Carlotta CAPURRO / Dries NOLLET / Daniel PLETINCKX
(Visual Dimension bvba, Belgium)
Abstract:
The Egmont castle of Zottegem is a standing building with a lot of history linked to it. Based upon archaeological and historical research, a virtual reconstruction has been made of the evolution of the castle and the surrounding landscape. The archaeological information was derived from several excavations plus a scanning with ground penetrating radar. Historical research in the context of this reconstruction project has revealed many more sources and a much better understanding about the evolution of the site and its inhabitants. The video shows briefly a selection of sources that have been used, and shows the evolution of the castle, the city and the surrounding landscape as one long shot, transiting from one period into the other (three periods are covered: 1150, 1300 and 1640). The innovation shown here in the video is the use of high-end digital landscape simulation, based upon archaeological and historical sources, and the link between the sources and the final 3D reconstruction. The realism of the video and the consistency and completeness of the virtual scenes provides the viewer an appealing and entertaining visualisation of the reconstructed periods (see test rendering at https://vimeo.com/98799233). The 3D model is used also in an interactive TimeFrame system in the Egmont castle itself, telling its story throughout the last millennium.
Keywords: medieval archaeology, virtual reconstruction, historical landscapes, visualisation of monuments, archaeological park