Cultural Heritage under Lenses.

3D Icons Project and the Romanian experience

E. Oberländer-Târnoveanu, Corina Nicolae, Mihai Bozgan, Marius Amarie, Tudor Martin

Romanian National History Museum, Bucharest, Ro

3D Digitisation of Icons of European Architectural and Archaeological

Heritage (3D Icons) project is a pilot project funded under the European

Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme, built on the results of

CARARE and 3D-COFORM.

3D-ICONS proposes to digitize a series of architectural and

archaeological masterpieces of world and European cultural significance

and provide 3D models and related digital content to Europeana, with

the aim of contributing to the critical mass of highly engaging content

available to users.

The project will exploit existing tools and methods, to integrate them in a

complete supply chain of 3D digitization to contribute a significant mass

of 3D content to Europeana.

The project will focus on UNESCO World Heritage monuments and other

monuments of outstanding value at European level, to illustrate a

particular strand of Europe’s history.

Partners

1. Università degli Studi de Napoli L’Orientale, Italy

2. MDR PARTNERS (CONSULTING) LIMITED, Great Britain

3. CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE, Italy

4. ATHENA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION CENTER IN INFORMATION COMMUNICATION &

KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES, Greece

5. THE DISCOVERY PROGRAMME LBG, Irland

6. UNIVERSIDAD DE JAEN, Spain

7. CMC Associates Ltd., Great Britain

8. POLITECNICO DI MILANO, Italy

9. Visual Dimension bvba, Belgiun

10. ASSOCIATION POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT DE L’ENSEIGNEMENT ET DES RECHERCHES

AUPRES DES UNIVERSITES, DES CENTRES DE RECHERCHE ET DES ENTREPRISES

D’AQUITAINE, France

11. FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER, Italy

12. KONINKLIJKE MUSEA VOOR KUNST EN GESCHIDENIS, Belgium

13. THE CYPRUS RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, Cyprus

14. CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, France

15. Romanian National History Museum

16. NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, Greec

The digital content will include overall 3D models and reconstructions, enlarged

models of important details, images, texts, videos. It will also include and re-

contextualize in 3D, objects belonging to a monument but presently located

elsewhere, for example in a museum.

Technology

• 3D model generation via

- image-based modeling, requiring only a digital camera;

- 3D scanning, a medium- or long-range 3D scanner required;

- procedural modeling and 3D sketching, using free or inexpensive specific software

• 3D model and digital information storage management: requires standard

computer resources and an open source repository management system

• 3D visualization tools: open source or free software

• Semantics: schemas and thesauri freely available, as well as the necessary tools

• Saint Michael Romano-Catholic

Cathedral, Alba Iulia, one of the

most important medieval

architectural monuments from

Transylvania, candidate on the

UNESCO lists

- 60 3D models

- 250 images

- 1 video

• Sarmizegetusa Regia, the Dacian fortress from the Orăștie Mountains,

UNESCO monument, together with the archaeological finds from its

neighborhood

- 20 3D models

- 300 images

- 1 video

The software used in the project are based mainly on open-source technologies

or on technologies that have low acquisition costs.

Besides the 3D content that the project intends to make available, another

important task is to make publicly available the production pipeline to other

cultural institutions or owners of 3D cultural content.

The outcome will be accesible to general public and to the scientific world in

usable format (.obj file).

The concept of creating 3D models might be used not only for the Europeana

platform, but as well for

• educational purposes in workshops organized by the museum

• scientific research, provided that the model has a high quality texture

In order for the results to be better disseminated among all the social

categories, with special attention to the children, the 3D models will be

presented in attractively format: 123D Make from AutoDesk (3D media router)

Methods used

Data acquisition

• Photogrammetry - offers accurate results, being a method suited for

personnel from cultural heritage domain, with a limited technical

background

• 3D reconstructions based on architectural blueprints with and accurate

measurements with the aid of CAD software

Processing and post-processing

• Open source and low cost software: Agisoft PhotoScan, MeshLab, Blender

• High quality render software: Cinema 4D with VRAY technology

Metadata architecture

Due to the user friendly concept of Excel and SQL databases, the metadata will be

accessible online, through CMS platform and as well offline, through common

Microsoft Excel architecture.

The project’s metadata will mainly follow the schemas created in previous

European funded projects, such as CARARE, with the intention of improving them

to suit the parameters of 3D models.

Due to the lack of standardization as regarding the metadata procedures (creation,

delivery…), we propose the creation of an architecture concept which will comprise all

the fields required by the scientific community and as well by the Europeana

repository; in this way, we will be able to provide the necessary fields for any

requirements (Europeana – with emphasis on general information, or scientific

purposes, with a more detailed view)

Data acquisition

- Canon EOS 5D Mk II ISO 100, t=1/60/ zoom lens EF 24-105 AF IS @

35 mm f: 22

- 2 Studioflash 1000w

- 2 Studioflash 300w

Processing and post processing

Hardware: APPLE MAC 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up

to 3.3GHz) cu 6MB L3 cache (2 buc.), Intel HD Graphics 4000, 32GB

1600MHz DDR3

Software: Agisoft Photoscan

MeshLab v.1.3.2

Blender 2.67

Model 1

wireframe

Model 1

Final render

Model 1

Model 1

Technical information

665206 points / 114496 faces / 57531 vertices

Align photos, build geometry and build texture - about 14 hours on high quality

220 photos acquired from which we selected 197 @5616x3744px

Model 2

wireframe

Model 2

Final render

Model 2

Technical information

294249 points / 41863 faces / 21076 vertices

Align photos, build geometry and build texture - about 8 hours on high quality

150 photos acquired from which we selected 94 @5616x3744px