[shard]

This. No 2D image of most of van Gogh's paintings can match the real thing because the 3D texture of the paint is such an integral part of the experience. I discovered this when I visited the van Gogh museum in Amsterdam. The 2D representations look lifeless to me now that I know how much more visceral the paintings are when viewed in real life.

[mafm]

Somebody at TU Delft did some work on making 3d scans / reproductions of paintings, and one of the artists they were scanning was van Gogh.

I think the reproductions were for sale, but they were pretty expensive (~$25K???).

Hackaday did a story on it in 2013: http://hackaday.com/2013/09/24/priceless-paintings-scanned-a...

[devdoomari]

I really hope someone would get a high-def 3d camera on those paintings and convert then to a web-gl format