E. Oberländer-Târnoveanu, Corina Nicolae, Mihai Bozgan, Marius Amarie and Tudor Martin, 'Cultural Heritage under Lenses: 3D Icons Project and the Romanian experience ', presentation given at the Cultural Heritage Creative Tools And Archives workshop, National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, 26-27 June 2013.

1. Cultural Heritage under Lenses.
3D Icons Project and the Romanian experience
E. Oberländer-Târnoveanu, Corina Nicolae, Mihai Bozgan, Marius Amarie, Tudor Martin
Romanian National History Museum, Bucharest, Ro

2. 3D Digitisation of Icons of European Architectural and Archaeological
Heritage (3D Icons) project is a pilot project funded under the European
Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme, built on the results of
CARARE and 3D-COFORM.
3D-ICONS proposes to digitize a series of architectural and
archaeological masterpieces of world and European cultural significance
and provide 3D models and related digital content to Europeana, with
the aim of contributing to the critical mass of highly engaging content
available to users.

3. The project will exploit existing tools and methods, to integrate them in a
complete supply chain of 3D digitization to contribute a significant mass
of 3D content to Europeana.
The project will focus on UNESCO World Heritage monuments and other
monuments of outstanding value at European level, to illustrate a
particular strand of Europe’s history.

4. Partners
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Università degli Studi de Napoli L’Orientale, Italy
MDR PARTNERS (CONSULTING) LIMITED, Great Britain
CONSIGLIO NAZIONALE DELLE RICERCHE, Italy
ATHENA RESEARCH AND INNOVATION CENTER IN INFORMATION COMMUNICATION &
KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES, Greece
THE DISCOVERY PROGRAMME LBG, Irland
UNIVERSIDAD DE JAEN, Spain
CMC Associates Ltd., Great Britain
POLITECNICO DI MILANO, Italy
Visual Dimension bvba, Belgiun
ASSOCIATION POUR LE DEVELOPPEMENT DE L’ENSEIGNEMENT ET DES RECHERCHES
AUPRES DES UNIVERSITES, DES CENTRES DE RECHERCHE ET DES ENTREPRISES
D’AQUITAINE, France
FONDAZIONE BRUNO KESSLER, Italy
KONINKLIJKE MUSEA VOOR KUNST EN GESCHIDENIS, Belgium
THE CYPRUS RESEARCH AND EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION, Cyprus
CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE, France
Romanian National History Museum
NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS, Greec

5. The digital content will include overall 3D models and reconstructions, enlarged
models of important details, images, texts, videos. It will also include and recontextualize in 3D, objects belonging to a monument but presently located
elsewhere, for example in a museum.
Technology
• 3D model generation via
- image-based modeling, requiring only a digital camera;
- 3D scanning, a medium- or long-range 3D scanner required;
- procedural modeling and 3D sketching, using free or inexpensive specific software
• 3D model and digital information storage management: requires standard
computer resources and an open source repository management system
• 3D visualization tools: open source or free software
• Semantics: schemas and thesauri freely available, as well as the necessary tools

6. • Saint Michael Romano-Catholic
Cathedral, Alba Iulia, one of the
most important medieval
architectural monuments from
Transylvania, candidate on the
UNESCO lists
- 60 3D models
- 250 images
- 1 video

7. • Sarmizegetusa Regia, the Dacian fortress from the Orăștie Mountains,
UNESCO monument, together with the archaeological finds from its
neighborhood
- 20 3D models
- 300 images
- 1 video

8. The software used in the project are based mainly on open-source technologies
or on technologies that have low acquisition costs.
Besides the 3D content that the project intends to make available, another
important task is to make publicly available the production pipeline to other
cultural institutions or owners of 3D cultural content.
The outcome will be accesible to general public and to the scientific world in
usable format (.obj file).

9. In order for the results to be better disseminated among all the social
categories, with special attention to the children, the 3D models will be
presented in attractively format: 123D Make from AutoDesk (3D media router)
The concept of creating 3D models might be used not only for the Europeana
platform, but as well for
• educational purposes in workshops organized by the museum
• scientific research, provided that the model has a high quality texture

10. Methods used
Data acquisition
• Photogrammetry - offers accurate results, being a method suited for
personnel from cultural heritage domain, with a limited technical
background
• 3D reconstructions based on architectural blueprints with and accurate
measurements with the aid of CAD software
Processing and post-processing
• Open source and low cost software: Agisoft PhotoScan, MeshLab, Blender
• High quality render software: Cinema 4D with VRAY technology

11. Metadata architecture
The project’s metadata will mainly follow the schemas created in previous
European funded projects, such as CARARE, with the intention of improving them
to suit the parameters of 3D models.
Due to the lack of standardization as regarding the metadata procedures (creation,
delivery…), we propose the creation of an architecture concept which will comprise all
the fields required by the scientific community and as well by the Europeana
repository; in this way, we will be able to provide the necessary fields for any
requirements (Europeana – with emphasis on general information, or scientific
purposes, with a more detailed view)
Due to the user friendly concept of Excel and SQL databases, the metadata will be
accessible online, through CMS platform and as well offline, through common
Microsoft Excel architecture.

12. Data acquisition
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Canon EOS 5D Mk II ISO 100, t=1/60/ zoom lens EF 24-105 AF IS @
35 mm f: 22
2 Studioflash 1000w
2 Studioflash 300w
Processing and post processing
Hardware: APPLE MAC 2.3GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up
to 3.3GHz) cu 6MB L3 cache (2 buc.), Intel HD Graphics 4000, 32GB
1600MHz DDR3
Software: Agisoft Photoscan
MeshLab v.1.3.2
Blender 2.67

13. Model 1
wireframe

14. Model 1
Final render

15. Model 1

16. Model 1
Technical information
220 photos acquired from which we selected 197 @5616x3744px
665206 points / 114496 faces / 57531 vertices
Align photos, build geometry and build texture - about 14 hours on high quality

17. Model 2
wireframe

18. Model 2
Final render

19. Model 2
Technical information
150 photos acquired from which we selected 94 @5616x3744px
294249 points / 41863 faces / 21076 vertices
Align photos, build geometry and build texture - about 8 hours on high quality