Michela Mortara

An overview on properties and efficacy of topological skeletons in shape modeling

The paper investigates the main issues related to the definition of abstraction tools for deriving high-level descriptions of complex geometric models. Among the wide range of shape descriptors, topological graph-like representations not only give a powerful and synthetic sketch of the object, but also capture its inner structure, that is how features connect together to give the overall shape. This aspect makes them useful to describe complex 3D objects in various applications like modeling, morphing, matching and recognition. The paper surveys the main properties of skeletons developed in shape modeling for representing objects.

Semantic 3D Media and Content: Semantics and 3D media: Current issues and perspectives

3D digital content has become popular as emerging media that can be created, edited and shared by users in a collaborative environment, likewise images and videos. The popularity of 3D media is not confined to the leisure sphere but it increased in many fields ranging from the entertainment market to the industrial product modelling, to health, biology, art, virtual tourism, and more. While problems related to the representation of the geometry of 3D shapes have been largely solved by the CG community, tools for coding, extracting, sharing, and retrieving the semantic content of 3D media are still far from satisfactory: interdisciplinary research efforts are needed to foster the development of the 3D Internet and its applications. The purpose of this paper is thus motivating research in this direction, presenting our vision of the future and, without offering any off-the-shelf solution, giving an overview of the various aspects of semantics required to optimise tasks and processes related to 3D content in different application domains. We identified four grand challenges which synthesise the open issues in common to the considered fields and represent a roadmap towards semantic 3D media.

3D shape retrieval based on best view selection

We describe the preliminary results of an ongoing work on content-based 3D retrieval, based on the selection of the best view of 3D objects according to semantic criteria. Experiments show that a single view is sufficient to achieve good performance, if it is the view in which the relevant shape features are maximally exposed.

Evaluating the Effectiveness of Serious Games for Cultural Awareness: The Icura User Study

There is an increasing awareness about the potential of serious games for education and training in many disciplines. However, research still witnesses a lack of methodologies, guidelines and best practices on how to develop effective serious games and how to integrate them in the actual learning and training processes. This process of integration heavily depends on providing and spreading evidence of the effectiveness of serious games This paper reports a user study to evaluate the effectiveness of Icura, a serious game about Japanese culture and etiquette. The evaluation methodology extends the set of instruments used in previous studies by evaluating the effects of the game on raising awareness, by avoiding the selective attention bias and by assessing the medium-term retention. With this research we aim to provide a handy toolkit for evaluating the effectiveness a serious games for cultural awareness and heritage.

Introduction to special issue on serious games for cultural heritage

Information and communication technologies provide powerful tools to build cultural heritage applications that facilitate a better understanding and appreciation of our present and past both by specialists and the general public and support the preservation, reproduction, representation, and fruition of artifacts, sites, and intangible goods in the form of virtual heritage. While multimedia archives and the digitization of artifacts and sites offer easy access to cultural content with no space or time constraints, game mechanics have the potential to engage the public in the fruition of such valuable resources. As a matter of fact, games with educational purposes, namely, Serious Games (SG), are becoming ever more popular. The main feature of a SG is an accurate combination of fun and instruction. The fun aspects favor engagement and can be determined by several factors such as storyboards, graphics, usability, interaction modalities, etc. The instructional aspects are the result of a proper pedagogical design, addressing in particular the organization of the learning content, the adaptation to the player’s profile and abilities, and the implementation of virtual tutor characters, or similar guidance/support systems. The goal of SGs in the cultural heritage domain is to actually spread cultural content to its maximum extent by exploiting the intrinsic features of this medium. SGs are suited to represent both the tangible and intangible heritage, as they can faithfully represent characters, environments, behaviors, and events. In this context, we called for papers reporting on case studies and perspective applications for tangible and intangible heritage, as well as providing insights about technological and methodological design and implementation issues. The overall goal is to sketch the landscape of the state-of-the-art in the field, investigating the actual benefits of SGs for the cultural heritage stakeholders and highlighting the challenges that need to be faced in order to really meet the requirements of the field. We have selected four articles that present a variety of contexts and solutions, addressing topics in areas such as artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, pedagogy, etc. J. Froschauer, D. Merkl, M. Arends, and D. Goldfarb describe ThIATRO, an art history SG, where the player acts as a museum curator who has to arrange an exhibition on several topics, collecting paintings from different museums. The article also suggests an inspiring methodology for evaluating the player learning gain, which is a key potential advantage of educational SGs. T. Coehen, L. Mostmans, and K. Naessens et al. report the case study of MuseUs, a pervasive mobile game, designed to enhance museum visits. The article describes requirements and provides new design solutions using common mobile devices to stimulate visitors to gain familiarity with the artworks on exhibit. C.-H. Huang and Y.-T. Huang describe Papaqwaka, which realistically simulates the life of the Atayal minority in Taiwan. Intangible cultural assets like tribal beliefs, customs, and ceremonies (e.g., the harvesting festival) are well integrated within the game objectives and mission levels. Finally, D. Mori, R. Berta, A. De Gloria, V. Fiore, and L. Magnani present an ad-hoc dialogue management system designed to support natural language interaction within SGs. The goal is to support

Investigating the Deployment of Serious Games in Secondary Education: A Pilot Study Inspired by Design-Based Research

This paper describes a pilot deployment in lower secondary school of a serious game dedicated to the learning of history. The primary aim of the initiative was to investigate the integration of Serious Games-based learning environments in the school study of humanities subjects. The pilot was carried out as part of investigations that researchers in the Games and Learning Alliance GALA Network of Excellence are conducting into the adoption and deployment of Serious Games SG in formal learning contexts. In this regard, the paper outlines the sequence of deployed pilot activities, which was shaped with the intention of responding to the needs of all the participants involved --- researchers, educators and learners. This approach is inspired by the principles of design-based research, as illustrated in the strategies adopted both for piloting activities and data gathering. The paper reports the outcome of these and considers some implications of the adopted approach both for SG deployment in formal education and for implementation of experimental SG pilots of this kind.

3D Virtual environments as effective learning contexts for cultural heritage

3D technology can be a valid support to cultural heritage not only for visual presentation and documentation, but also for communication and educational purposes. In this paper, we will discuss the potential of 3D virtual environments as effective learning contexts for Cultural Heritage. This encompasses various disciplines such as history, art, and languages, and includes both tangible and intangible content like myths, beliefs and social values. We will analyse virtual and augmented reality and innovative interfaces, highlighting their affordances for successfully triggering learning experiences. A number of digital environments and serious games will be also analysed with respect to their potential for supporting immersion, presence and motivation. In the literature, these factors are considered key in raising learner interest, making 3D worlds a direct and engaging setting for informal learning in Cultural Heritage.