5Dculture: Improving the quality and promoting the reuse of 3D cultural heritage data

Presentation given by Anthony Corns (Discovery Programme) at EAA 2024 during CARARE's session "Making connections: Towards Archaeological Narratives in Contemporary Society".

5Dculture, a 24-month collaborative project co-funded by the European Union, involves twelve partners across cultural heritage sectors such as archaeology, museums, and fashion. Its goal is to enhance European 3D digital cultural heritage assets in the data space, promoting reuse in education, tourism, and broader cultural and creative sectors for sustainable outcomes. The project focuses on delivering high-quality 3D content by engaging existing datasets from partner collections, emphasizing fashion, archaeology, and architecture. Reuse scenarios, spanning from high-quality
to derivatives, are being developed. The Discovery Programme, with a history of involvement in 3D digital documentation, particularly through projects like 3D-ICONS, recognizes opportunities and challenges in reusing 3D archaeological content. This includes enhancing visitor experiences at archaeological sites and leveraging 3D surrogates across various sectors like tourism, education, gaming, arts, conservation, and heritage management.

This paper discusses the research conducted in this context, introducing an improved processing pipeline to enhance the quality of 3D models of cultural heritage assets, facilitating their increased reuse. It details approaches to refining model geometry, generating and applying enhanced textures, creating rich metadata, and establishing strategies for persistence and archiving. The paper emphasizes use case pilots in tourism, conservation, and the creative arts sectors. The paper also explored the collaborations the Discovery Programme has with partners in these sectors to deliver enhanced yet practical outputs tailored to diverse user needs and reuse potential.

1. 5Dculture:
Improving the
quality and
promoting the
reuse of 3D
cultural heritage
data
EAA Rome, 2024
Anthony Corns,
Robert Shaw,
Rebecca O’Reilly,
Siva Namberi,
Lesley Davidson,
Hannah Genders Boyd

2. Full Title: Deploying and Demonstrating a 3D cultural heritage space
(101100778), 24 months
A European collaboration of key CH stakeholders that aims to enrich the
offer of 3Ddigital cultural heritage assets, toolsand know-howin the data
spacefor CHnand foster their reusein important domains.

3. 3
Fashion Archaeology City/Architecture

4. Archaeology Pilot Objectives
A. Improve quality & number of 3D models
B. 3 Use case scenarios
1.Conservation
2.Creative Sector
3.Tourism

5. pipeline POINT
CLOUD
HIGH POLY
MODEL
LOW POLY
MODEL
TEXTURED
MODEL
CAPTURE
MODELLING TEXTURING
OUTPUT
IMAGES: FREEPIK

6. PARAMETRIC
TEXTUREs
JAVAD RAJABZADE, ARTSTATION.
SYNTHETIC STONE

7. Quality Improvements –Artec Eva
Old New

8. Model Collection
Old

9. Model Collection
New

10. Model Collection

11. Reprocessing TLS Data

13. Model Collection –New Data

14. Model Collection –New Data

15. Model Collection –New Data

16. Metadata Improvement

17. Metadata Improvement 200+ 3D Models

18. Conservation

19. Conservation

20. Conservation -INCEPTION

21. Conservation -INCEPTION

22. Creative Arts –3D Printing
Print Mold Pastercast Painted3D Model

23. Creative Arts –3D Printing Chocolate Mold

24. Creative Arts
Natasha Handley (Leeds Beckett University)

25. Tourism –Onsite Evaluation

26. Tourism –Visual Disabilities
Use of 3D prints in monument visits for
people with visual disability

27. Tourism –Visual Disabilities
Flanders

28. Thanks
anthony@discoveryprogramme
https://5dculture.eu/
Sketchfab: @discoveryprogramme
X: @discprog
Facebook: DiscoveryProgramme
www.discoveryprogramme.ie
Funded by the European
Union. Views and opinions
expressed are however those
of the author(s) only and do
not necessarily reflect those of
the European Union or
European Health and Digital
Executive Agency (HADEA).
Neither the European Union
nor the granting authority can
be held responsible for them.