VAST11: The 12th International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Intelligent Cultural Heritage

Permanent URI for this collection

https://diglib7.eg.org/handle/10.2312/454

Reconstructing and Exploring Massive Detailed Cityscapes

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Gobbetti, Enrico
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Marton, Fabio
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Benedetto, Marco Di
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Ganovelli, Fabio
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Bühler, Matthias
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Schubiger, Simon
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Specht, Matthias
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Engels, Chris
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Gool, Luc Van

Fast and Robust Semi-Automatic Registration of Photographs to 3D Geometry

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009-016.pdf
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Pintus, Ruggero
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Gobbetti, Enrico
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Combet, Roberto

Dense 3D Point Cloud Generation from Multiple High-resolution Spherical Images

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Pagani, Alain
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Gava, Christiano
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Cui, Yan
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Krolla, Bernd
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Hengen, Jean-Marc
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Stricker, Didier

Integrated High-Quality Acquisition of Geometry and Appearance for Cultural Heritage

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Schwartz, Christopher
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Weinmann, Michael
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Ruiters, Roland
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Klein, Reinhard

Point Cloud Segmentation for Cultural Heritage Sites

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041-048.pdf
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Spina, Sandro
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Debattista, Kurt
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Bugeja, Keith
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Chalmers, Alan

Documentation and Interpretation of an Archeological Excavation: an Experience with Dense Stereo Reconstruction Tools

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033-040.pdf ,
Documenting_Callieri.wmv
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Callieri, Marco
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Dell'Unto, Nicolò
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Dellepiane, Matteo
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Scopigno, Roberto
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Soderberg, Bengt
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Larsson, Lars

Reassembling Thin Artifacts of Unknown Geometry

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049-056.pdf ,
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Oxholm, Geoffrey
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Nishino, Ko

Radiometric Characterization of Spectral Imaging for Textual Pigment Identification

[meta data] [files:
057-064.pdf
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Kim, Min H.
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Rushmeier, Holly

Global Consistency in the Automatic Assembly of Fragmented Artefacts

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073-080.pdf
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Castañeda, Antonio García
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Brown, Benedict
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Rusinkiewicz, Szymon
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Funkhouser, Thomas
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Weyrich, Tim

Automatic Coin Classification by Image Matching

[meta data] [files:
065-072.pdf
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Zambanini, Sebastian
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Kampel, Martin

A Repository for Heterogeneous and Complex Digital Cultural Objects

[meta data] [files:
081-087.pdf
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Felicetti, Achille
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Niccolucci, Franco

Federating Specialized Digital Libraries

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097-103.pdf
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Ronzino, Paola
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Amico, Nicola
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Niccolucci, Franco

3D-centered Media Linking and Semantic Enrichment through Integrated Searching, Browsing, Viewing and Annotating

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089-096.pdf
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Serna, Sebastian Pena
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Scopigno, Roberto
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Doerr, Martin
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Theodoridou, Maria
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Georgis, Christos
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Ponchio, Federico
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Stork, Andre

Real-time Rendering of Massive Unstructured Raw Point Clouds using Screen-space Operators

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105-112.pdf ,
vast2011_paper1004.mp4
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Pintus, Ruggero
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Gobbetti, Enrico
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Agus, Marco

WebGL-based Streaming and Presentation Framework for Bidirectional Texture Functions

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113-120.pdf ,
WebGL-based Streaming and Presentation Framework for BTF.wmv
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Schwartz, Christopher
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Ruiters, Roland
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Weinmann, Michael
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Klein, Reinhard

Linking Evidence with Heritage Visualization using a large Scale Collaborative Interface

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121-128.pdf
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Bale, Kim
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Abbott, Daisy
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Gowigati, Ramy
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Pritchard, Douglas
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Chapman, Paul

VSim: Real-time Visualization of 3D Digital Humanities Content for Education and Collaboration

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129-135.pdf
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Poyart, Eduardo
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Snyder, Lisa
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Friedman, Scott
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Faloutsos, Petros

The Digital 3D Survey as Standard Documentation of the Archaeological Stratigraphy

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145-152.pdf
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Fiorini, Andrea
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Urcia, Alberto
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Archetti, Valentina

Virtual Heritage in the Cloud: New Perspectives for the Virtual Museum of Bologna

[meta data] [files:
153-160.pdf
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Lercari, Nicola
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Toffalori, Elena
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Spigarolo, M.
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Onsurez, L.

