Samuele Pierattini

3D modeling and remote rendering technique of a high definition cultural heritage artefact

Abstract Recent improvements in 3D laser scanning technology allow to reliably and accurately digitize the external shape of many physical objects with high definition and accuracy. Moreover the resulting 3D models can be used for digital documentation as well as to perform different analysis such as measurements, conservation monitoring, feature extractions and possibly virtual restoration. In recent years, the number of range scanners has been growing rapidly and surface reconstruction algorithms have been developing by the open-source community. This diffusion among cultural heritage institutions gives the scientific society a wide range of 3D hardware capturing devices and software solutions. Many researchers, however, do not have access to scanning facilities or dense polygonal models. In this paper is presented the whole pipeline from the creation of a high resolution 3D model of an ‘Acquasantiera’ to its Remote Rendering on the world wide web without any loss of details or accuracy.

Remote rendering and visualization of large textured 3D models

There is an increasingly urgent need, expressed by the scientific community and by the end users, to exploit web resources in order to analyse, process, visualize and interact remotely and in real time with 3D high definition models of Cultural Heritage artefacts and monuments. Many sharing platforms are currently developing thanks to user contributions. However this goal has not been yet reached successfully. Complex mesh models cannot be displayed interactively online on consumer computers, without downloading locally the entire model or accepting the compromise solution that the model is blurred and fuzzy during the interaction. Thus a key aspect is the quality with which the content is “distributed”, and, at the same time, the certainty of copyright protection. The platform implemented and here presented allows an efficient and effective multi-user online sharing of high quality 3D textured models without the need for the users to download it locally but exploiting the performances of a remote HPC infrastructure.