DH2013 - Digital Heritage International Congress 2013
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Item Dense Image Matching: comparisons and analyses(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Remondino, Fabio; Nocerino, Erica; Menna, Fabio; Nex, Francesco; Spera, Maria Grazia; Gonizzi-Barsanti, Sara; -The paper presents a critical review and analysis of dense image matching algorithms. The analyzed algorithms stay in the commercial as well open-source domains. The employed datasets include scenes pictured in terrestrial and aerial blocks, acquired with convergent and parallel-axis images and different scales. Geometric analyses are reported, comparing the dense point clouds with ground truth data.Item Placing Intangible Cultural Heritage(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Karavia, Despoina; Georgopoulos, Andreas; -Over the last decades, the concept of Cultural Heritage has included Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICH), mainly due to UNESCO's initiatives. ICH is in danger of disappearance or degradation due to globalization, immigration, urbanization etc. On the other hand, ICH is strongly related to the features of space. It is formed and developed in a specific location, which is influenced by the vicinity with other civilizations. Its topographic features (altitude, inclination, distance from sea or freshwater, climate etc.), their influence in everyday life and the natural raw materials present are determinant in the process of the ICH formation. It is very important to capture and analyze the various forms of ICH, in order to extract the latent human creativity hidden in them, while at the same time studying the influence of space on their evolution. Their capture should be done by implementing appropriate equipment, methods and archival formats in order to fully describe them and to ensure the preservation of the resulting digital archives. Nowadays, the evolution of technology provides flexible means towards this aim. Furthermore, Geographic Information Systems (GIS) are a tool to disseminate and manage spatial data and their relations to attributes, like the forms of ICH They allow the correlation of data, the response to spatial queries and they can lucidly visualize the data. On one hand, a web GIS system, can designate and preserve ICH by presenting the digital records of its forms and by focusing on its relations to place. On the other hand, such a system can be implemented on a research level, by introducing the analysis of the ICH forms, in order to study the influence of the geographic and topographic features of space on their evolution and formation and to study similarities and relationships between ICH of different communities and cultures. This paper describes an integrated approach to the issues of digitization of ICH and the implementation of the analysis- within a GIS environment. Its practical application requires large effort by a multidisciplinary scientific team.Item Patterning Culture: Developing a system for the visual notation of greetings(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Shortt, Marie Therese; -My research explores how the human interaction of greeting can be analysed through a digital graphic visualisation process to reveal nonverbal dimensions such as personal space, touch and other movement patterns. Previous systems of visualization devised by anthropologists for the study of greetings have stopped short of using contemporary digital technology. I aim to show how the use of digital techniques such as stop motion video, vector animation and interactive programming in the documentation and analysis of human greetings can advance our understanding of culturally patterned behaviour. Such visual and interactive explanations of greetings also open up the possibility of historical preservation and mapping of cultural greetings and, potentially, other forms of human interaction.Item Realistic Virtual Reproductions. Image-based modelling of geometry and appearance(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Martos, Antonio; Ruiz, Bernardino; -Existing technologies for contact-less 3D scanning and Image Based Modelling (IBM) methods are being extensively used nowadays to digitize cultural heritage elements. With a convenient degree of automation these methods can properly capture and reproduce shape and basic colour textures. However, there is usually a quite evident lack of fidelity in the resulting appearance of the virtual reproductions when compared with the original items. Even when properly photo-textured, the reproduced surfaces often resemble either plaster or plastic, regardless of the properties of the original materials. What is neither captured nor modelled is the natural dynamic response of the actual materials with respect to changes in observation angle and/or the lighting arrangement. The methodology introduced in this paper tries to improve the three-dimensional digitalization and visualization of cultural heritage elements, by extending the present capabilities of IBM with additional capture and modelling of surface appearance. We show that it is possible to automatically reproduce realistic-looking virtual objects and scenes, even with photographs taken with an uncalibrated single moving camera and while under uncontrolled and intentionally variable lighting conditions. This is achieved not only by reconstructing the shape and projecting colour texture maps from photographs, but also modelling and mapping the apparent optical response of the surfaces to light changes, while also determining the variable distribution of environmental illumination of the original scene. This novel approach integrates Physically Based Render (PBR) concepts in a processing loop that combines capture and visualization. Using the information contained in different photographs, where the appearance of the