I saw this post the other day from Autodesk. They have created a new plugin called “Project Helix” which will allow users of 3ds Max and 3ds Max Design to import Cloud Point Diagrams (.ptx files). Now this is interesting to me because it involves two programs and disciplines that I am very interested in but do not know how to use at all!
I have been attempting to learn 3ds Max for about a year. That program is pretty daunting and I keep putting it aside for too long. When I try to jump back in I have to learn all over again. Recently I have been going by Direct Dimensions in Owings Mills, MD. This a premiere laser scanning company that is at the top of the industry. They describe themselves: “Direct Dimensions, Inc. (DDI) provides unique solutions to complex modeling and manufacturing problems. We specialize in the on-site application of digitizers, laser scanners, and the conversion of complex three-dimensional data into 3D computer models.” I must say that with all the historical projects they do it is right up my alley.
I was there yesterday and I found that they have about Four Programs they use inside their workflow. Pointools, Solidworks, Z-Brush, it is a little scary. Their team is made up of mostly hungry 20 somethings who seem eager to put the time in the office. I am hoping that Plugins like this for 3ds Max will allow me to learn a workflow that can actually be in one program! This is unfortunately not reality. I am using only the lowest level of modeling in Sketchup. I still need Kerkythea and GIMP to give me any hope of having realistic models.
One promising thing that I did learn is that 3dx Max 2011 can directly import files from Sketchup. At the very least I can now skip the modeling portion in 3ds Max and jump directly into Rendering and Animation. This is a big step for me and I expect everyone will start seeing some high quality stuff in the near future.
I read a really fun post over at Gamesradar entitled, “The Top 7 Historical Figures Defamed by Video Games.” Most of the references were obscure or really bizzare. A lot were Asian warlords. Go ahead and check it out. It got me thinking about the time I wasted playing the game Caesar in Elementary School. I have a feeling this was a really key moment for me in starting to like Ancient History.
I was brought onto this game after I had mastered Sim City. I had created the ultimate city and was now ready for a new challenge. Let’s create a city in Ancient Rome. I had a blast. I wasted countless hours developing the ultimate city state. With a little help from some online gaming websites I had figured out the perfect formula.
Soon I branched out to other games like Sid Meier’s Civilization. I am currently working with Rob Cloutier, a 3d designer who worked on the game. Please visit his website www.3dhistory.com to see some of his work. He’s very talented. Civilization took the history angle to a new level. Now I was starting multiple cities and managing entire military campaigns. Beneath the framework of fun, a lot of educational building blocks came into place. You had to elevate from the stone age to the bronze age, by discovering certain aspects of science. You could only progress in your building by collecting more natural resources. Pretty tremendous all around.
Eventually you can find a way to reshape a lot of the historical landscape. I actually conquered the planet Earth with the United States. It was pretty awesome. USA! USA! USA!
Shawn Graham at Electric Archaeology has taken this to a new level. Many of these games allow for modification of your own campaigns. Shawn has added campaigns to Civilization IV and Caesar IV and began using them as teaching tools for his students. He believes that he can edit parameters of the game to help teach his students different aspects of Roman History.
“I want to use Caesar IV as a simulation to explore Roman economics. The idea is, I’ll get my students to play this scenario, and in playing it, it highlight/contrast game mechanics with the current understanding of how the Roman economy works (if you think modern economic thought is dry, you ain’t seen nuthin’ till you’ve read the ancient version… gaming economics ought to be way more fun for my students!)”
As great as it is to use Video Games to teach history, it is also fun to just ride around cause havoc. My friend Doyle just bought Red Dead Redemption. The game is Grand Theft Auto set in the Wild West. I played for about 10 minutes and was immediately hooked. Correlating with all 3d history, video games give us not only a chance to see the past, but to interact with it. Due to the lowering attention span of our youth and the increasing amount of technology in schools, I would not be surprised to see video games being used as a teaching tool 10 years from now. Educational games are already out there, let’s just bridge the gap.
All of this has gotten me wanting to play some games. I am going to dust off my copy of Age of Empires!
I found an excellent post from the Official Google Sketchup Blog that tracks the excellent work being done by Michael Hathorn, a High School Teacher from Hartford, VT. He has taught his class the basics of Google Sketchup through the recreation of their own town. Hathorn gave them the assignment of telling the history of individual buildings and recreating them for Google Earth. The Video below gets in depth on the project as well as their website.
