Multi-scale 3D Digitization at Nidaros Cathedral: from archiving to large-scale Visualization

Theoharis THEOHARIS¹ / Georgios PAPAIOANNOU² / Kristin BJØRLYKKE³ / Øystein EKROLL³ / Dirk RIEKE-ZAPP⁴ / Anja LEIN⁵ / Anthousis ANDREADIS²
(¹Dept. of Computer and Information Science, NTNU, Norway / ²Dept. of Informatics, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece /³Nidaros Domkirkes Restaureringsarbeider, Trondheim, Norway /⁴Breuckmann GmbH, Germany /⁵Dept. of Informatics, University of Applied Science Dresden, Germany)

Keywords: 3D digitisation, multi-scale, cultural heritage

Abstract: 3D scanning in cultural heritage (CH) is used in most cases either for the faithful generation of digital models of CH objects or for visualization purposes. In this paper, we move a step further and concentrate on documenting the requirements and our experience in 3D scanning for alternative CH application scenarios, where digitization is not the end product, but rather the means to augment the existing information and acquired data. In our work, which is part of the PRESIOUS EU-funded project, we aim at utilizing and inventing new methodologies and technologies for the prediction of geometric information on CH data, ranging from the digitization process itself to geometric reassembly, shape prediction and simulation/prediction of monument degradation. To this end, the scanning requirements of the different processing tasks are given, including specialized high-definition scans for erosion measurement, mesoscale digitization for reassembly as well as for the visualization of the results. Important practical lessons are drawn and the actual digitisation pipelines of state-of-art 3D digitisation technologies are given. A practical discussion summarizes our multi-scale digitisation experience (giving the accuracy, required time and resulting data size that we observed), mainly drawn from the digitization activities at the Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim, Norway.