RTI-WTF-OMFG
I think the only acronym that needs to be explained in the title is RTI: Reflective Transformation Imaging. The rest I am sure you can figure out. What is RTI? In short, RTI is a “computational photographic method that captures a subject’s surface shape and colour and enables the interactive re-lighting of the subject from any direction” (CHI, 2022). In short, it allows you to see things that the naked eye cannot or has difficulty seeing. My intention for this tech is to apply it to ancient coins and see if it can aid in their identification. Worn-out coins are notoriously difficult to identify and time-consuming to do so and any little clue can help with a coin’s identification. Even if it is a shadow that highlights an edge of a half-punched Greek letter. I will take that and run with it. RTI is that help…or so I thought.
Check out the below video for an example of Reflective Transformation Imaging.
COOL, EH?
Unfortunately, it turns out the software you need to process the images lacks current updates and does not compute well (Yea, I said Compute) with the new Mac M1 silicon computers. Both the RTI Builder and Viewer were built for the Intel chip and, to my knowledge, even if you have an Intel Macbook Pro, you still need a little help with running the programs such as Parallels or Crossover by Codeweavers.
So you would think, easy peasy…I got this. Download the necessary software to run the programs I need and, PRESTO, away I go. So I did just that. I decided to go with Crossover. I downloaded it, ran it, then opened the RTI builder. So far, so good. Everything appeared to be working. Let’s move on to getting those photos I need.
Twelfth-century Tetartera and half-Tertartera copper coins. Numismatics Museum of Athens.
These have been cleaned and many are still difficult to make out. Photo: Scott Coleman, 2022.
The steps in this process are easy enough but a little time-consuming until you get the hang of it. I will keep it short. 1) You set up your camera gear and subject (the coin). You have one or two black reflective spheres alongside the coin and position a camera directly above the coin and pointing down. 2) Once your gear is set up you take at least forty photos with a light source coming from a different angle for each photo. 3) Once completed, you import those photos (which should be in RAW format) into a photo convertor like Bridges and convert them into jpg and DNG files. 4) Then you open up the RTI Builder software and import the jpg files. AND ERROR…for over FIVE HOURS I TRIED TO GET THIS TO WORK!
WTF!! OMFG!! DIE!! JUST WORK!! FML!!
Turns out that once you get to the Mac Catalina OS and beyond then Builder and Viewer become more cumbersome, if not, just downright inoperable. NOW, this is no fault of the developers who created this program as from what I read on their forums, they lack funding to further develop the software so it is more compatible and up-to-date. What a surprise, the Humanities and Social Sciences lacking in funding! Who’d-of-thunk-it?
Anyway, after hours upon hours of renaming files, moving files, tweaking this and tweaking that, all I get is an output of jpg-exports folder cannot be found or some BS message like that! I double-checked, triple-checked, and quadruple-checked my file path names (you cannot have any spaces in the file names, as this will throw an error), and made sure everything is converted properly. Still, a no go. The software is running, but it no-likey my request to import the jpegs. So what to do from this point?
The only reason for the errors I can come up with is that RTI Builder does not like Monterey OS and therefore, will not read the file paths properly. The solution: I keep playing with the programs or I get an old Mac, or God forbid, a PC. Shivers.
Maybe I can learn enough code to fix this myself…Hmmm.
That is it for today. Just a short rant about RTI and Macs. If you have any suggestions or know anyone that can solve this problem for me, please, PLEASE, pass this post along. I can use all the help I can get. So to end on a positive note…at least I wrote something, finally. And here is a photo from last night’s thunder and lightning show to say goodnight!
North-west side of the Acropolis. Photo: Scott Coleman, 2022.