CloudCUBE for Archaeology

Virtualgeo will propose new technologies for the documentation and analysis of cultural heritage in the congress “New researches and studies on the Saint Anastasia’s Urn”, which will take place on April 23rd 2009 at Burovich Cultural Centre in Sesto al Reghena (province of Pordenone, Italy).

Virtualgeo will illustrate in particular the laser scanning survey campaign with a T-Scan laser scanner of Leica Geosystems on the Saint Anastasia’s Urn (placed in the abbey church of Sesto al Reghena), the treatment with CloudCUBE software of the “point clouds” delivered by laser scanner and the various products elaborated starting from the collected data.

The scale plastic model produced with rapid prototyping printer as well as the videos of point clouds acquired and virtual reality applications concerning the Urn will be presented.

The program includes a series of activities for the knowledge, protection, preservation and advancement of the unique and outstanding monumental artistic heritage belonging to Longobard age. Such activities were extended to the Longobard remains present in the rest of the Friulian territory and imply an in-depth study for the knowledge and the advancement of the Saint Anastasia’s Urn (8th century), placed in the abbey church of Sesto al Reghena.

Virtualgeo in collaboration with the technicians of Leica Geosystems carried out the survey campaign of the Urn with T-Scan high-speed hand laser scanner. Such laser scanner is normally used in industrial applications, in automotive, aircraft, naval, etc. fields. Only in cases of remarkable interest highly advanced technologies and instruments, originally used in industrial or also medical fields, are applied to cultural heritage. In such case the morphology of the Urn had to be acquired with a high precision (lower than a hundredth part of a millimetre) surveyThe sensor of the laser scanner, which was put at disposal by Leica Geosystems (the company was involved in the project by Virtualgeo), acquired in a non-invasive modality (without direct contact) 6 million points in about 4 work hours. In this way a high precision three-dimensional geometric database of the Urn was obtained.

The database is fundamental to document the “object” and is the starting point for the following phases of analysis and study. From the acquired point cloud a digital three-dimensional model of the Urn, composed of 1.500.000 triangular faces, was elaborated with CloudCUBE. CloudCUBE is the software developed in the last three years by Virtualgeo for managing and modelling on AutoCAD platform data acquired by laser scanning. The three-dimensional model elaborated reproduces exactly all the minute details of the sculptured surfaces of the Urn. Moreover, the gaps on the surfaces of the Urn were modelled following the specialist information given by the archaeologist Luca Villa.

Virtualgeo used the digital model to realize some products which are suitable both for scientific dissemination and didactics of the archaeological researches (and much more). The digital model without gaps of the Urn assumed a realistic aspect thanks to special textures and was used to produce a virtual reality video.  Such video shows in an effective way, the animation of the “disassembly” and “assembly” of the singles parts, a new hypothesis of the original use of the Urn proposed by Dr. Luca Villa. The digital model was elaborated also to produce a plaster plastic model (scale 1:5) with rapid prototyping 3D printer.