the linen.
Earlier on it could have been a real life image, if this same method could have been applied 1500 years ago, when the Shroud was in a better state of conservation, or in its first year of existence when it had much more faithful gray-scale information, but that of course we will never know. So, the procedure was, to use the gray-scale information as the basis and then “sculpt” (using my experience in this field), the facial image, but only in the before mentioned areas, obscured by “extraneous information”. Knowing, that on average the gray-scale represents a human face or body, it is logical to eliminate from this study the small areas of interference by “extraneous information”.

METHODOLOGY

The method normally is, to “sculpt” on the original face, until it is given the right volume, which means the same in all the points of the matrix of the gray-scale that is put on top of the original, after correcting the areas obscured by “extraneous information”. This proved to be impossible in 4 simultaneous conversions (or master camera views from different angles) and judging by the naked eye only. So, instead, I attached a “mask”, based on the gray-scale map, to the artistic version after erasing the deformed areas from the latter. Subsequently I corrected and filled in the image-free areas of these “masks” (which appear as “holes” in the 3D image), measuring Pixel by Pixel and attachment to attachment in the 4 successive conversions). This is comparable to the restoration process used to “mask” insect holes in wood for example. The point is, that the four used “masks” are different, so are their “holes”, which I filled in such a way, that I used the same patches in all of them. And these patches (being the same) had to be transformed according to the camera view (virtual) and lens (virtual) that I was working with, in such a way that they look right in stereo view. This implies that there could not be a Pixel shift or Pixel displacement between the patches going from one camera view to the next, because the brain detects a mistake of even one Pixel and that will cause what is called “retinal rivalry”, which is confusion, caused by the rivalry between the two retinas.
See for the different stages in this process the Figures 1 to 6 (4 and 5 form a stereoscopic pair):

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

THE PHOTOS ARE ANAGLYPH, SO USE YOUR 3D GLASSES !!!!

Figure 1 shows the FACE-Anaglyph with grayscale without and with “softening”.
Figure 2 shows the FACE-Anaglyph without “softening”= 3D-grayscale.
Figure 3 shows the FACE-Anaglyph “softened”.
Figure 4 shows the FACE with the mask or matrix in PARALELL view (eyes are parallel).
Figure 5 shows the FACE with the mask or matrix in CROSS-EYED view.
Figure 6 shows the MASTER-ANAGLYPH.

Note to the figures 4 and 5 : In figure 4 we appreciate a difference between the “artistic’ conversion (the image that contains the red points) and the image that should be the conversion to coincide with the version with the “depth-map”. This artistic version, should be such that you do not see any separation (on the Z-axis) between the red points (key-points) and the surface of the face. Once you have accomplished this coincidence between the artistic conversion of the face and the “key-points” of the scientific conversion (based on the “depth-map = grayscale) we will have a conversion with a much more human aspect and with a precision that is being dictated by the objective or scientific parameters. This specific way of doing the conversion of 2D to 3D has at least twice as much depth, so twice as much 3D effect than the first conversions that we accomplished in 2005.

This will translate in two different qualities:
1) 100% more depth with the same visual angle as before.
2) The same 3D depth with a double visual angle as before (when you move to the side you will notice that the head of the image rotates more degrees).

In the end this particular conversion process is a hybrid, that is not only similar to the version of the VP-8 Analyzer, but it also looks much more human than the previous conversions.
I thought at first, that in this more scientific conversion, the hidden information in the Shroud (3D information in the gray-scale), would be a nuisance or obstacle to produce a human representation of the face, and that I would have to struggle continuously against this. Strangely enough, this hidden scientific information in the Shroud became the key and the basis for this work, reducing my artistic work to only softening the “holes” and deformities (caused surely by the passing of time) and the adapting to what this scientific version commands you to do: filling in and normalizing the “holes” or “dead areas” in the hidden information of the linen. For example: the areas without information in the forehead have been corrected following the surrounding gray-scale with coherent information and with a normal human forehead in mind. This process was helped by the fact, that the central zone of the forehead and the bony structure of the orbits contain very coherent information and that of course was taken as a guideline.

The final work included the positioning of the 625 virtual camera shots, placed in a virtual lateral camera array, which was to be the basis information that the Holographic Laboratory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, needed to produce a Master-Hologram.

A 3D Lenticular is produced by using a material that consists of very small (invisible) tubular lenses. The spectator will look at the 3D image through this layer of lenses and in this way, he will experience a 3D image.
The material works like an infinite amount of lenses next to each other. The original image behind them has been calculated and revised to suit these lenses. One image is the left view, the other the right view and the lenticular lens focuses these images into position for your left and right eye. Depending on the position of the eye, the lenses will offer a different view of the object that you are looking at. You will experience this as a 3D presence. (see photograph 1)

Photograph 1 – Working of 3D in lenticular imaging

A 3D Lenticular does not require a special light source (like a Hologram) to be put on display. The 3D images in the Lenticulars have been developed from the original 3D data base of the Shroud by Walter Spierings, Director of the Dutch Holographic Laboratory in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (see photograph 2). This is the same data base that has been used to manufacture the 3D life size holograms of the Shroud. So, the Lenticular will display the same 3D image albeit through a different technique.

Photograph 2 – Walter Spierings Director of Dutch Holographic Laboratory with lenticular of the Virgen of Guadalupe

We use these life-size Lenticulars with the front and the back of the body in expositions of The Shroud, and smaller size lenticulars when giving presentations.
See photographs 3 and 4.

Life-size lenticulars of front and back of body. Expostion Panama

Life-size lenticulars of front and back of body. Expostion Univ. of Anahuac, Mexico D.F.