Creating digital archives of 3D artworks			Marc Levoy Hector Garcia-Molina

Abstract

Recent improvements in laser rangefinder technology, together with algorithms for combining multiple range and color images, allow us to accurately digitize the external shape and surface characteristics of many physical objects. This capability makes it possible for the first time to digitize and archive substantial bodies of three-dimensional artistic and cultural artifacts, such as statues, buildings, and archeological remains.

Although the methodologies needed to create and manage digital archives of two-dimensional artifacts have matured substantially in the last ten years, the jump from two to three dimensions poses new problems. These are problems of both scale and substance, and they touch on every aspect of digital archiving: storage, indexing, searching, distribution, viewing, and piracy protection. In this pilot project, we are focusing on selected aspects of the following subproblems of this new domain:

• cataloguing 3D artworks using techniques from image-based rendering
• searching model-based or image-based catalogues (and the Internet) for 3D models or rendered views of them
• protecting 3D archives against piracy using robust 3D digital watermarking
• efficient streaming of 3D models over networks of limited bandwidth
• real-time display of large 3D models on low-cost PCs

As of Summer, 2003, this pilot project has ended. One concrete outcome of the project is ScanView: a secure client / server rendering system that permits unlicensed users to examine 3D models, but not extract the underlying data. If you want to fly around our models of Michelangelo's statues but you don't qualify for a license, try this viewer. The other goals of the pilot project have been folded into our Digital Forma Urbis Project, recently funded by the NSF under the name, Solving the Puzzle of the Forma Urbis Romae.

People:

• Marc Levoy
• Hector Garcia-Molina < hector@cs.stanford.edu >
• Szymon Rusinkiewicz < smr@graphics.stanford.edu >
• Dave Koller < dk@graphics.stanford.edu >
• Michael Turitzin

Recent papers in this area:

Protected Interactive 3D Graphics Via Remote Rendering

David Koller, Michael Turitzin, Marc Levoy, Marco Tarini,

Giuseppe Croccia, Paolo Cignoni, Roberto Scopigno

Proc. SIGGRAPH 2004

A shortened version of this paper was the cover article in the June 2005 issue of Communications of the ACM (CACM).

Streaming QSplat: A Viewer for Networked Visualization of Large, Dense Models

Szymon Rusinkiewicz

Marc Levoy

Proc. 2001 Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics

QSplat: A Multiresolution Point Rendering System

Szymon Rusinkiewicz

Marc Levoy

Proc. SIGGRAPH 2000

Other links:

• The white paper that motivated this project. It describes in more detail the subproblems listed above
• Web pages of the Digital Michelangelo Project, during which we acquired 3D scans of the statues of Michelangelo
• Web pages of the Digital Forma Urbis Romae Project, during which we acquired 3D scans of this marble map of ancient Rome
• An archive of 3D models from the Digital Michelangelo Project.
• An archive of map fragments from the Forma Urbis Romae Project.
• The scanalyze software package used to align and merge range data in the Digital Michelangelo Project.
• Volfill, our diffusion-based hole filler for large polygon meshes.
• The QSplat multi-resolution viewer for large polygon models.
• ScanView: a secure viewer that permits unlicensed users to examine 3D models, but not extract the underlying data.