Easy and cost-effective cuneiform digitizing

Modern researchers in the field of ancient Mesopotamian studies read th ir primary sources, cuneiform tablets, either manually, by moving lights around the tablet to maximize readability, or b y studying photographs (or drawn copies) when the actual tablet is not at hand. Although the latter method only h lds partial information, and is therefore less desirable, it is often the only available resource due to the inac cessibility of tablet collections. Recently, several digitizing projects have been proposed to provide acc urate 2D+ and 3D models of these tablets for digital preservation. However, these methods require manual intera c ion or are not available to many research groups due to their cost. Furthermore, the digitizing device should be quick ly deployable on-site, have an easy calibration procedure and should not have any moving parts which could be problematic in difficult circumstances. We therefore present a new fully automated cuneiform tablet digitizing solution th at is relatively inexpensive and easily field-deployable. The solution consists of a small, light-weight dome o f light sources and a digital camera. 2D+ representations of the tablets are created by use of photometric stere o. Th obtained information allows for photorealistic virtual re-lighting and non-photorealistic rendering of the tab lets in real-time through the use of programmable graphics hardware.