--- title: President Barack Obama Sits for a Three Dimensional Portrait description: The White House offered a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of a presidential portrait, in three dimensions, canonical: https://time.com/3614352/barack-obama-3d-portrait/ author: Dan Kedmey article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-02T19:55:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-10-01T09:02:11.726Z article:section: Politics og:title: President Barack Obama Sits for a Three Dimensional Portrait og:description: The White House offered a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of a presidential portrait, in three dimensions, og:url: https://time.com/3614352/barack-obama-3d-portrait/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9d0fb989459cd7f2/69876bfa2dce01b1079dc20c/screen-shot-2014-12-02-at-2-49-35-pm.png?branch=production&width=743&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 743 og:image:height: 418 og:image:alt: President Barack Obama 3D Portrait og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: President Barack Obama Sits for a Three Dimensional Portrait twitter:description: The White House offered a behind-the-scenes peek at the making of a presidential portrait, in three dimensions, twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9d0fb989459cd7f2/69876bfa2dce01b1079dc20c/screen-shot-2014-12-02-at-2-49-35-pm.png?branch=production&width=743&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Watch President Obama Sit for a 3D-Portrait > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=f8f62d3a-9953-4dc6-aaae-bb76c6679a82&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: The President in 3D [Watch (HLS stream): The President in 3D](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/eLbI9fmI.m3u8) (3:08)  _Published 2014-12-02. The president gets a 3D portrait_  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Dec 2, 2014 7:55 PM UTC The president gets a 3D portrait  by [Dan Kedmey](https://time.com/author/dan-kedmey/)  ## Dan Kedmey Dec 2, 2014 7:55 PM UTC The White House offered a behind-the-scenes peek Tuesday at the making of a presidential portrait—in three dimensions. The video on the White House YouTube channel, entitled “The President, in 3D,” shows Barack Obama smiling wide, surrounded by a scaffolding of 50 custom-built LED lights and a team of digital imaging specialists from the Smithsonian Institution. One-second of flashes later, and they have captured what is expected to be “the highest resolution digital model of a head of state.” The Smithsonian [unveiled](http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2014/12/02/new-video-provides-behind-scenes-look-first-3d-printed-presidential-portraits) the freakishly lifelike bust on Tuesday. ## Transcript We are here at the White House working with the Smithsonian Institution on creating a 3D presidential portrait, and the system that we've brought to be part of this process is called our mobile light stage. It's right over there and we're setting it up right now so that it can be used to record almost certainly the highest resolution digital model that's ever been made of a head of state. [ MUSIC ] The inspiration for the project of creating a 3D portrait of President Obama really comes from the Lincoln life mask in our National Portrait Gallery. And I have a Lincoln life mask with me today and they're called life masks because these were directly taken from his likeness. So there was plaster put on his face. There were two little holes poked where the nostrils were so he could still breathe. And seeing that made us think what would happen if we could actually do that with a sitting President using modern day technologies and tools to create a similarly authentic experience that connects us to history to connect us to a moment in time and connects us to a person's likeness. The process should go relatively quickly. We will invite the president to sit down. He will be surrounded in front by 50 custom built LED lights, 8 high resolution sports photography cameras, and additional 6 wider angle cameras. In about 1 second, as he holds his presidential pose, he'll be illuminated by 10 different lighting conditions. Which will change the polarization of the light, the directionality of the light and will give us everything that we need to understand the shape of his face and how it transforms instant into illumination into the images that we see of him. 10 years ago it was just barely possible to think this could be done. So here we have a structured light 3- D scanner, and we're using this to scan the president. They're hand- held. They're flashing a fringe pattern of light, and there are stereo cameras recording how that fringe pattern forms over geometry, or in this case, the president's face. The president getting his likeness scanned, as cool as that is, is also about a broader trend that's going on, and that is the third industrial revolution. It's the combination of the digital world and the physical world that is allowing students and entrepreneurs to be able to go from idea to prototype in the blink of an eye. Been a few days since we've 3D scanned the president and we're looking at some raw data onscreen right here, so this is the data that came out of the handheld scanners that Adam Mattel and I were. We're using to scan a president. This is the first bust that's created of a head of state from objective 3D scan data. So this isn't an artistic likeness of the President, this is actually millions upon millions of measurements that create a 3D. Likeness of the President that we can now 3D print and make something that's never been done before. 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