Partners from NTUA participated at the virtual conference FIG e-working week 2021 20 – 25 June, with the presentation of the peer-review paper entitled “From 3D documentation to XR representation of Cultural Heritage buildings -The case of the Katholikon of St. Stephen, Meteora”.
The purpose of this paper is the multi-representation of the restoration phases of a Byzantine church. The aim is twofold; the introduction of a low-cost photogrammetric methodology for a detailed and accurate 3D geometric documentation of CH buildings, and the development of a web-based integrated 3D platform with XR functionalities. The proposed methodology is applied to the external and internal 3D reconstruction of the 16th century old church (Katholikon) of St. Stephen’s Monastery in Meteora, Greece, at two different periods: prior and after church maintenance work and restoration innervations. Close-range photogrammetry and computer vision are used for the collection of image data and the generation of dense point clouds, surface models and texture mapping. The final 3D models along with their supported metadata are integrated into an online XR viewer for a comparative temporal analysis through an immersive experience. The viewer has the following capabilities: (i) automated virtual tour on the 3D scene, (ii) points of interest, (iii) VR navigation as well as, (iv) marker-less AR based on hand pattern recognition. The 3D rendering and progressive loading, the interactive tools as well as the various visualization modes are built upon Three.js, Tween.js and AR.js libraries. The evaluation of the developed platform regarding performance and usability demonstrates the effectiveness of VR and AR in remote access, monitoring and preservation of tangible Cultural Heritage.
Authors are Charalabos Ioannidis, Sofia Soile, Argyro-Maria Boutsi, Styliani Verykokou, Fotis Bourexis and Chryssy Potsiou from the teams of Laboratory of Photogrammetry of NTUA.
Check the full paper, the presentation and the short video of the developed work
