TO ACHIEVE REAL IMMERSION: THE 3D VIRTUAL AND PHYSICAL RECONSTRUCTION OF CAVE 3 AND CAVE 12 OF YUNGANG GROTTOES

As the 3D laser scanning and photogrammetry technologies continue to mature, more and more applications founded in numerous areas. The realistic 3D models are mainly adopted for digital display uses, such as the 3D game, web showcases, head-mounted display, etc. While we are enjoying the vivid digital sceneries through different kinds of digital display screens, there are still challenges exist for the 3D printing application, especially for large size objects. In this article, we will present an approach on digitizing and 3D replicating large grottoes. Unlike 3D rendering, 3D printing requires high detailed shape data for the fabrication. Such demands cause many technical difficulties including huge data amount, accurate dense point cloud, high-resolution texture mapping. We chose cascade SfM, grouped MVS, automatic texture mapping to prepare the high definition colored 3D model for printing and painting references. Meanwhile, we optimized 3D printing procedure as well as post-processing, installation, lacquer and painting. Two replicas of 10- meter sized grottoes have been manufactured after four years of efforts, which have earned some appreciations from audiences

Creating Three-Sixty Objects for Marist Archives Using Open Source JQuery Reel

[Excerpt] In this article I will look into some of the recent 3D digitization projects and highlight numerous technological and financial challenges that would be familiar to many small and medium sized archives. I will further propose jQuery Reel, an open source three-sixty player as a viable alternative to 3D modeling and discuss the workflow we employed at Marist Archives

Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI) System for Ancient Documentary Artefacts

This tutorial summarises our uses of reflectance transformation imaging in archaeological contexts. It introduces the UK AHRC funded project reflectance Transformation Imaging for Anciant Documentary Artefacts and demonstrates imaging methodologies

Developing Interaction 3D Models for E-Learning Applications

Some issues concerning the development of interactive 3D models for e-learning applications are considered. Given that 3D data sets are normally large and interactive display demands high performance computation, a natural solution would be placing the computational burden on the client machine rather than on the server. Mozilla and Google opted for a combination of client-side languages, JavaScript and OpenGL, to handle 3D graphics in a web browser (Mozilla 3D and O3D respectively). Based on the O3D model, core web technologies are considered and an example of the full process involving the generation of a 3D model and their interactive visualization in a web browser is described. The challenging issue of creating realistic 3D models of objects in the real world is discussed and a method based on line projection for fast 3D reconstruction is presented. The generated model is then visualized in a web browser. The experiments demonstrate that visualization of 3D data in a web browser can provide quality user experience. Moreover, the development of web applications are facilitated by O3D JavaScript extension allowing web designers to focus on 3D contents generation

Digital Image Access & Retrieval

The 33th Annual Clinic on Library Applications of Data Processing, held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in March of 1996, addressed the theme of "Digital Image Access & Retrieval." The papers from this conference cover a wide range of topics concerning digital imaging technology for visual resource collections. Papers covered three general areas: (1) systems, planning, and implementation; (2) automatic and semi-automatic indexing; and (3) preservation with the bulk of the conference focusing on indexing and retrieval.published or submitted for publicatio

Use of a Laser Scanning System for Professional Preparation and Scene Assessment of Fire Rescue Units

The paper presents results of a study focused on usability of a 3D laser scanning system by fire rescue units during emergencies, respectively during preparations for inspection and tactical exercises. The first part of the study focuses on an applicability of a 3D scanner in relation to an accurate evaluation of a fire scene through digitization and creation of virtual walk-through of the fire scene. The second part deals with detailed documentation of access road to the place of intervention, including a simulation of the fire vehicle arrival

Capturing natural-colour 3D models of insects for species discovery

Collections of biological specimens are fundamental to scientific understanding and characterization of natural diversity. This paper presents a system for liberating useful information from physical collections by bringing specimens into the digital domain so they can be more readily shared, analyzed, annotated and compared. It focuses on insects and is strongly motivated by the desire to accelerate and augment current practices in insect taxonomy which predominantly use text, 2D diagrams and images to describe and characterize species. While these traditional kinds of descriptions are informative and useful, they cannot cover insect specimens "from all angles" and precious specimens are still exchanged between researchers and collections for this reason. Furthermore, insects can be complex in structure and pose many challenges to computer vision systems. We present a new prototype for a practical, cost-effective system of off-the-shelf components to acquire natural-colour 3D models of insects from around 3mm to 30mm in length. Colour images are captured from different angles and focal depths using a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera rig and two-axis turntable. These 2D images are processed into 3D reconstructions using software based on a visual hull algorithm. The resulting models are compact (around 10 megabytes), afford excellent optical resolution, and can be readily embedded into documents and web pages, as well as viewed on mobile devices. The system is portable, safe, relatively affordable, and complements the sort of volumetric data that can be acquired by computed tomography. This system provides a new way to augment the description and documentation of insect species holotypes, reducing the need to handle or ship specimens. It opens up new opportunities to collect data for research, education, art, entertainment, biodiversity assessment and biosecurity control.Comment: 24 pages, 17 figures, PLOS ONE journa

An investigation to examine the most appropriate methodology to capture historical and modern preserved anatomical specimens for use in the digital age to improve access: a pilot study

Anatomico-pathological specimens constitute a valuable component of many medical museums or institutional collections but can be limited in their impact on account of both physical and intellectual inaccessibility. Further concerns relate to conservation as anatomical specimens may be subject to tissue deterioration, constraints imposed by spatial or financial limitations of the host institution, or accident-based destruction. In awareness of these issues, a simple and easily implementable methodology to increase accessibility, impact and conservation of anatomical specimens is proposed which combines photogrammetry, object virtual reality (object VR), and interactive portable document format (PDF) with supplementary historical and anatomical commentary. The methodology was developed using wet, dry, and plastinated specimens from the historical and modern collections in the Museum of Anatomy at the University of Glasgow. It was found that photogrammetry yielded excellent results for plastinated specimens and showed potential for dry specimens, while object VR produced excellent photorealistic virtual specimens for all materials visualised. Use of PDF as output format was found to allow for the addition of textual, visual, and interactive content, and as such supplemented the virtual specimen with multidisciplinary information adaptable to the needs of various audiences. The results of this small-scale pilot study indicate the beneficial nature of combining these established techniques into a methodology for the digitisation and utilisation of historical anatomical collections in particular, but also collections of material culture more broadly

Three dimensional asset documentation using terrestrial laser scanner technology

Asset documentation is a detailed record or inventory of the properties located within a room or a building. It is important to record the assets in case of property loss happen inside the premise especially when that premise caught fire, earthquake, robbery and others. The instrument used in this study is Faro Laser Scanner Photon 120/20. The object of the study is the computer room of Photogrammetry Lab, Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate. The final output of this study is the 3D model of the assets available inside the building. Before 3D model can be formed, the scanned data which is in the form of point cloud generated from the laser scanner have to be registered and georeferenced in order to combine the scans. The combine scans is the representation of the whole area of work surveyed from every scan points. These processes use Faro Scene, software that comes together with the laser scanner. By introducing this method, large scale asset documentation such as for factories and schools would be very beneficial rather than conventional method. The next process is to model the point cloud using AutoCAD 2011. Every item available on the room such as desks, chairs, cubicles, computers, whiteboard, projectors and cupboard are modeled and each of these items was inserted with attributes so that we can know the information of each item