Digital replica of cultural landscapes: An experimental reality-based workflow to create realistic, interactive open world experiences

Abstract In the last decades, the awareness of what cultural heritage is, as well as its definition, has changed and broaden its horizon. Important international institutions such as ICOMOS and UNESCO, which represent the reference points for documentation and protection, have revised the definition of cultural heritage to include not only the elements of historical-artistic relevance and the testimonies of a civilization but also the environment around them. In other words, the meaning of cultural heritage has been extended to the concept of cultural landscape. This article tries to meet this last definition of cultural heritage: through an extensive 3D survey of the ancient city of Sarmizegetusa (National Historical Monument), it presents a new perspective for the documentation and representation of cultural landscape that includes not only the structures of the city but also the areas that have not been excavated yet, and the surrounding natural environment. The term “digital replica” is presented to define this new perspective. The article deals in detail with the whole digitization process and the tools used to obtain a digital replica of a Roman city deepening the integration between photogrammetry and computer graphics. The detailed description is intended to make the workflow reproducible by the scientific community. Besides, as a final remark, experimented optimization procedures and navigation tools designed to manage and explore large three-dimensional datasets will be illustrated.

[1]  Daniele Ferdani,et al.  3D-GIS as a Platform for Visual Analysis: Investigating a Pompeian House , 2016 .

[2]  Roberto Pierdicca,et al.  Mapping Chimu's settlements for conservation purposes using UAV and close range photogrammetry. The virtual reconstruction of Palacio Tschudi, Chan Chan, Peru , 2017, Digit. Appl. Archaeol. Cult. Heritage.

[3]  Emanuel Demetrescu,et al.  A Complete Workflow From the Data Collection on the Field to the Deployment of a Virtual Museum: the Case of Virtual Sarmizegetusa , 2016, GCH.

[4]  Filiberto Chiabrando,et al.  Recent trends in cultural heritage 3D survey: The photogrammetric computer vision approach , 2018, Journal of Cultural Heritage.

[5]  Philippe De Smedt,et al.  Towards a three-dimensional cost-effective registration of the archaeological heritage , 2013 .

[6]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  3D SURVEYING AND MODELING OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES - SOME CRITICAL ISSUES - , 2013 .

[7]  George Pavlidis,et al.  Methods for 3D digitization of Cultural Heritage , 2007 .

[8]  Sabry F. El-Hakim,et al.  Detailed 3D reconstruction of large-scale heritage sites with integrated techniques , 2004, IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications.

[9]  Jeremy Birn,et al.  Digital Lighting & Rendering , 2000 .

[10]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  3D recording and modelling in archaeology and cultural heritage : theory and best practices , 2014 .

[11]  I. Colomina,et al.  Unmanned aerial systems for photogrammetry and remote sensing: A review , 2014 .

[12]  Kotaro Yamafune,et al.  Photogrammetric texture mapping: A method for increasing the Fidelity of 3D models of cultural heritage materials , 2018 .

[13]  J. Fernández-Lozano,et al.  Improving archaeological prospection using localized UAVs assisted photogrammetry: An example from the Roman Gold District of the Eria River Valley (NW Spain) , 2016 .

[14]  Holley Moyes,et al.  Defining Best 3D Practices in Archaeology , 2014, Advances in Archaeological Practice.

[15]  Gabriele Guidi,et al.  A Multi-Resolution Methodology for the 3D Modeling of Large and Complex Archeological Areas , 2009 .

[17]  Luca De Vito,et al.  Editorial of the special issue on the 1st international conference on metrology for archaeology: Measurement science for archaeology and cultural heritage , 2018 .

[18]  Filiberto Chiabrando,et al.  UAV and RPV systems for photogrammetric surveys in archaelogical areas : two tests in the Piedmont region (Italy) , 2011 .

[19]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  Image‐based 3D Modelling: A Review , 2006 .

[20]  Jitendra Malik,et al.  Recovering high dynamic range radiance maps from photographs , 1997, SIGGRAPH '08.

[21]  J. L. Lerma,et al.  Terrestrial laser scanning and close range photogrammetry for 3D archaeological documentation: the Upper Palaeolithic Cave of Parpalló as a case study , 2010 .

[22]  Fabrizio Galeazzi,et al.  Towards the definition of best 3D practices in archaeology: Assessing 3D documentation techniques for intra-site data recording , 2016 .

[23]  Gabriele Guidi,et al.  3D survey and virtual reconstruction of archeological sites , 2014, Digit. Appl. Archaeol. Cult. Heritage.