object surface changes with environmental light variations, we show that it is possible to enhance the information contained in the usual colour texture maps with additional layers. This enables the reproduc- ion of finer details of surface normals and relief, as well as effective approximations of the Bi-directional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF). The appearance of the surfaces can then be reproduced with a dedicated render engine providing unusual levels of detail and realism due to enriched multi-layer texture maps and custom shading functions. This methodology will be introduced with a real case-study, to illustrate its practical applicability and flexibility; The virtual reproduction of the Lady of Elche was performed only from archived photographs taken at the museum for different documentation purposes, using uncalibrated optics and an uncontrolled studio light arrangement. We discuss the capture on larger architectural elements as well, with uncontrolled (yet still variable) illumination in outdoor environments and challenging items with difficult to capture surfaces such as the brass sculpture of La Regenta, where proper reproduction of surface reflection and environmental lights are fundamental steps to provide a good visualization experience. These cases will show the feasibility of working with field calibration and initial approximations for the camera model and light-maps, addressing thus the flexibility required for practical field documentation in museum environments or outdoors. The potential for diffusion will be shown with the use of open source software tools for enhanced visualization. The presented capture methods are integrated with the specific adaptation of open-source GPU-based (Graphics Processing Unit) render engines to produce two flavours of 3D inspection/visualization tools with proper relighting capabilities, able to reveal very subtle details: A quasi-real time realistic engine (Blender Cycles), which is also the basis for the capture process and is focused on realistic reproduction, and a real-time version based on customized pixel shaders, for the real-time visualization of lightweight models on web browsers and other interacItem Automatic creation of bas-relieves from single images(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Lorenzini, Cristian; Carrozzino, Marcello; Tecchia, Franco; Bergamasco, Massimo; -When we think to bas-relieves it is natural to compare them with sculptures, because they share some common properties such as techniques, materials and shapes. However, from a different perspective, bas-relieves have even deeper connections with other bi-dimensional forms of art, such as the frescoes; both have been used to decorate walls surfaces, although bas-reliefs enabled different perspective of interpretation. Bas-relieves, in fact, extend themselves in the three-dimensional space and are therefore able to provide more information compared to an image representing the same scene; moreover, and not less interestingly, they are also enjoyable by users with special needs, such as blind people, that are able to explore their surfaces by means of their sense of touch. For this reason, many attempts have been made in the past to realize bas-relieves representing transpositions of bi-dimensional artworks such as images in order to improve their accessibility. Commonly these transpositions are manually made since manual procedures allow to retain the full control of the final result. The introduction of ICT tools such as 3D modeling and printing has allowed to simplify this process which however still results long and time-consuming, often aimed to one single specific case. In this paper we present an automatic system to enable a fast and massive production of 2.5D models, suitable to be transformed into simplified bas-relieves, starting from a single image, and providing an interactive editor in order to refine the results of the automatic reconstruction, designed for users having no special technical skills. The resulting digital models can be (optionally) refined with 3D modeling tools and directly used in Virtual Reality applications, for instance for educational purposes, or physically reconstructed as actual bas-reliefs to enable access to blind people. The paper details the methodology, the algorithm and presents the results obtained.Item Building Information Modelling and the Documentation of Architectural Heritage: between the typical and the specific(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Fai, Stephen; Sydor, Mikael; -One of the greatest challenges to using Building Information Modelling (BIM) for the documentation of architectural heritage is in overcoming the propensity of the software toward standardization. Most BIM applications are optimized for industrialized building systems where even a minor deviation in geometry or dimension between like elements is considered problematic. Heritage buildings, on the other hand, are more typically constructed of unique elements that, while sometimes similar, can never be assumed to be identical. For example, two Corinthian capitals from the Temple of Mars Ultor may be similar, but they are not the same. In this paper, we discuss a novel method for developing a BIM for a unique vernacular building in eastern Ontario, Canada. Constructed anonymously in two discrete stages during the last half of the 19C, the builders employed both stacked log and an idiosyncratic balloon frame construction. Both types of construction are far from the standard assemblies found in commercial BIM software. In discussing the construction of the model, we will outline the integration of detailed survey data, including pointcloud, with a library of 'typical', but parametric, construction details under development by our research group. While the survey provides an accurate geometrical record of the building