A Methodology for the Physically Accurate Visualisation of Roman Polychrome Statuary

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137-144.pdf
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Beale, Gareth
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Earl, Graeme

Preserving the Khmer Smile: Classifying and Restoring the Faces of Bayon

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161-168.pdf
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Lu, Min
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Zheng, Bo
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Takamatsu, Jun
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Nishino, Ko
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Ikeuchi, Katsushi

Assessing Film Heritage as a City Promotion Tool

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169-176.pdf
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Linaza, Maria Teresa
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Sarasua, Cristina
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Diez, Gorka
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Jorge, Elisabeth

ROV-3D, 3D Underwater Survey Combining Optical and Acoustic Sensor

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177-184.pdf
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Drap, Pierre
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Merad, Djamal
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Boï, Jean-Marc
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Boubguira, Wafia
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Mahiddine, Amine
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Chemisky, Bertrand
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Seguin, Emmanuelle
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Alcala, Frederic
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Bianchimani, Olivier

Browse

Recent Submissions

Now showing 1 - 23 of 23
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    Reconstructing and Exploring Massive Detailed Cityscapes
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Gobbetti, Enrico; Marton, Fabio; Benedetto, Marco Di; Ganovelli, Fabio; Bühler, Matthias; Schubiger, Simon; Specht, Matthias; Engels, Chris; Gool, Luc Van; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    We present a state-of-the-art system for obtaining and exploring large scale three-dimensional models of urban landscapes. A multimodal approach to reconstruction fuses cadastral information, laser range data, and oblique imagery into building models, which are then refined by applying procedural rules for replacing textures with 3D elements, such as windows and doors, therefore enhancing the model quality and adding semantics to the model. For city scale exploration, these detailed models are uploaded to a web-based service, which automatically constructs an approximate scalable multiresolution representation. This representation can be interactively transmitted and visualized over the net to clients ranging from graphics PCs to web-enabled portable devices. The approach's characteristics and performance are illustrated using real-world city-scale data.
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    Fast and Robust Semi-Automatic Registration of Photographs to 3D Geometry
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Pintus, Ruggero; Gobbetti, Enrico; Combet, Roberto; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    We present a simple, fast and robust technique for semi-automatic 2D-3D registration capable to align a large set of unordered images to a massive point cloud with minimal human effort. Our method converts the hard to solve image-to-geometry registration problem in a Structure-from-Motion (SfM) plus a 3D-3D registration problem. We exploit a SfM framework that, starting just from the unordered image collection, computes an estimate of camera parameters and a sparse 3D geometry deriving from matched image features. We then coarsely register this model to the given 3D geometry by estimating a global scale and absolute orientation using minimal manual intervention. A specialized sparse bundle adjustment (SBA) step, exploiting the correspondence between the model deriving from image features and the fine input 3D geometry, is then used to refine intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of each camera. Output data is suitable for photo blending frameworks to produce seamless colored models. The effectiveness of the method is demonstrated on a series of real-world 3D/2D Cultural Heritage datasets.
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    Dense 3D Point Cloud Generation from Multiple High-resolution Spherical Images
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Pagani, Alain; Gava, Christiano; Cui, Yan; Krolla, Bernd; Hengen, Jean-Marc; Stricker, Didier; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The generation of virtual models of cultural heritage assets is of high interest for documentation, restoration, development and promotion purposes. To this aim, non-invasive, easy and automatic techniques are required. We present a technology that automatically reconstructs large scale scenes from panoramic, high-resolution, spherical images. The advantage of the spherical panoramas is that they can acquire a complete environment in one single image. We show that the spherical geometry is more suited for the computation of the orientation of the panoramas (Structure from Motion) than the standard images, and introduce a generic error function for the epipolar geometry of spherical images. We then show how to produce a dense representation of the scene with up to 100 million points, that can serve as input for meshing and texturing software or for computer aided reconstruction. We demonstrate the applicability of our concept with reconstruction of complex scenes in the scope of cultural heritage documentation at the Chinese National Palace Museum of the Forbidden City in Beijing.
