3D printing for Cultural Heritage

As many of you know,

since last year we are working on the preparation of the open source exhibition "FACCE. I molti volti della storia umana" (here some news in ATOR: 1, 2 and here the official page and the FB page). Of course all the software we are using are Free and Open (FLOSS), but for some particular exhibits, we are working also with open hardware.

Our interest in this specific topic dates back to 2006, when we started investigating the potentialities of open hardware in archeology, especially in the field of aerial photography e rapid prototyping. We get the first results in 2008, with our UAVP prototype (here some news from ATOR: 1, 2) an all the other UAV we built (KK, etc...).

For the exhibition the main open hardware we used are 3D printing machines. We experienced different solutions: +Leonardo Zampi printed the 3D model of the Taung Child thanks to the Kentstrapper machines, an ideal choice if you want an hardware which is ready to work out of the box (here the related articles: 1, 2)...

The Taung Child printed in the Volta printer (Kentstrapper)

... and we build our own device from the scratch, a Fa)(a 3D, thanks to +Giacomo Falaschi  and +silvio tassinari , of Roma Makers.

Building the Fa)(a 3D at Roma Makers lab.

One of the main issue in 3D printing for Cultural Heritage is to replicate an object in the right scale (otherwise you will just print a souvenir) and this is why it is very important to know how to perform a 3D scan, but also how to post-process your data ( (in ATOR you will find a lot of informations about this), in order to send the right file to the machine.
Here are some example of the models we are printing for the exhibition (scale 1:1): some 3D skulls of hominids (different individuals of Homo georgicus) we were able to scan, tanks to the kindness of Prof. David Lordkipanidze, during our mission to Tiblisi and Dmanisi. We will use them to prepare some Augmented Reality interactive exhibits related to paleoart.

3D printed skull (side view)

3D printed skull (front view)

And here is a short video of our Fa)(a 3D in action:

Have a nice day!

Augmented Reality at Cultways

Yesterday Arc-Team attended the workshop "Cultural tourism and mobile technologies" organized by Trentino Sviluppo in the city of Rovereto. The meeting was related with the European project Cultways and, although we had not participated in the work (already concluded), we were invited to show some related research we did for other institutions (especially the Soprintendenza per i Beni Librari, Archivistici e Archeologici di Trento).

Here below is the poster we presented, done (like always) with Inkscape and GIMP:

The poster for the workshop

In addition to the poster, we prepared some Augmented Reality applications, to show the potentialities of this techniques in Cultural Heritage.
The first installation we did is a prototype for the upcoming exhibition that should take place in Padua in November 2014, as a collaboration between the Antrhropological Museum of the city, Antrocom Onlus, and Arc-Team. This event, called "Facce. I volti della storia umana", is the natural evolution of the Taung Project, and is ideally connected with the exhibition "Faces da Evolução" which took place in Curitiba (BZ). Both of the exhibitions are intended to be "open source", as the data, the software and the know-how has been (and will be) shared through the net.
Here is a short clip of the application, which is based on the joint used of Augmented Reality and 3D printed objects with RepRap (with the help of our friends of Kenstrapper):

The second installation we prepared is a prototype we developed for the Museum of Torre di Pordenone, in order to allow tourist fruition of part of the roman villa buried under the garden.

The third application regards a pilot project we are working on for the Archaeological Office of the Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano Alto Adige/ Autonome Provinz Bozen Suedtirol. The research is connected with a survey to map and document the WW1 evidences in the territory. As an experimental stage of the same project we are testing some Augmented Reality tools to develop cultural sightseeing of the landscape, looking to the commemoration of this event which will be in 2014/2015. Currently we are considering the possibility to print interactive maps like the prototype below:

Just an example of interactive map

Please notice that the informations displayed in the map are not geographically correct: they are just an example to show all the possible kind of data which can be loaded (images, movies, 3D models).

Another possibility for tourist fruition are interactive panels, like the one below...

A test for a panel

... in this case we just added a simple image, but, like the map before, we could load movies or 3D objects.

All the Augmented reality applications were done with Open Source and Free Software. I will describe these tools in the next post, but you can already find some information here in ATOR (just search for this topic).

It is Carnival!

Once we were young and stupid, now we are no more young

(quote attributed to Mick Jagger)

OK, I am stupid, but the Taung Child face was the only 3D data I had in my computer at this moment, so I gave a try to a software we would like to add in ArcheOS.

We are working on the implementation of some new functionalities for the next release (Theodoric), especially regarding a good 3d engine and some augmented reality applications. I think Alessandro, surfing on the net, found the right open source software (openspace3d) and, with the help of ORNis (aka Romain Janvier) we hope to port it in GNU/Linux as soon as possible.

So here is the result of the first test:

Do not worry for the slow reaction of the software, it is mainly caused by the on-line screen recorder I was using to register the video (it was based on Java and it slowed down a little bit the applications that were running on my computer...). As usual, if you want to help us (also for software evaluation), just join ArcheOS channel on IRC.

Stay tuned :).