Some of the clients have been benefits from its high resolution and automation in 360° x 180° HDR panorama capturing, while some others are using the Civetta for 3D reconstruction. While using the panoramics as an input for 3D photogrammetry modelling is still not very common, Weiss AG enables the Civetta camera to generate both fish-eye lens images and panorama at the same time. It enables users to choose the types of input they desired, based on their needs and resources.

This article will go over the general steps of creating a 3D model based on the fish-eye lens images captured by the Civetta, and all the screenshots are generated from the tutorial video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2Sik9N06p0&t=3134s

The author only used the medium accuracy setting to process the dataset to enable a faster showcase of the process, yet one can also visit this video to look at a high accuracy result of the 3D model: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iN1LkF1y6s4

The dataset used in this article/tutorial video is a series of photos of the Qing Yang Si Ku Si Cave No.165. The images are captured by a reseller and user of Weiss AG. This article will only cover the process of processing images from Civetta only, a combination method of using both Civetta and a DSLR camera will be covered in the future article/tutorial.

The Capturing

The Civetta is provided as a standardised procedure for any user with or without a photogrammetry background. Civetta is controlled by a touch-screen remote controller, the user only need to click “start” and the Civetta will automatically turn 360° to capture HDR panorama images. The default setting suits for most of the situations, including in extreme environment, therefore, the user do not need to adjust any setting in the scene.

The capturing process can be watched in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhPJM_wlByc&t=5s

1. Import Images

The Civetta will first capture and save images from different exposures as CR2 files. One can use software like ENFUSEGUI to convert these images into tiff.

User can drag images into a chuck.

2. Camera Calibration

Once the images are imported, the user should choose “tool -> camera calibration -> select “fisheye”.

Do not forget to save the setting after you change the camera calibration setting from the default “frame” to “fisheye”.

3. Masking

Select one image, and choose the selection tool, right-click, then select the scissor option, which gives you more flexibility in selecting the area to keep or discard.

After you circle the area to keep, you might realise the area are inverted, you need to make sure the area to keep is bright and the area to ignore is dark. You can right-click the selected area and choose “invert mask”.

Then you can save your work, and right-click the images, choose “export mask”. You need to remember where you saved the mask file and the file name. Then you select the rest of the images in the chuck, right-click “import mask”. Make sure you have copy-and-paste the right file name into the setting before import and make sure you are pointing at the right folder/destination when the window pops up after you click “OK”.

4. Workflow – Align Photos

In the top bar, choose “workflow -> Align Photos”. There is an option to select the level of accuracy, the user should adjust it based on its hardware limitations.

5. Workflow – Build Dense Cloud

In the top bar, choose “workflow -> Build Dense Cloud”. There is an option to select the level of accuracy, the user should adjust it based on its hardware limitations.

6. Workflow – Build Mesh

In the top bar, choose “workflow -> Build Mesh”. There is an option to select the level of accuracy, the user should adjust it based on its hardware limitations. One should also check its computer memory to make sure the computer has enough memory to process this step.

7. Workflow – Build Texture

In the top bar, choose “workflow -> Build Texture”. There is an option to select the level of accuracy, the user should adjust it based on its hardware limitations. One should also check its computer memory to make sure the computer has enough memory to process this step.

Visit us at www.weiss-ag.com if you are interested in knowing more about our Civetta.

Article written by Christiane Zhao: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiane-zhao-a073b4130/

1. Consider the limits of your team or your hardware

It is essential to check whether your 3D photogrammetry camera can operate in an extreme environment or not. For example, Civetta, the 230 megapixels HDR panorama camera, is recommended to perform between -10°C to 50°C temperature zone, with a humidity of 85% or less. The users or operation team can also contact the hardware provider to consult whether their hardware is suitable under some circumstances. Commonly, the camera’s battery life might be affected in an extreme temperature environment. Therefore, we usually recommend using an extra battery to support their 3D photogrammetry camera operation. To best deal with clients with special needs, Civetta can function in real-time while charging. Weiss AG can also provide customisation if clients require a larger internal battery for their Civetta. Our users reported that it is always challenging to find a place to recharge their device, as these rural areas or difficult to reach places are always the ones with a great demand for digitalisation. When a customer decided to purchase a 3D photogrammetry camera, all these details might not be clearly stated in their technical sheet or website. You can always search for case studies or 3D photogrammetry results to confirm its real adaptability.