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    Integrated High-Quality Acquisition of Geometry and Appearance for Cultural Heritage
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Schwartz, Christopher; Weinmann, Michael; Ruiters, Roland; Klein, Reinhard; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Current research trends demonstrate that, for a wide range of applications in cultural heritage, 3D shape acquisition alone is not sufficient. To generate a digital replica of a real world object the digitized geometric models have to be complemented with information pertaining to optical properties of the object surface. We therefore propose an integrated system for acquiring both the 3D shape and reflectance properties necessary for obtaining a photo-realistic digital replica. The proposed method is suitable for the digitization of objects showing the complex reflectance behavior, for example specularities and meso-scale interreflections, often encountered in the field of cultural heritage. We demonstrate the performance of our system with four challenging examples. By using Bidirectional Texture Functions, our structured light based approach is able to achieve good geometric precision while preserving tiny details such as scratches and engravings.
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    Point Cloud Segmentation for Cultural Heritage Sites
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Spina, Sandro; Debattista, Kurt; Bugeja, Keith; Chalmers, Alan; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Over the past few years, the acquisition of 3D point information representing the structure of real-world objects has become common practice in many areas. This is particularly true in the Cultural Heritage (CH) domain, where point clouds reproducing important and usually unique artifacts and sites of various sizes and geometric complexities are acquired. Specialized software is then usually used to process and organise this data. This paper addresses the problem of automatically organising this raw data by segmenting point clouds into meaningful subsets. This organisation over raw data entails a reduction in complexity and facilitates the post-processing effort required to work with the individual objects in the scene. This paper describes an efficient two-stage segmentation algorithm which is able to automatically partition raw point clouds. Following an intial partitioning of the point cloud, a RanSaC-based plane fitting algorithm is used in order to add a further layer of abstraction. A number of potential uses of the newly processed point cloud are presented; one of which is object extraction using point cloud queries. Our method is demonstrated on three point clouds ranging from 600K to 1.9M points. One of these point clouds was acquired from the pre-historic temple of Mnajdra consistsing of multiple adjacent complex structures.
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    Documentation and Interpretation of an Archeological Excavation: an Experience with Dense Stereo Reconstruction Tools
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Callieri, Marco; Dell'Unto, Nicolò; Dellepiane, Matteo; Scopigno, Roberto; Soderberg, Bengt; Larsson, Lars; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    An archeological excavation is usually a rapidly evolving environment: several factors (weather, costs, permissions) force the work to be concentrated in a few weeks. Moreover, excavating is essentially a mono-directional operation, which constantly modifies the state of the site. Since most of the interpretation is performed in a second stage, it is necessary to collect a massive amount of documentation (images, sketches, notes, measurements). In this paper we present an experiment of monitoring of an excavation in Uppåkra, South Sweden, using dense stereo matching techniques. The archeologists were trained to collect a set of images every day; the set was used to produce a 3D model depicting the state of the excavation. In this way, it was possible to obtain a reliable geometric representation of the evolution of the excavation. The obtained model were also used by the archeologists, by the means of an open-source tool, to perform a site study and interpretation stage directly on the geometric data. The results of the experimentation show that dense stereo matching can be easily integrated with the daily work of archeologists in the context of an excavation, and it can provide a valuable source of data for interpretation, archival and integration of acquired material.
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    Reassembling Thin Artifacts of Unknown Geometry