under discussion including structural deformations the library is used to develop the specific assemblies and is based on, and fully indexed to, 'typical' details culled from construction manuals available in Canada during the late 19C.Item Aspects of the Digitalisation of the Documentation and Research of Lithuanian Historical Organs(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Povilionis, Girenas; Povilioniene, Rima; -About 450 historical organs have survived to the present day in Lithuania. Some of them are almost completely authentic instruments which constitute valuable heritage and have been recognised as being unique in European context. Currently the digitalisation of the data about the Lithuanian organ heritage is being implemented at the Centre for the Lithuanian Cultural Heritage since 2000 (until then non-digital data were accumulated) and is oriented towards the promotion of this part of the country's heritage, and scientific research. The most valuable instruments included on the heritage list are registered in detail: comprehensive photography of their separate parts and equipment, engineering data, as well as that of the surviving authentic mechanism and parts. A research into the instrumental part of some the most valuable organs (the organs in the church in Joniskis, the churches of the Holy Spirit and the Bernardine in Vilnius) is introduced. By the drawings it is possible to recreate an organ or make a copy-replica in case it is destroyed; the data can be used to make a new instrument according to old organ-making traditions.Item Cellars of Paris, under the cobbles, cellars!(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Sandron, Dany; Chaumet, Gregory; -This project of systematic investigation of Parisian cellars is by nature pluri-disciplinary. It relies on the complementary skills of historians, architectural historians, archaeologists, architects and engineers. For several years, the Centre Chastel (UMR 8150) has developed a specific research axis about Paris, and is now associated with other organisations that have produced expert works and surveys on the development of the city based on documentary and archaeological materials: the Department for History of Architecture and Archaeology of Paris (DHAAP), the Heritage and inventory services of the Ile de France region, which benefits from a strong regional experience in the analysis of cellars, the National Archives and their centre on the historical topography of Paris and the INRAP engineers and archaeologists.Item Visualizing a scanned model for effective heritage interpretation(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Ahn, Jaehong; Kong, Dal-Yong; Wohn, Kwang-Yun; -Scientific analysis of the scanned model can enhance interpretation of heritage. Visualization methods that use various rendering algorithm can reveal geometric features of the model clearly, which may not be recognized in pictures or even on the site. Thus it helps to overcome the subjectivity or restriction in first-hand interpretation. In this paper, visualization of scanned model for interpretation of heritage was surveyed. Based on that survey, a classification scheme was proposed which can be used in the interpretation pipeline. In a case study of dinosaur track, we analyzed the possible problems in the interpretation stage and proposed various visualization of scanned model according to the purpose. User test was performed to evaluate the effectiveness of the method. A practical survey in this paper showed that 3D scanned model and its appropriate visualization could be used for effective interpretation of heritage.Item Measuring Changes in Cultural Heritage Objects with Reflectance Transform Imaging(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Manfredi, Marcello; Williamson, Greg; Kronkright, Dale; Doehne, Eric; Bearman, Gregory; Jacobs, Megan; Marengo, Emilio; -Sites and objects of cultural heritage from art to ancient inscriptions to ruins are under constant attack by time and the environment. While much is known about how material components change from laboratory-based artificial aging, very little is known about the process or rates of change of actual objects and sites in situ. Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) is a quantitative method that captures surface normals. In our case, it provides detailed information on the geometry of the object surface. We show that RTI can be quantified for use as a method for measuring change in cultural heritage objects. The past decade has seen the rapid evolution and application of computational photography methods to document important works of human heritage, from art and architecture to archives and archaeology. The next logical step involves defining just how reproducible and precise these methods can be to use them to measure rates of change for important works of cultural heritage. The need is to move to calibrated, quantitative image datasets for reproducible imaging. We measure the precision of computed surface normals, which define the basic repeatability of RTI. Our results show that the average included solid angle for RTI sensitivity fitted to the Hemispherical Harmonics (HSH) polynomial function is 0.003 steradians (3 sigma), while the older Polynomial texture map (PTM) method is much less sensitive (0.5 steradians). The absolute sensitivity of the method is the minimum variation of the normal that can be statistically considered a change of the object. It is calculated considering the average value of the normal of each single pixel. The solid angle of the cone of variation represents the statistical limit (3 *s). Analysis of multiple RTI data sets from objects that have changed between image capture sessions results in a map of change that can easily be evaluated by conservators.Item Cutting-edge technologies for the survey and documentation of cultural