---
title: "Marcin Stempniewicz"
url: "https://www.u3da.pl/agents/marcin-stempniewicz-9c7155ec-1eb8-4180-84a6-891dfeb32155"
community: "U3DA"
description: "Marcin Stempniewicz is a TDI Full Cave diver, technical wreck diver, and 3D artist based in Poznań, Poland. He founded the Submerged Foundation to document underwater environments that almost nobody will ever see in person -flooded mines, caves, and wrecks -and to bring them back to the surface as a"
updated: "2026-09-06T13:03:58.05687+00:00"
---

# Marcin Stempniewicz

Underwater 3D instructor · Underwater 3D Academy

Industries: TDI

## About Marcin

Marcin Stempniewicz is a TDI Full Cave diver, technical wreck diver, and 3D artist based in Poznań, Poland. He founded the [Submerged Foundation](https://submergedfoundation.org/) to document underwater environments that almost nobody will ever see in person -flooded mines, caves, and wrecks -and to bring them back to the surface as accurate, explorable 3D models.

His flagship project is the [Maria Concordia](https://exploration.xdeep.eu/projects/maria-concordia-mine-3d-scanning-project) flooded magnesite mine, supported by the XDEEP Exploration Support Program. Over hundreds of hours underwater, Marcin and his team worked through four labyrinthine levels and a 40-metre vertical shaft in cold, silt-prone, zero-margin conditions, capturing hundreds of thousands of photographs and reconstructing the entire mile-long site as a single coherent model. The same approach has taken him into the [Marie Agnes](https://themarieagnesproject.com/) silver-lead-zinc mine—some 12,000 photos over four dives—the Cold War-era Kowary uranium mine, and the flooded galleries of the Srebrna Góra fortress. He also collaborates with Poland's National Maritime Museum on the digital documentation of wrecks, where a cinematic 3D record is often the only form in which a vanishing site can be preserved.

That field experience is where U3DA comes from. Every scan Marcin has ever brought home hit the same wall: the photogrammetry software produces a mesh, and the mesh is not the story. Wrong scale, muddy textures, a viewer that only another specialist can read. The workflows, lighting rigs, shader setups, and Python scripts he built to solve that for his own expeditions became the course. Outside the water, Marcin co-founded Ar-range, a rendering platform that produces every product variant a furniture brand sells—millions of images from one 3D source—and the same batch-rendering and automation discipline runs through the U3DA workflows.

His work has appeared in [*InDepth*](https://indepthmag.com/mapping-the-mines-of-maria-concordia-my-journey-into-3d/) (GUE), [XDEEP ESP](https://exploration.xdeep.eu/projects/maria-concordia-mine-3d-scanning-project), [divers24](https://divers24.com/flooded-mine-maria-concordia-in-photogrammetric-view/), and *Podcast Spod Wody*. He has presented at [Hidden Earth](https://hidden.earth/session/1122) (UK), the NSS Convention (West Virginia 2024, Tennessee 2025), Baltictech, and Dive Expo Belgium 2025, on how accurate 3D documentation changes both cartography and dive planning in overhead environments.

"The raw scan is not the product," Marcin says. "The story non-divers can experience is." At U3DA, he teaches divers, wreck surveyors, marine archaeologists, and underwater photographers—starting from zero Blender experience—how to turn their own scans into cinematic animations that a museum, a sponsor, or a family member can actually watch.

## Expertise

### TDI

**Designations & Certifications:**

- **TDI Advanced Nitrox** — Advanced Nitrox Diver · TDI — Mixes up to 100% oxygen for accelerated decompression.
- **TDI Deco Procedures** — Decompression Procedures · TDI — Staged decompression diving to 45 m.
- **TDI Helitrox** — Helitrox Diver · TDI — Light helium mixes (up to 20% He) for decompression diving to 45 m.
- **TDI Cavern** — Cavern Diver · TDI — Overhead diving within the daylight zone.
- **TDI Intro to Cave** — Intro to Cave Diver · TDI — Single-guideline cave penetration with no jumps or gaps.
- **TDI Full Cave** — Full Cave Diver · TDI — Complex cave penetration with jumps, gaps, circuits and traverses.

### All segments

**Focus Areas:** Cave Diving, Cave Photogrammetry, Wreck Photogrammetry, Wreck Diving, Underwater Archaeology, Site Survey & Mapping, 3D Scanning & Modelling, Sidemount Diving, Expedition & Exploration