There are thousands of tiny tchotchkes in the world modeled after the giant Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio de Janeiro, but it's been impossible to make any of them into an exact replica—until now. The PUC University of Rio de Janeiro has teamed up with 3D scanning company Pix4D and Canadian drone company Aeryon Labs to capture every detail of the icon, surmounting drone photography nightmares like high winds, bad weather, and worse lighting in order to do it. "This dream is…15 years old already," the univeristy explains in a video about the project. "Christ the Redeemer is our most important symbol."
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In order to fully digitize that symbol, the team wove together 2,090 aerial photographs to create a fully textured 3D model, which you can explore in the interactive visuals below. The project was inspired by an even bigger venture from back in 2013—senseFly's mapping of the entire Matterhorn—but the detail work and conditions they overcome to capturing the Redeemer statue were herculean in their own right. The citizens of Rio will be grateful, though, to have the symbol of their city that much closer every day.
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