There are a lot of great quotes that really illustrate exactly why I like to use Sketchup. Hathorn says that he will go around the town with his students and they will point out buildings they are excited to recreate. The seniors in High School think it is “cool to sketch it up.” Each student knows that they are preserving their city’s history while learning a fun, free program. One student’s quote really hit home, “I can go on any computer in the world and see something I created.” That is something you can sell to students. Their classwork is going to put into an international database. Anyone can see it. Truly empowering.
I recommend anyone interested in Sketchup in the classroom check it out. There is some words on using it with Geography classes as well as Design and Production classes.
I just read an excellent post over at http://heritage-key.com on Malcolm Jack’s Blog. Malcolm broke down the Top Ten Places to see King Tut.
King Tut or Tutankhamun (1341 BC – 1323 BC) was an Egyptian pharaoh of the 18th dynasty (ruled c.1333 BC – 1323 BC in the conventional chronology), during the period of Egyptian history known as the New Kingdom. King Tut was discovered in 1922 by archaeologist Howard Carter.
Recently it was discovered through DNA evidence that Tut was the son of Akhenaten and his sister/wife. Exciting and gross, but hey that’s Egypt! Certainly not as fun as Ramses II having over 100 children.
Malcolm’s List is as follows
1) KV62 (Actual Tomb: Valley of the Kings)
3) Luxor Museum
4) Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (Traveling Exhibit – NY)
5) Highclere Castle – Hampshire, UK
6) Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs (Traveling Exhibit -Denver)
7) Tutankhamun Exhibition Dorchester
8 ) Hull Hands on History Museum – Hull, UK
9) Las Vegas Natural History Museum
10) King Tut Virtual on Heritage Key
There are some really excellent places on here. Unfortunately as I have previously posted about…..I have not been to Egypt and have no idea when I will be able to go there. Just as much, won’t be making it to England anytime soon. A great alternative is the traveling exhibit here in the United States. I know a few people who saw it and they loved it. It is going to be at a few new places before it is gone for good.
One cool site is the new Exhibit in Las Vegas Natural History Museum. This exhibit is utilizing EON Reality’s touchscreen technology. Here are a few clips
“EON Reality, Inc., the world’s leading interactive 3D software provider, today announced that Las Vegas Natural History Museum in Las Vegas, NV, has selected EON Reality’s burial chamber of king Tutankhamun simulation and touchscreen technology for their interactive Treasures of Egypt exhibition.
Visitors have the unique opportunity to explore the burial chamber of king Tutankhamun in a 3D 21″ touchscreen environment. The Treasures of Egypt exhibit is a permanent exhibition.
“We are thrilled to be able to show the burial chamber of king Tutankhamun in a 3D environment where the visitors can interact and walk around in real-time. This gives the visitor a much better understanding of how it actually looked like inside the king’s chamber,” said Marilyn Gillespie, Executive Director at the Las Vegas Natural History Museum.”
If you want to try to see the 3d Environment from the get go, check out the recreation at Heritage Key. http://heritage-key.com/king-tut-virtual .
King Tut’s treasure trove is one of the greatest wonders our world has today. One of way or another I will see it before I die!
3d History Blog is going to be partnering up with CyArk again to help do something meaningful. On Tuesday March 16th, 2010 the Royal Kasubi Tombs in Uganda were destroyed by a horrific act of arson. For those who don’t know…from http://www.kasubitombs.org
“Situated on Kasubi hill, within Kampala, Uganda, the Kasubi Tombs site is an active religious place in the Buganda Kingdom. To the Baganda the Kabaka is the unquestioned symbol of spiritual, political, and social state of the Buganda nation. As the burial ground for the previous four Kabakas, therefore, the Kasubi Tombs is a place where the Kabaka and others in Buganda’s complex cultural hierarchy frequently carry out important centuries-old Ganda rituals.”
As one of the most active religious centers of the Kingdom the destruction of these tombs was devastating. Thankfully, a little over a year ago the team from Cyark traveled to Africa to scan and preserve this UNESCO Heritage Site. In conjunction with their team I am going to create a 3d Model to help better the process of them recreating their sacred site.
