A silver lining: digital technology gives hockey fans a close-up look at the Stanley Cup. (web graphics).(Brief Article)

The Stanley Cup--hockey's oldest, most coveted prize--has journeyed more miles than the most seasoned of business travelers. That's because every summer, during the sport's off-season, each member of the reigning championship team gets to spend 24 hours with the trophy. As a result of this unique tradition, the three-foot, 35-pound cup has circled the globe, with stays in foreign countries from Russia to Japan to Switzerland, and brief stops atop mountain peaks, in hot tubs, and inside igloos.

Despite this exposure, relatively few people have ever seen the Stanley Cup close enough to read the individual names engraved on it. Even visitors to the Hockey Hall of Fame in Toronto, where the trophy is displayed, cannot see all the engravings, especially those inside the bowl. But thanks to digital technology, hockey fans throughout the world can now obtain a personal, close-up look at every inch of the Stanley Cup by using their home computers.

"The Stanley Cup is the people's and players' trophy, so we want to give everyone the opportunity to have their own personal time with it," says Peter Jagla, producer of new media for the Hockey Hall of Fame. This can be accomplished in two ways: through an interactive 3D model or a high-resolution still image with a zoom feature, both of which are available on the Hall of Fame's Web site (www.legendsofhockey.net).

Both types of imagery were created by diginiche, a Toronto- and New York-based visualization company that specializes in merging photography with digital technologies. To generate the 3D model, diginiche used Viewpoint's 3D Photo Studio software, which is based on a photographic rather than conventional computer-generated imaging process. First, the diginiche team snapped a series of 60 photos of the Cup in six-degree increments, as well as a registration grid, using a Kodak Professional DCS 330 digital camera. The camera, as well as the motorized turntable and strobes used for the photo shoot, were controlled through Photo Studio. By backlighting the trophy--no side or top lights were used--the team captured silhouette images of the Cup. Photo Studio then interpreted this information, and automatically generated a 3D model. The artists later imported the digital object into Alias|Wavefront's Maya, where they tweaked the geometry.

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