Alessandro MERLO / Gaia LAVORATTI / Andrea ALIPERTA, Filippo FANTINI
(DiDA: Dipartimento di Architettura – Università degli Studi di Firenze, Italy)
Keywords: Pietrabuona, laserscan, image based modeling, dissemination, heritage
Abstract:
The subject of this paper is the ancient church of San Matteo, built in the medieval settlement of Pietrabuona (Pescia, Pistoia, Italy).
This ancient building was founded in the XI century and has been transformed into a fortification in the XV century, during the battles between Pisa and Florence, but since then it has been abandoned and reduced to ruin.
The elaboration of data obtained thanks to a digital survey and the interpretation of such information done by a multidisciplinary research staff have made possible not only the analysis of the typological distinctive features of the church, but also the analysis of the executive criteria and stylistic elements that characterize the building.
The 3D models are gradually becoming an essential resource for those who are working in the old heritage field, because they introduce new potential uses in the dissemination and preservation: they can be seen as holders of a variety of data (metric, materic, static, historical data, etc.).
Starting from laser scanner data and through more and more refined optimization procedures, it is now possible to obtain a 3D representation which has greater metric and perceptive reliability, if compared to a significant reduction of hardware resources necessary for the visualization.
Once a high detail model is well-defined (high-poly), the pipeline presented in this study case allows to create scale models with simplified geometry (low-poly), using reverse modeling process and modeling techniques taken from the entertainment field. These models, conveniently mapped with normal/displacement maps and diffuse color textures, are characterized by a high perceptive fidelity and can be easily visualized on laptops, tablet and smartphones, not to mention that they are enriched with information that can be extremely useful for the analysis of the building.