Line drawings vs. curvature shading: scientific illustration of range scanned artefacts

Abstract

For scientific archaeological illustrations, pen-and-ink drawings are traditionally the most prevalent type. Over the years, drawing styles have substantially changed several times and even today there is basically no general agreement about how to illustrate objects best. Without doubt, this is one major reason why most computergenerated line drawings are still recognized as such, although non-photorealistic rendering has made significant advances during the past decade. With a special focus on cultural heritage objects and the theoretical and practical restrictions of current NPR techniques on scanned range data, we discuss the question if line drawings could generally be replaced by a detail-shaded view, which highlights relevant features, but still conveys an objective plastic impression as well.