Updates will most certainly follow
Recently I had Justin Barton, Production Manager for Cyark, answer a few questions about himself and Cyark. As you might have noticed, I talk quite a bit about Cyark and have been partnering with them on some volunteer projects. I am about to jump into one of the best yet; helping to restore the Kasubi Royal Tombs in Uganda. Expect this to be a new featured portion of 3d History Blog with more short interviews to come.
What is CyArk?
CyArk is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit. We partner with service providers (surveyors, engineers, architects, etc.) and heritage professionals (site authorities like the National Park Service, university researchers, conservators, etc.) and help the two work together to provide accurate digital preservation data that can be used to create professional deliverables such as architectural drawings and structural analyses as well as public dissemination deliverables such as virtual tours, videos, and immersive panoramic photographs.
What is your mission?
Officially, our mission is:
CyArk is a non-profit entity whose mission is to digitally preserve cultural heritage sites through collecting, archiving and providing open access to data created by laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art technologies.
I am the Production Manager. I oversee aspects of field data collection as well as the production of final deliverables that meet (a) CyArk’s standards for accuracy, collection, and control, (b) acceptable content for public dissemination, and (c) any specific needs/requests outlined by our partners.
What were you doing before you joined Cyark?
I’ve been with CyArk in some capacity since 2005. Before that I was an undergraduate in Anthropology at UC Berkeley. It was there I met the former Director of R&D who was teaching a course at UCB on how to digitally capture and represent place. It was after graduating in May 2005 that I did my first field work with CyArk over the summer in Peru. Later, in December, I was officially contracted to be a member of the deliverables production staff. Even when I “left” CyArk from 2006-2008 to pursue my MA in Field Archaeology at University College London, I was still involved with CyArk. I did occasional telecommute work for website maintenance and my MA research focused on using laser scanning in heritage to monitor erosion. That research work was then contributed to the CyArk archive and again I worked with CyArk to produce many of the deliverables found on the webiste. It was in 2009, after my return from the UK, that I came back to CyArk full time and entered the position of Project Manager (which was recently transitioned into Production Manager).
You can find a lot of Justin’s work at www.cyark.org and follow him on twitter @amen_ra
UPDATE: THIS WAS MODELED BY SCOTT OLSEN
CHECK OUT http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/search?q=pmolsen&scoring=d
He used the data created by University of Arkansas
I found this via the Google Earth Blog
“In 2005, researchers from CAST used the Optech ILRIS-3D laser scanner to scan the ancient ruins of Machu Picchu in Peru. To read more about the survey, please visit the section on Machu Picchu Project Details. Three data sets from the Machu Picchu survey are available here as point clouds in the Polyworks PWK format (as IMInspect projects). Data are currently not available in polygonal mesh format. Be sure and visit the Free Data Viewer section to download the latest version of Polyworks IMView that allows you to not only view and interact with the data but also perform different types of measurements.”
I recommend everyone take a look at their site and watch this nice Youtube Video Below. GREAT JOB!
Recently my final product of Temple II at Tikal was posted at Cyark.org. As I have previously mentioned Cyark “is dedicated to the preservation of cultural heritage sites through the CyArk 3D Heritage Archive, an internet archive which is the repository for heritage site data developed through laser scanning, digital modeling, and other state-of-the-art spatial technologies.” I was lucky enough to get into contact with them last year via twitter after reading an article featuring them in Archaeology magazine. You can read more about it in the About section of this site.
This was my second project for Cyark and I much more proud of this than my last attempt, Monte Alban. The main difference between the two models was that all of my textures I used for this model were from actual pictures of Temple II at Tikal. Justin Barton and the team at Cyark has been extremely patient and let me work at my own pace.
My work flow begins with utilizing the cloud point diagrams found on Cyark’s website. Cyark gave me access to a user account where I was able to take individual measurements of all aspects of the model. The models I am working with only hold a fraction of the million cloud points taken by Cyark’s 3d scanners. 
The process is always very slow at first. After working in Sketchup and being completely used to the work flow, going back and forth between this unfamiliar 3d viewing program was a little difficult. Thanks to the MONTHS it took me to do Monte Alban, I have gotten the hang of it.
