AMBER ROOM. VR VERSION

Tsarskoe Selo State Museum with the support of PJSC Gazprom

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VR version of the Amber Room is an exact interactive model of the world-famous Catherine Palace interior created in virtual reality format.

The uniqueness of the project lies in the difficulty of preserving the amber pattern, taking into account reflective properties of the stone. The virtual version of the Amber Room was created by Tsarskoe Selo State Museum with the support of PJSC Gazprom. The content developer is Stereoforma.

Due to the special equipment, the interior of the Amber Room can be viewed in the smallest detail, zooming into the art and craft items and elements of decoration, Florentine mosaics and carvings. In the virtual space, the viewer can look at the exhibits from minimum distance and learn about the history of the interior, techniques, and materials. It took about a year to complete the VR version of the Amber Room. The work of 3D scanning specialists was particularly challenging because it dealt with the most complex surfaces – reflective, shiny and transparent. They make up 70% of the volume of the Amber Room – mirrors, gilded carvings and translucent amber.

The VR project uses a combined approach to preserve the unique amber pattern and photographic realism of the object – photogrammetric scanning followed by hand sculpting. In fact, the specialists repeated the work of the restorers, only the painstaking work with each item was not in stone and wood, but in 3D.