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Oxholm, Geoffrey; Nishino, Ko; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    We introduce a novel reassembly method for fragmented, thin objects that uses minimal user interaction. Unlike past methods, we do not make any restrictive assumptions about the geometry or texture of the object. To do so, we exploit the geometric and photometric similarity along and across the boundaries of matching fragments, and leverage user feedback to tackle the otherwise ill-posed problem. We begin by encoding the scale variability of each fragment's boundary contour in a multi-channel, 2D representation. Using this multi-channel boundary contour representation, we identify matching sub-contours via 2D partial image alignment. We then align the fragments by minimizing the distance between their adjoining regions while simultaneously ensuring geometric continuity across them. The configuration of the fragments as they are incrementally matched and aligned form a graph structure. By detecting cycles in this graph, we identify subsets of fragments with dependent alignments. We then minimize the error within the subsets to achieve a globally optimal alignment. Using ceramic pottery as the driving example, we demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of our method on six real-world datasets.
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    Radiometric Characterization of Spectral Imaging for Textual Pigment Identification
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Kim, Min H.; Rushmeier, Holly; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Digital imaging of cultural heritage artifacts has become a standard practice. Typically, standard commercial cameras, often commodity rather than scientific grade cameras, are used for this purpose. Commercial cameras are optimized for plausible visual reproduction of a physical scene with respect to trichromatic human vision. However, visual reproduction is just one application of digital images in heritage. In this paper, we discuss the selection and characterization of an alternative imaging system that can be used for the physical analysis of artifacts as well as visually reproducing their appearance. The hardware and method we describe offers a middle ground between the low cost and ease of commodity cameras and the high cost and complexity of hyperspectral imaging systems. We describe the selection of a system, a protocol for characterizing the system and provide a case study using the system in the physical analysis of a medieval manuscript.
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    Global Consistency in the Automatic Assembly of Fragmented Artefacts
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Castañeda, Antonio García; Brown, Benedict; Rusinkiewicz, Szymon; Funkhouser, Thomas; Weyrich, Tim; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Automatic reconstruction of fragmented objects is of great interest in archaeology, where artefacts are often found in a fractured state. In this paper, we focus on the problem of automatically agglomerating clusters of fragments from previously determined pairwise matches. Common to any automated cluster agglomeration technique is the challenge of error accumulation, making it increasingly difficult to discern false from true matches as the assembly grows. Many assembly algorithms therefore introduce a global relaxation phase to distribute alignment errors evenly across the cluster, minimising major inconsistencies. Nevertheless, error accumulation limits the problem size automated assembly systems can handle in practice. In this paper we show how two careful modifications of the traditional relaxation scheme help lift this limit considerably. In contrast to previous work, we integrate global relaxation earlier, in the search phase of the assembly process. In addition, we do not fix connections between assembled fragments, but rather leave them flexible throughout the assembly. By modifying two representative assembly algorithms, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach. Using the example of a challenging fresco dataset, we show that these modifications achieve larger reconstruction sizes than traditional strategies.
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    Automatic Coin Classification by Image Matching
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Zambanini, Sebastian; Kampel, Martin; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    This paper presents an automatic image-based ancient coin classification method that adopts the recently proposed SIFT flow method in order to assess the similarity of coin images. Our system does not rely on pattern classification as discriminative feature extraction and classification becomes very difficult for large coin databases. This is mainly caused by the specific challenges that ancient coins pose to a classification method based on 2D images. In this paper we highlight these challenges and argue to use SIFT flow image matching. Our classification system is applied to an image database containing 24 classes of early Roman Republican coinage and achieves a classification rate of 74% on the coins' reverse side. This is a significant improvement over an earlier proposed coin matching method based on interest point matching which only achieves 33% on the same dataset.
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    A Repository for Heterogeneous and Complex Digital Cultural Objects
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Felicetti, Achille; Niccolucci, Franco; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The paper proposes a solution for a repository of digital cultural objects, which can manage complex data as 3D objects, videos and more, together with the related metadata. The repository is built with open source components and may be easily installed and managed. Basing on an example, interfaces are shown for the most common operations. The system allows for text searches, semantic searches as well as facet refinements. The proposed system can support a full-featured digital library for its modularity and easy personalization.
