Technology as Means to Recreate Cultural Heritage: An assessment of some current Portuguese projects

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Virtual Community Heritage:An Immersive Approach to Community Heritage

   Our relationship with cultural heritage has been transformed by digital technologies. Opportunities have emerged to preserve and access cultural heritage material while engaging an audience at both regional and global level. Accessibility of technology has enabled audiences to participate in digital heritage curation process. Participatory practices and co-production methodologies have created new relationships between museums and communities, as they are engaged to become active participants in the co-design and co-creation of heritage material. Audiences are more interested in experiences vs services nowadays and museums and heritage organisations have potential to entertain while providing engaging experiences beyond their physical walls. Mixed reality is an emerging method of engagement that has allowed enhanced interaction beyond traditional 3D visualisation models into fully immersive worlds. There is potential to transport audiences to past worlds that enhance their experience and understanding of cultural heritage

Exploring 3D Data Reuse and Repurposing through Procedural Modeling

Most contemporary 3D data used in archaeological research and heritage management have been created through ‘reality capture,’ the recording of the physical features of extant archaeological objects, structures, and landscapes using technologies such as laser scanning and photogrammetry (Garstki 2020, ch.2; Magnani et al. 2020). A smaller quantity of data are generated by Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Building Information Modeling (BIM) projects, and even fewer data are generated through procedural modeling, the rapid prototyping of multi-component threedimensional (3D) models from a set of rules (Figure 8.1.). It is unsurprising therefore that in archaeology and heritage, efforts around digital 3D data preservation and accessibility have concentrated on high-resolution 3D data produced through scanning and image-based techniques (Hardesty et al. 2020; Richards-Rissetto and von Schwerin 2017). Establishing best practices, cultivating a community of experts, and developing infrastructure for this kind of 3D data in the archaeological and cultural heritage domains have been the focus of several coordinated efforts in Europe over the past decade (Fresa et al. 2015, Remondino and Campana 2014, Taylor and Gibson 2017, Vecchio et al. 2015). A series of European projects including 3D-COFORM, CARARE, and their successor projects, made particularly notable contributions (D’Andrea et al. 2013, Kuroczyski et al. 2014, Papatheodorou et al. 2011, Pitzalis et al. 2011, Remondino and Campana 2014). These projects were primarily oriented toward 3D data captured as part of conservation and heritage management work. Issues of preservation, accuracy, fidelity, access, and associated ethical issues of ownership, stewardship, contextualization, and interpretation were, appropriately, the center of extended disciplinary debates (for example, Magnani et al. 2018, Santana Quintero et al. 2019, Ulguim 2018; and more broadly on digital ethics Dennis 2020 and Richardson 2018). File size, geometric complexity, the diversity of ‘standard’ formats, evolving platforms for delivery, and presentation online posed challenges that continue to re-emerge today (for example, Digital Lab Notebook http://culturalheritageimaging.org/ Technologies/Digital_Lab_Notebook/, Jensen 2018a, Koutsoudis et al. 2020, Münster et al. 2016, Rahaman et al. 2019, Rourk 2019). To these efforts, heritage practitioners working in the context of architecture and urban development communities added workflows and tools designed to make CAD- and BIM-produced 3D models FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable). Such work provides a foundation for broader efforts to make data in 3D digital archaeology and heritage FAIR (Apollonio et al. 2012, Leventhal 2018, Pocobelli et al. 2018, Saygi et al. 2013, Wilkinson et al. 2016). These CAD and BIM projects also advanced the development of archaeological information infrastructures and workflows for 3D data by incorporating more extensive use of paradata, while also grappling with issues of uncertainty and intellectual transparency in the interpretive modeling process (Bentkowska-Kafel et al. 2012, Denard 2012). In contrast, procedural modeling’s geometrically simple, lego-like 3D models have received little attention from the community concerned with digital 3D infrastructures, standards, and practices (Coelho et al. 2020). Various sectors employ the approach to create multiple virtual reconstructions (simulations) and to explore alternative constructions and arrangements with varying properties. These multiple, nesting-doll reconstructions redeploy components such as buildings in different arrangements according to diverse rules (Figure 8.1.). In archaeology, they have been used to investigate ancient Roman, Greek, Egyptian, and Maya cities in connection with core research questions about the emergence, character, and experience of urban life (Dylla et al. 2009, Fanini and Ferdani 2011, Kitsakis et al. 2017, Piccoli 2014, 2016, 2018, Richards- Rissetto and Plessing 2015, Saldana 2014, Saldana and Johanson 2013, Sullivan 2017, 2020)