heritage: the case study of the architectural-archaeological area of Aruch in Armenia(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Versaci, Antonella; Cardaci, Alessio; -One of the most important finalities of survey is the architecture's comprehension. To the end of cultural heritage conservation, it is furthermore necessary to communicate the acquired knowledge. In the recent years, this need has resulted in a radical change in cataloging and digitization systems, as well as in telematics networking. Moreover, the use of 3D laser scanner has transformed not only the approaches related to metrics data acquisition and graphic rendering but has also afforded the opportunity to share important information on the web. This paper focuses on the usefulness of state-of-the-art technologies for documentation, presenting a case study related to the architectural-archeological area of Aruch in Armenia.Item When script engravings reveal a semantic link between the conceptual and the spatial dimensions of a monument: the case of the Tomb of Emperor Qianlong.(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Luca, Livio De; Busayarat, Chawee; Domenico, Francesca De; Lombardo, Julie; Pierrot-Deseilligny, Marc; Stefani, Chiara; Wang, Françoise; -Like most Chinese imperial tombs, the tomb of Emperor Qianlong consists of a suite of four rooms forming a underground space of 372 m2. Its originality lies in the inscriptions which are engraved on the walls and vaults and exclusively in Tibetan (30,000 characters) and Lantsa (600 characters). In the project we present here, all engravings were digitized and a large part of them have been identified. Their identification has highlighted the idea which was certainly at the base of ornamental program of the Qianlong's tomb: the choice of texts and their particular arrangement was used to virtually reconstruct a "stupa" : a Buddhist funerary monument. So the study and representation of script engravings and iconography of the tomb opened the general issue of finding an original solution to explain, from a visual and semantic point of view, the relationship of two parallel dimensions. On the one hand, the description of the morphology of the tomb through the spatial structure of geometric entities in a 3D model (collection of architectural forms and spatial relationships), on the other hand, the description of knowledge related to the Tibetan funeral rituals (abstract concepts and semantic relations). The formalized and represented textual and graphics data become accessible within an analytical support (information system) allowing to explore the relationship between the conceptual and spatial dimensions of the tomb through three interactive devices interconnected: a real-time 3D scene for exploring the physical space, a dynamic graph for navigating within a network of interconnected concepts, an graphic schema displaying the theoretical position of each conceptual and spatial entity within the representation of a virtual stupa.Item Virtual Conservation and Interaction with our Cultural Heritage: Framework for multi-dimension model based interface(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Ma, Nan; Laroche, Florent; Hervy, Benjamin; Kerouanton, Jean-Louis; -Thanks to rapid development of Virtual Reality technologies, the research is not only limited in military training and scientific visualization realm, it has been expanded into more multidisciplinary areas, such as education, archaeology, conservation of culture heritage, etc. Many heritage objects can be found in museum, among them, historical mock-up represents a city with its precious historical value. The objective of this paper is not only to propose a prototype of future interface that uses VR technology in visualizing and interacting with 3D mock-ups, but also to provide a tool for decision-making aid, which helps to select proper interface depending on the content we desire to display. Our proposals exploit a variety of State of the Art, and raise a concept named multi-dimension model based interface, which can be applied to multiple VR applications, gives more information than a simple history book, explains to user the real cultural value in a virtual environment.Item A Low-Cost Portable 3D Laser Scanning System with Aptness from Acquisition to Visualization(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Banerjee, Sumandeep; Biswas, Prabir Kumar; Bhowmick, Partha; Dutta, Somnath; -This paper presents the design perspectives of a low-cost portable 3D laser scanning mechanism. The hardware is simple in design, easy to fabricate, and costs much less compared to the cheapest ones available in the market. Moreover, it is noninvasive and able to generate high-quality data sets. We present the complete design pipeline and discuss how to implement and put together the most recent algorithms. We propose this design for its wide applications to virtual reality simulation, 3D modeling, digitization of archaeological artifacts, automated defect inspection, object recognition etc.Item 3D documentation of Cultural Heritage artefacts: from data acquisition to virtual conservation and restoration(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Athanasiou, Eleni; Faka, Marina; Hermon, Sorin; Vassallo, Valentina; Yakoupi, Kyriaki; -This paper focuses on the development of a procedure for 3D documentation of Cultural Heritage assets and describes all the steps from the 3D data acquisition of the real object, the post processing the raw data and finally the digital recording, documentation and virtual preservation of the 3D data. It will also describe the experiences, carried out during the digital process, of some virtual restoration cases.Item Design and implement a reality-based 3D digitisation and modelling project(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Remondino, Fabio; Menna, Fabio; Koutsoudis, Anestis; Chamzas, Christos; El-Hakim, Sabry; -3D