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    Federating Specialized Digital Libraries
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Ronzino, Paola; Amico, Nicola; Niccolucci, Franco; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The paper describes a procedure for creating a joint thesaurus of Architectural Heritage (AH) based on existing ones. After surveying the most important repositories of historic architectonical information and the associated thesauri, the design of a multilingual framework incorporating the different thesauri is presented and discussed. Also a system to perform semantic queries on these architectural databases is briefly presented. The implementation is based on the combination of existing technology, such as SKOS, RDF, Linked Data and semantic queries
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    3D-centered Media Linking and Semantic Enrichment through Integrated Searching, Browsing, Viewing and Annotating
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Serna, Sebastian Pena; Scopigno, Roberto; Doerr, Martin; Theodoridou, Maria; Georgis, Christos; Ponchio, Federico; Stork, Andre; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The digitally documented world heritage is archived in databases or repositories, where collections of metadata, images, multimedia objects or nowadays even digital 3D artifacts can be stored and queried. Modeling and linking all this information is complex and involves refined categorizations and relations, which are usually accessed by either simplistic or overwhelmingly complex interfaces. Hence, finding the right level of abstraction for a general interface is very challenging. This becomes even more demanding, if in addition to collection exploration, semantic enrichment is required. This work focuses on the design and implementation of an integrated interface, in which four dedicated activities are combined and provided: i) flexible definition of relational queries, ii) browsing of multiple results and query refinement, iii) inspection and analysis of multimedia objects, and iv) building and enrichment of semantic relationships (data paths) between objects. This integrated interface can handle different kinds of multimedia objects, allowing for querying and annotating text, 2D images or 3D artifacts. We present the software design of this interface and the corresponding underlying model in the semantic network. This work is a general step toward interfacing to 3D Linked Open Data.
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    Real-time Rendering of Massive Unstructured Raw Point Clouds using Screen-space Operators
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Pintus, Ruggero; Gobbetti, Enrico; Agus, Marco; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Nowadays, 3D acquisition devices allow us to capture the geometry of huge Cultural Heritage (CH) sites, historical buildings and urban environments. We present a scalable real-time method to render this kind of models without requiring lengthy preprocessing. The method does not make any assumptions about sampling density or availability of normal vectors for the points. On a frame-by-frame basis, our GPU accelerated renderer computes point cloud visibility, fills and filters the sparse depth map to generate a continuous surface representation of the point cloud, and provides a screen-space shading term to effectively convey shape features. The technique is applicable to all rendering pipelines capable of projecting points to the frame buffer. To deal with extremely massive models, we integrate it within a multi-resolution out-of-core real-time rendering framework with small pre-computation times. Its effectiveness is demonstrated on a series of massive unstructured real-world Cultural Heritage datasets. The small precomputation times and the low memory requirements make the method suitable for quick onsite visualizations during scan campaigns.
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    WebGL-based Streaming and Presentation Framework for Bidirectional Texture Functions
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Schwartz, Christopher; Ruiters, Roland; Weinmann, Michael; Klein, Reinhard; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Museums and Cultural Heritage institutions have a growing interest in presenting their collections to a broader community via the Internet. The photo-realistic presentation of interactively inspectable digital 3D replicas of artifacts is one of the most challenging problems in this field. For this purpose, we seek not only a 3D geometry but also a powerful material representation capable of reproducing the full visual appeal of an object. In this paper, we propose a WebGL-based presentation framework in which reflectance information is represented via Bidirectional Texture Functions. Our approach works out-of-the-box in modern web browsers and allows for the progressive transmission and interactive rendering of digitized artifacts consisting of 3D geometry and reflectance information. We handle the huge amount of data needed for this representation by employing a novel progressive streaming approach for BTFs which allows for the smooth interactive inspection of a steadily improving version during the download.
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    Linking Evidence with Heritage Visualization using a large Scale Collaborative Interface