Throughout the process of measuring the features of the model, I began creating the model. Google Sketchup has my been my most used program on my computer for the last 3 years. For a free program it does some amazing things. I never had a background in CAD or 3d modeling and learning this on my own was not intimidating at all. Unlike learning 3ds Max, which I am doing right now.
Once I was finished with the base model of Temple II, I began texturing it. I took pictures of Temple II from Cyark’s website and began to slowly crop parts of the temple and resize them to fit their individual parts. This is one of my favorite parts of the modeling procress. This is where the model really begins to come alive.
After the texturing process I was able to convert the it into a .3ds file to send off to Cyark so they could add it in the 3d Viewer. Please go check it out here. I am not really sure what project they are going to have me do next. I think I might jump ahead and start to work on the Temple of Jupiter at Pompeii. Cyark is slowly filling out its ranks with new and exciting things. I hope to have a full feature on them with an few interviews as well.
Check out that picture. That is from the Sistine Chapel Virtual Tour. I found this while reading the The History Blog and might I say this is spectacular. Created by a team from the University of Villanova, they had 2 years and unprecedented access. From tons of pictures and painstaking effort an amazing 3d recreation of the Sistine Chapel is in front us of
Honestly I have never seen the inside of the chapel. I have never been to Europe and really all I have seen is the picture God reaching out, ya know the famous part at the top of the building. I try to prop up 3d History in the realm of recreation. This is what is so amazing about sites like this. This is history that is still available for us to see today. If somehow war was to hit Italy and this building would be destroyed, that would be an ungodly tragedy.
Being Catholic myself, some people try to say that you shouldn’t need huge buildings and fancy churches to worship God. Oddly enough though, stepping foot in buildings like this you really can sense the presence. The high ceilings and the beautiful artwork puts your mind in a different place. I am set to be married this summer at the Basilica in Baltimore. The Basilica has some beautiful domes that were actually designed by Latrobe. Not being a Gothic style cathedral it really is going to add something spectacular to the ceremony.
Buildings like this should be able to be preserved forever. Thanks to projects like this by the team from Villanova this is one more piece of history we can hopefully save.
This is certainly one of the places everyone needs to see, but for now the 3d tour can make due.
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The History Channel is coming out with a special Tuesday, March 30, at 8-10 p.m. EDT. Using 3d technology they hope to utilize the Shroud of Turin to recreate the face of Jesus.
For those of you who don’t know:
The Shroud of Turin (or Turin Shroud) is a linen cloth bearing the image of a man who appears to have suffered physical trauma in a manner consistent with crucifixion. It is kept in the royal chapel of the Cathedral of Saint John the Baptist in Turin, northern Italy. The origins of the shroud and its image are the subject of intense debate among scientists, theologians, historians and researchers.
(Oh no I got lazy and took that from Wikipedia. This isn’t the highest form of scholarship anyway)
From the History Channel’s press release
“As the starting point for a 3D model of Jesus, the Shroud provides an amazing advantage: the image of the man is mysteriously encoded with three-dimensional information. An astonishing discovery was made in 1976, and a property no other painting or artwork has — “The presence of 3D information encoded in a 2D image is quite unexpected, as well as unique,” says Downing. “It is as if there is an instruction set inside a picture for building a sculpture.” But can today’s technology and man’s skill in using it build this sculpture, resurrecting the man in the shroud for all to see?
The encoding of 3D information onto an ancient piece of cloth has fascinated believers and skeptics alike, not least among them John Jackson, a professor of Physics at the University of Colorado. In 1978, Jackson led a team of American scientists which was given exclusive access to the cloth for five days of intensive scientific examination. Jackson has continued his analysis of that data until the present time. In late 2009, Downing and HISTORY traveled to Jackson’s Turin Shroud Center in Colorado to learn more about the science of the cloth from the man who has studied it first-hand. But despite decades of intense scientific investigation, the mechanism underlying the mysterious encoding of this three dimensional data within the Shroud remains elusive. Against the background of Shroud history and information, HISTORY’s team is seen grappling with the faint Shroud image to wrestle out the hidden face within.”
I don’t know what to think about. To say whether the shroud could actually be Jesus’ burial cloth is a stretch to begin with. What really should be thought about here is that just the fact they can do this is awesome. Regardless if this is the face of Jesus, it could be the face of somebody. So I will be tuning in.