digitisation denotes the process of describing parts of our physical world through finite measurements and representations that can be processed and visualised with a compute r system. Reality-based 3D digiti sation is essential for the documentation, conservation and preservation of our Cultural Heritage. This article composes a critical review of the digitisation pipeline, ranging from sensor selection and planning to data acquisition, processing and visualisation.Item Fast Color Correction for Rapid Scanning in Uncontrolled Environment(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Schenkel, Arnaud; Warzée, Nadine; Debeir, Olivier; -This work addresses the problem of colorizing correctly time-of-flight 3D scans performed during rapid scanning of a site in natural and uncontrolled lighting conditions. Contrarily to the usual approach correcting high resolution pictures, the proposed method combines all available radiometric information to colorize per vertex the medium resolution depth map. The obtained rendering exhibits no visible artifacts, for models composed of a series of scans. Our solution allows to quickly obtain good visual results within a reasonable time, while allowing to consider various other methods to improve colors and rendering.Item Simulation of Past Life: Controlling Agent Behaviors from the Interactions between Ethnic Groups(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Lim, Chen Kim; Cani, Marie-Paule; Galvane, Quentin; Pettre, Julien; Talib, Abdullah Zawawi; -Many efforts have been carried out in preserving the history and culture of Penang and also other regions of Malaysia since George Town was elected as a UNESCO living heritage city. This paper presents a method to simulate life in a local trading port in the 1800s, where various populations with very different social rules interacted with each other. These populations included Indian coolies, Malay vendors, British colonists and Chinese traders. The challenge is to model these ethnic groups as autonomous agents, and to capture the changes of behavior due to inter-ethnic interactions and to the arrival of boats at the pier. Agents from each population are equipped with a specific set of steering methods which are selected and parameterized according to predefined behavioral patterns (graphs of states). In this paper, we propose a new formalism where interactions between the different ethnics groups and with the boats can be either activated globally or locally. Global interactions cause changes of states for all the agents belonging to the target population, while local interactions only take place between specific agents, and result in changes of states for these agents only. The main contributions of our method are: i) Applying microscopic crowd simulation to the complex case of a multi-ethnic trading port, involving different behavioral patterns; ii) Introducing a high-level control method, through the inter-ethnic interactions formalism. The resulting system generates a variety of real-time animations, all reflecting the adequate social behaviors. Such a system would be particularly useful in a virtual tour application.Item News Search Using Discourse Analytics(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Thompson, Paul; Nawaz, Raheel; Korkontzelos, Ioannis; Ananiadou, Sophia; -The vast numbers of digitised documents containing historical data constitute a rich research data repository. However, computational methods and tools available to explore this data are still limited in functionality. Research on historical archives is still largely carried out manually. Text mining technologies offer novel methods to analyse digital content to identify various types of semantic information in these documents and to extract them as semantic metadata. Methods range from the automatic identification of named entities (e.g., people, places, organisations, etc.) to more sophisticated methods to extract information about events (e.g., births, deaths, arrests, etc.), allowing users to greatly increase the specificity of their search. We have created an extended model of event interpretation to allow searches to be refined based on various discourse facets, including isolating definite information about events from more speculative details, distinguishing positive and negative opinions and categorising events according to information source. We present ISHER as an example of a multi-faceted, semantically oriented system for searching news articles from the New York Times, dating back to 1987. We explain how our extended event interpretation model can enhance search capabilities in systems such as ISHER, including the identification of contrasting and contradictory information in news articles.Item Capturing of Contemporary Dance for preservation and presentation of choreographies in Online Scores(The Eurographics Association, 2013) Kahn, Svenja; Keil, Jens; Müller, Benedikt; Ulrich, Bockholt; -In this paper, we present a generic and affordable approach for an automatized and markerless capturing of movements in dance, which was developed in the Motion Bank / The Forsythe Company project (www.motionbank.org). Thereby within Motion Bank we are considering the complete digitalization workflow starting with the setup of the camera array and ending with a web-based presentation of ''Online Scores'' visualizing different elements of choreography. Within our project, we have used our technology in two modern dance projects, one ''Large Motion Space Performance'' covering a large stage in solos and trios and one ''Restricted Motion Space Performance'' that is suited to be captured with range cameras. The project is realized in close cooperation with different choreographers and dance companies of modern ballet and with multi-media artists forming the visual representations of dance.