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Bale, Kim; Abbott, Daisy; Gowigati, Ramy; Pritchard, Douglas; Chapman, Paul; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The virtual reconstruction of heritage sites and artefacts is a complicated task that requires researchers to gather and assess many different types of historical evidence which can vary widely in accuracy, authority, completeness, interpretation and opinion. It is now acknowledged that elements of speculation, interpretation and subjectivity form part of 3D reconstruction using primary research sources. Ensuring transparency in the reconstruction process and therefore the ability to evaluate the purpose, accuracy and methodology of the visualization is of great importance. Indeed, given the prevalence of 3D reconstruction in recent heritage research, methods of managing and displaying reconstructions alongside their associated metadata and sources has become an emerging area of research. In this paper, we describe the development of techniques that allow research sources to be added as multimedia annotations to a 3D reconstruction of the British Empire Exhibition of 1938. By connecting a series of wireless touchpad PCs with an embedded webserver we provide users with a unique collaborative interface for semantic description and placement of objects within a 3D scene. Our interface allows groups of users to simultaneously create annotations, whilst also allowing them to move freely within a large display visualization environment. The development of a unique, life-size, stereo visualization of this lost architecture with spatialised semantic annotations enhances not only the engagement with and understanding of this significant event in history, but the accountability of the research process itself.
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    VSim: Real-time Visualization of 3D Digital Humanities Content for Education and Collaboration
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Poyart, Eduardo; Snyder, Lisa; Friedman, Scott; Faloutsos, Petros; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    This paper presents VSim, a framework for the visualization of 3D architectural and archeological models. VSim's design focuses on educational use and scholarly collaboration, an approach that is not commonly found in existing commercial software. Two different camera control modes address a variety of scenarios, and a novel smoothing method allows fluid camera movement. VSim includes the ability to create and display narratives within the virtual environment and to add spatially localized multimedia resources. A new way to associate these resources with points and orientations in space is also introduced.
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    The Digital 3D Survey as Standard Documentation of the Archaeological Stratigraphy
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Fiorini, Andrea; Urcia, Alberto; Archetti, Valentina; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    In this contribution we describe tools and methods used to perform three-dimensional photogrammetric survey of different archaeological contexts. In particular, we studied in depth some aspects: swiftness (of the proceeding), accuracy (of the measurement), informative contents (of the registration) and cost (of the instruments). Considering these factors we propose some solutions for the integration of photomodelling and stereophotogrammetry within the current standards of archaeological documentation. The first part will show three-dimensional photomodelling examples of walls stratigraphy and structural elements. Then follows the comparative analysis of two different technique of survey for the documentation of the same archaeological context: the direct detection and the stereophotogrammetric one of a burial. The second part discusses the first results of an experiment still in progress: the documentation of all the contexts identified during an archaeological excavation by stereo-detection. The contribution closes with an experience of photogrammetric survey of petroglyphs.
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    Virtual Heritage in the Cloud: New Perspectives for the Virtual Museum of Bologna
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Lercari, Nicola; Toffalori, Elena; Spigarolo, M.; Onsurez, L.; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    This paper focuses on the integration of Cloud computing tools and user-generated content into an online cultural virtual environment. Our investigation aimed to clarify whether the Metaverse can be used as a spatial interface for aggregation and synestetic visualization of heterogeneous cultural data distributed in the Cloud. The case study we adopted is Nu.M.E. 2010 a virtual reconstruction of Piazza di Porta Ravegnana, a crucial area of late medieval Bologna (Italy), published on the platform Second Life (SL). A newfound awareness and appreciation for the new epistemic scenario introduced by Cloud computing and virtualization techniques has raised the following methodological questions: can Cloud computing help optimize the communication strategy and educational effectiveness of cultural data online? Can historical research and cultural data interpretation benefit from collaborative annotation and user-generated content? The described application entailed the use within SL of some of the most popular virtualization services: Google Maps, Panoramio, Google Docs, and Google Warehouse. The results of our testing activity suggest that Cloud services currently available are in fact useful tools for reshaping an online virtual space into an effective collaborative place, allowing users to share content, take an active part in the interpretation process and, most importantly, to provide valid feedback for cultural reception analysis.
