Fieldwork

Animating the finds of First Government House

As part of the development for our Unearthed exhibition at the Museum of Sydney, we’ve been exploring new ways to present a large volume of archaeological material excavated from the site of First Government House.

These objects come from one of Sydney’s most important colonial-period digs: between 1983 and 1991, the site of Australia’s first Government House yielded around 140,000 artefacts that had been buried beneath the city’s streets for nearly 140 years. The collection includes everything from gaming tokens to bone points and personal belongings - objects that offer a unique insight into life during this period. They are often small, fragile and deeply textured, and we wanted to interpret them in a way that helped visitors understand their form and function without overwhelming the original material.

Within the exhibition, our 3D designers — Kieran Larkin and Dean Scott — proposed a range of ways for visitors to actively engage with the objects. These included interactive games, 3D models on iPads, and short animations that bring a selection of objects to life. This work brought together photogrammetry, web-based interface development, 3D animation and post-production to create experiences that are both informative and easy to navigate.

Creating the models: photogrammetry

The process began by creating high-resolution models of the objects using photogrammetry. Each object was photographed under controlled lighting, with around 120 images taken from multiple angles. These were then processed into 3D models using Metashape. Photogrammetry is ideal for this kind of work: it preserves surface detail and texture down to the millimetre, allowing the resulting models to be rotated, zoomed and examined in ways that reveal features easily missed in static photography. Metashape, one of the leading tools used in cultural-heritage capture, offered the reliability and surface-detail accuracy the Photogrammetry work required.

While other platforms and capture technologies exist, photogrammetry was best suited for this use case, delivering high-quality geometry and exceptionally rich textures. Across the project, around 100 objects were captured. Many were produced by specialist Michael Rempe, with additional models created by our in-house team - primarily Dean Scott - supported by a dedicated volunteer (the photos below might suggest I was leading the charge, but in reality I only captured a few objects at the very start - Michael and Dean handled the vast majority of the photogrammetry work).

The model below was created from the images you can see me capturing above. It is all that remains of a dog buried in the grounds of the first Government House. The burial pit also contained several gnawed bones and a timber panel, possibly part of a small coffin. Analysis of the skeleton revealed that the dog weighed 20–30 kilograms (the size of a Labrador), had worn teeth, and was 10–12 years old when it died, sometime before 1820.

Early work in After Effects and Video Copilot

The first pass used Video Copilot’s Element 3D inside Adobe After Effects. When it first launched, Element was a game-changer: it let you import OBJ files directly into AE, set up lighting quickly, add lens and lighting effects (shadows, depth of field, glows, reflections), and keyframe complex movements with ease.

I made solid progress with this approach, but as the project scaled - multiple artefacts, long frame counts, high-resolution renders - its limitations became blockers. Element 3D, which hasn’t seen meaningful updates in several years, struggled with stability. Mid-workflow, the plugin would fail to load or freeze After Effects entirely, forcing a restart and often losing work. Creating complex sequences became increasingly unreliable. After several forced resets, it was clear the pipeline needed a more robust 3D engine.

Shifting the Workflow to Blender

We already use Blender extensively in our 3D workflows for working on models between other applications, and I’d experimented with simple animations before, so shifting the project into Blender became a practical solution. It offers full control over lighting, materials, camera movement and, critically, the ability to generate shadows on transparent backgrounds.

Each model was imported, scaled and positioned to match its intended framing in the final animation. To produce the required shadow pass, I used a dedicated shadow-catcher plane beneath each model. This allowed me to export clean RGBA renders — the object plus a soft shadow — without baking in an opaque background. Every frame was exported as a PNG sequence, ready to be imported into Adobe Premiere for assembly.

Moving to Blender also brought much-needed consistency across the suite of objects. Camera angles could be matched, and the lighting and shadow work could be brought into a consistent, repeatable setup that was genuinely workable at scale, ensuring each animation sat comfortably within a unified visual language.

Final Assembly in Premiere Pro

Once renders were complete, they were moved into Adobe Premiere for final compositing. This is where the coloured background layers were added, positioning done within a grid that had to match a physical overlay used in the exhibition, and delivery formats exported.

Because each 3D render included only the model and a transparent shadow layer, the coloured backgrounds remained flexible: quick to swap, easy to test against installed colours, and consistent across the full set. This was particularly important when trying to match the colour backgrounds with physical installation.

A Digital Window Into the Archaeology

The result is a suite of object animations that sit comfortably within the exhibition’s broader design language while foregrounding the archaeological significance of the material. These small objects - many among the earliest European domestic traces in Sydney - are no longer hidden beneath layers of earth. Brought back into view through this multifaceted process, they now move and rotate just a few storeys above the ground where they were first discovered, with shifting light revealing markings and textures that have been largely unseen since their excavation.

Despite this workflow zig-zagging through several applications, the intention remained constant: a deep respect for the physical presence and interpretation of each object.