ITN-DCH or Initial Training Network for Digital Cultural Heritage is a research project under the European Union’s Seventh Framework program (FP7) as a Marie Curie Actions program. It gathered the combined work of several universities and institution such as the University of Geneva, University of Cyprus, MaxPlanck institute, etc..
This project aimed at forming the next generation of researchers through various case studies and many exchanges (3 months), meetings or conferences.
The project was pretty nice and I met and got to know many other young researchers with different backgrounds (Archeology, Photogrammetry, Computer vision, Mechanical engineer). The possibility to travel altogether in so many different places was enjoyable. From the hidden church of Asinou in Cyprus to the castle of Rhodes in Greece and the ruins of Carnuntum in Austria, we talked to the professionals and locals and visited theses sites.
Here I am showing the interactive application on a laptop directly inside the Asinou church.
Technically, I worked on the Church of Asinou, that we had it fully reconstructed in 3D using aerial drone footage and photogrammetric tools. The resulting point cloud was processed to extract a textured mesh that could be imported in a 3D engine (Unity), which then allowed to add the interactive layer. On the church video, some archelogical information were added to visualise the different states of the church over the time.
Another outcome was to make an interactive app in relation with the church and its priest as intangible heritage. We motion captured the priest doing some gestures related to ancient rituals and mapped them to an avatar made from the photo of the priest. The result is an interactive reconstruction of the church with a priest avatar in the place and animated motion recreating the traditional ritual gestures.
Tools
Unity 3D – Agisoft Photoscan – N-frame reconstruction – Avatar creation – C#
Methodology
3D reconstruction – Texturing – Motion blending
Outcome
Application to visualise the historical elements around a 3D reconstruction of an antique church
Application to visualise the Church interior and reconstruction of the priest as well as antique rituals.