[24]  George Pavlidis,et al.  Multi-image 3D reconstruction data evaluation , 2014 .

[25]  Peter Lindstrom,et al.  Out-of-core simplification of large polygonal models , 2000, SIGGRAPH.

[26]  Valerio Pascucci,et al.  Terrain Simplification Simplified: A General Framework for View-Dependent Out-of-Core Visualization , 2002, IEEE Trans. Vis. Comput. Graph..

[27]  K. Themistocleous.  The use of UAVs to monitor archeological sites: the case study of Choirokoitia within the PROTHEGO project , 2017 .

[28]  Paul Debevec.  Rendering synthetic objects into real scenes: bridging traditional and image-based graphics with global illumination and high dynamic range photography , 2008, SIGGRAPH Classes.

[29]  K. Nikolakopoulos,et al.  UAV vs classical aerial photogrammetry for archaeological studies , 2017 .

[30]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  3d Surveying and modelling of the Archaeological Area of Paestum, Italy , 2015 .

[31]  Gabriele Guidi,et al.  3D Modeling of Large and Complex Site Using Multi-sensor Integration and Multi-resolution Data , 2008, VAST.

[32]  A. T. Mozas-Calvache,et al.  Method for photogrammetric surveying of archaeological sites with light aerial platforms , 2012 .

[33]  Emanuel Demetrescu,et al.  Different Photogrammetric Approaches to 3D Survey of the Mausoleum of Romulus in Rome , 2014, GCH.

[34]  Carlo Meghini,et al.  ARIADNE: A Research Infrastructure for Archaeology , 2017, ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage.

[35]  Andrew Jones,et al.  Direct HDR capture of the sun and sky , 2004, AFRIGRAPH '04.

[36]  Dieter Fritsch,et al.  3D preservation of buildings – Reconstructing the past , 2018, Multimedia Tools and Applications.

[37]  Helena Rua,et al.  Living the past: 3D models, virtual reality and game engines as tools for supporting archaeology and the reconstruction of cultural heritage – the case-study of the Roman villa of Casal de Freiria , 2011 .

[38]  J.-A. Beraldin,et al.  Multiscale archaeological survey based on the integration of 3D scanning and photogrammetry , 2002 .

[39]  A. Mouget,et al.  PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ARCHAEOLOGICAL SURVEY WITH UAV , 2014 .

[40]  Frank Vermeulen,et al.  Surveying the Townscape of Roman Ammaia in Portugal: An Integrated Geoarchaeological Investigation of the Forum Area , 2012 .

[41]  Michael M. Kazhdan,et al.  Poisson surface reconstruction , 2006, SGP '06.

[42]  Roberto Scopigno,et al.  Archeological excavation monitoring using dense stereo matching techniques , 2012 .

[43]  Richard Szeliski,et al.  Computer Vision - Algorithms and Applications , 2011, Texts in Computer Science.

[44]  Paul S.C. Taçon,et al.  Testing the value of low-cost Structure-from-Motion (SfM) photogrammetry for metric and visual analysis of rock art , 2018 .

[45]  M. Forte,et al.  Virtual Reality in archaeology , 2000 .

[46]  Andrew Bevan,et al.  A comparative assessment of structure from motion methods for archaeological research , 2014 .

[47]  M. Dubbini,et al.  Digital elevation models from unmanned aerial vehicle surveys for archaeological interpretation of terrain anomalies: case study of the Roman castrum of Burnum (Croatia) , 2016 .

[48]  Erik Reinhard,et al.  High Dynamic Range Imaging: Acquisition, Display, and Image-Based Lighting , 2010 .

[49]  Jonas Unger,et al.  Real-time Image Based Lighting with Streaming HDR-light Probe Sequences , 2012, SIGRAD.

[50]  Fabio Remondino,et al.  QUERYARCH3D: QUERYING AND VISUALISING 3D MODELS OF A MAYA ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITE IN A WEB-BASED INTERFACE , 2011 .

[51]  Geert Verhoeven,et al.  Taking computer vision aloft – archaeological three‐dimensional reconstructions from aerial photographs with photoscan , 2011 .

[52]  K. Wenzel,et al.  4D Reconstruction of Tangible Cultural Heritage Objects from Web-Retrieved Images , 2014 .

[53]  Wolfgang Neubauer,et al.  3D LASER SCANNERS ON ARCHAEOLOGICAL EXCAVATIONS , 2005 .

[54]  F. Giannone,et al.  A new approach to digitalization and data management of cultural heritage sites , 2015, 2015 Digital Heritage.