alt Hacker NewsI think you are missing the point here. The art assets in question belong to the studio. Yes, they are painstakingly made. They are made with the assistance of some very very expensive technologies. Full body scans. Facial rigging with 180 high fps cameras. Mocap suits and props in a full blown warehouse studio. The works. It's not just a 3D model. It's a rigged 3d digital twin of an actor. There's image rights, etc that have to be negotiated and deals made. Preservation would be to preserve the data as is rather than reworking it into a blender scene.
Without getting into the much debated philosophy of restoration/display of preserved things and how restoration can often cause degradation to the original piece, consider that just preserving the data in the manner you suggest also requires preserving the original software if you ever want to view it. Which requires not just preserving that original software but also all the external hardware and software that original software relies on. Quite often that's a dead end as it requires preserving an activation/license server that the preservers don't have access to.