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    A Methodology for the Physically Accurate Visualisation of Roman Polychrome Statuary
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Beale, Gareth; Earl, Graeme; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    This paper describes the design and implementation of a methodology for the visualisation and hypothetical virtual reconstruction of Roman polychrome statuary for research purposes. The methodology is intended as an attempt to move beyond visualisations which are simply believable towards a more physically accurate approach. Accurate representations of polychrome statuary have great potential utility both as a means of illustrating existing interpretations and as a means of testing and revising developing hypotheses. The goal of this methodology is to propose a pipeline which incorporates a high degree of physical accuracy whilst also being practically applicable in a conventional archaeological research setting. The methodology is designed to allow the accurate visualisation of surviving objects and colourants as well as providing reliable methods for the hypothetical reconstruction of elements which no longer survive. The process proposed here is intended to limit the need for specialist recording equipment, utilising existing data and those data which can be collected using widely available technology. It is at present being implemented as part of the 'Statues in Context' project at Herculaneum and will be demonstrated here using the case study of a small area of the head of a painted female statue discovered at Herculaneum in 2006.
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    Preserving the Khmer Smile: Classifying and Restoring the Faces of Bayon
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Lu, Min; Zheng, Bo; Takamatsu, Jun; Nishino, Ko; Ikeuchi, Katsushi; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    The Bayon temple is known for its numerous massive stone faces with serene smiles, often referred to as the 'Khmer Smile.' Many of these sculptures are, however, only partially preserved, making it difficult to see the original appearance of these faces. To restore the Bayon faces, we propose a novel method that builds upon the matrix recovery theory. The method achieves accurate restoration by adopting a two-step shape recovery strategy. Rough restoration and clustering processes are first carried out using the entire database to group similar samples together. Then refined restoration using high resolution data is executed in each cluster to restore higher details while retaining the characteristics of each face. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method.
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    Assessing Film Heritage as a City Promotion Tool
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Linaza, Maria Teresa; Sarasua, Cristina; Diez, Gorka; Jorge, Elisabeth; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    Cultural tourists are currently looking for new destinations and experiences. The tourism industry itself is very competitive with many new destinations trying to attract tourists. Moreover, there has been an increasing number of tourists visiting destinations featured through films and television series which are not directly related to the tourist promotion of the Destination Management Organizations (DMO). This is a new form of tourism called Film-induced Tourism, one of the fastest growing sectors of the tourism industry. Recent research suggests that films can have strong influence on tourist decision-making and films do not only provide short-term tourism revenue but long-term prosperity to the destination. This paper investigates the way new experiences based on Information and Communication Technologies can enhance the experience of film lovers to destinations related to films such San Sebastian on the basis of the CINeSPACE project. Based on the location and profile of the user, the system delivers multimedia content that best fits his/her requirements. Results of the in situ evaluation are also provided.
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    ROV-3D, 3D Underwater Survey Combining Optical and Acoustic Sensor
    (The Eurographics Association, 2011) Drap, Pierre; Merad, Djamal; Boï, Jean-Marc; Boubguira, Wafia; Mahiddine, Amine; Chemisky, Bertrand; Seguin, Emmanuelle; Alcala, Frederic; Bianchimani, Olivier; Franco Niccolucci and Matteo Dellepiane and Sebastian Pena Serna and Holly Rushmeier and Luc Van Gool
    ROV 3D project aims at developing innovative tools which link underwater photogrammetry and acoustic measurements from an active underwater sensor. The results will be 3D high resolution surveys of underwater sites. The new means and methods developed aim at reducing the investigation time in situ, and proposing comprehensive and non-intrusive measurement tools for the studied environment. In this paper, we are presenting a new method of 3D surveys which are dedicated to high resolution modeling of underwater sites. The main met constraints in situ are taken into account and this method leads to a precise 3D reconstruction. Some examples will present both the main obtained results and their limitations. We will end with the perspectives and the necessary improvements to the method, so as to automate the multimodal registration step.