Automatic generation of affective 3D virtual environments from 2D images

Today, a wide range of domains encompassing, e.g., movie and video game production, virtual reality simulations, augmented reality applications, make a massive use of 3D computer generated assets. Although many graphics suites already offer a large set of tools and functionalities to manage the creation of such contents, they are usually characterized by a steep learning curve. This aspect could make it difficult for non-expert users to create 3D scenes for, e.g., sharing their ideas or for prototyping purposes. This paper presents a computer-based system that is able to generate a possible reconstruction of a 3D scene depicted in a 2D image, by inferring objects, materials, textures, lights, and camera required for rendering. The integration of the proposed system into a well known graphics suite enables further refinements of the generated scene using traditional techniques. Moreover, the system allows the users to explore the scene into an immersive virtual environment for better understanding the current objects’ layout, and provides the possibility to convey emotions through specific aspects of the generated scene. The paper also reports the results of a user study that was carried out to evaluate the usability of the proposed system from different perspectives

Phone2Proc: Bringing Robust Robots Into Our Chaotic World

Training embodied agents in simulation has become mainstream for the embodied AI community. However, these agents often struggle when deployed in the physical world due to their inability to generalize to real-world environments. In this paper, we present Phone2Proc, a method that uses a 10-minute phone scan and conditional procedural generation to create a distribution of training scenes that are semantically similar to the target environment. The generated scenes are conditioned on the wall layout and arrangement of large objects from the scan, while also sampling lighting, clutter, surface textures, and instances of smaller objects with randomized placement and materials. Leveraging just a simple RGB camera, training with Phone2Proc shows massive improvements from 34.7% to 70.7% success rate in sim-to-real ObjectNav performance across a test suite of over 200 trials in diverse real-world environments, including homes, offices, and RoboTHOR. Furthermore, Phone2Proc's diverse distribution of generated scenes makes agents remarkably robust to changes in the real world, such as human movement, object rearrangement, lighting changes, or clutter.Comment: https://allenai.org/project/phone2pro

Community Engagement in Cultural Heritage A Digital Context

A series of case studies outlining the application of virtual reality and digital technologies for cultural heritage is presented in this article with an aim to examine the role for community engagement and SMEs in cultural heritage within a digital context. Digital technologies can be a repository and tool for telling local stories in relation to place and time on site and virtually off-site. In a series of case studies, tools and technologies for virtual reality experiences are outlined to identify the appropriate tools which can best facilitate this community engagement. In addition, community-based digital heritage initiatives will be discussed with reference to the Faro Convention. These technologies include applying BIM or GIS for historic structures involves initially data capture of the geometry and texture using laser scanning or digital photogrammetry, and then converting the digital survey data to solid Building Information Models (BIM). The process is described as Historic BIM or Historic GIS and, in this paper, several virtual reconstruction case studies of Irish Megalithic and Romanesque structures are presented

Procedural Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM) For Recording and Documenting European Classical Architecture

Procedural Historic Building Information Modelling (HBIM) is a new approach for modelling historic buildings which develops full building information models from remotely sensed data. HBIM consists of a novel library of reusable parametric objects, based on historic architectural data and a system for mapping these library objects to survey data. Using concepts from procedural modelling, a new set of rules and algorithms have been developed to automatically combine HBIM library objects and generate different building arrangements by altering parameters. This is a semi-automatic process where the required building structure and objects are first automatically generated and then refined to match survey data. The encoding of architectural rules and proportions into procedural modelling rules helps to reduce the amount of further manual editing that is required. The ability to transfer survey data such as building footprints or cut-sections directly into a procedural modelling rule also greatly reduces the amount of further editing required. These capabilities of procedural modelling enable a more automated and efficient overall workflow for reconstructing BIM geometry from point cloud data. This document outlines the research carried out to evaluate the suitability of a procedural modelling approach for improving the process of reconstructing building geometry from point clouds. To test this hypothesis, three procedural modelling prototypes were designed and implemented for BIM software. Quantitative accuracy testing and qualitative end-user scenario testing methods were used to evaluate the research hypothesis. The results obtained indicate that procedural modelling has potential for achieving more accurate, automated and easier generation of BIM geometry from point clouds