An essential aspect to consider is human resources, such as how many staffs might need to participate in this project, their health status and the amount of work to be complete. Although it is difficult to forecast and plan when one does not have too much experience with photogrammetry capturing job, it is always possible to ask for advice from users using the same hardware. It is crucial to keep in mind that the 3D photogrammetry camera you have chosen can critically affect your work time and work quality. However, in other words, it also means that you can still calculate the amount of work for your project based on the operability of your camera. Therefore, you will need to know the minimum accuracy you would like to achieve for your project, as it will determine how closely you align with each photo. A general photogrammetry theory, the more valid photos we used as an input, the more accurate the model could be(yet each camera has its limit, so choosing a good camera is important). For example, the Civetta can automatically capture one HDR panorama image(360*180°) within 40 seconds, and you can calculate the time of setting up the camera or moving in-between spots. Thus you can figure out how much time you or your team would need to complete the entire project.

Another core consideration for human resources is how challenging your environment is and how can it negatively affect one’s performance. For example, many of our users had the experience of walking(or climbing) in the desert while carrying the Civetta, tripod, computer and many other pieces of equipment. It is common for them to work for long hours in the desert without access to the Internet, store or charging station. The natural environment and physical limitation can be the major factor that affects the actual capturing time, and some might not include these when planning the capturing time. One of our clients once uses the Civetta to capture an underground heritage in a wet and dark condition. To avoid the reflective surface caused by the wetness, they carefully choose a specific time frame for operation.

Finding a good combination of hardware and human resources is significant for you to operate in an extreme environment successfully, not just for efficiency but also for safety consideration.

2. Avoid the avoidable issues in photogrammetry

The photogrammetry technique has its strength and limitation. For example, it can capture accurate(real vector) colour point clouds with surface and texture information, which can never be achieved by a laser scanner. Yet, you might also need to be aware that the photogrammetry method has difficulties in processing images of an object with pure black or white, reflective or transparent surfaces. It could also bring great challenges for those who want to capture 3D models on top of a snow mountain(yet our technical team has achieved it before in a temple digitalisation project!) Therefore, you might need to find ways to overcome some of these limitations in photogrammetry, such as using a spray(not appliable in many situations), sticker, calibration tags or any label to help your computer algorithm recognise the object.

Given the environment you observed, one might use some supportive tools to enable a better-capturing experience and quality. For example, you might need to use some extra lighting for the underground. In such a case, one might need to revise its 3D photogrammetry capturing procedures again to avoid making mistakes — do not move the light; otherwise, the 3D model can never be formed. One might also want to consider using other tools, such as a tripod or even a robot.

3. Prevent data loss and cover all spots

It will be a nightmare if one found out their data are all gone due to human errors. Set up a straightforward procedure and make sure you have all the data transferred quickly to another device or hard drive after a certain period. Users can simply plug in their Civetta with their laptop with a USB 3.0 provided and transfer all the images captured within minutes. The capturing team can also choose to upload their raw image assets into a cloud, like the Visual Asset Management System VAM2. It allows the data processing team to start work with the data simultaneously with the capturing group. Thus, a processed 3D coloured point cloud or mesh can be uploaded and viewed directly on a web browser by clients or third parties.

It is common that you will only have one chance to capture data for your project in these extreme environments, as these are difficult to reach, require additional approval, costly, or simply cannot access without the client’s or institution’s permissions. Therefore, it is always essential to have a quick walk-through of the environment and understand the scene or building for capturing before planning. If you are not permitted to access the given region, you can ask the local staffs or department to send you some photographs, maps or CAD for you to use as a reference for planning. When selecting the capturing spot, try to choose a stable position to avoid shaking, which can cause errors in the data captured.

Although photogrammetry enables you to re-capture the missing part for processing, the best way to avoid doing it is to plan carefully and choose all the capturing spots before the capturing process. For instance, we recommend our user to set up each Civetta capturing spot 5-10 meters away from each other while making sure the new spot can see the old capturing spot with human eyes. Given this rule, it becomes much easier to set up the plan and avoid missing data, even for those who have no experience in photogrammetry.

Lastly, organising your captured data is a critical aspect to consider, especially in a large-scale project. Sorting, grouping and labelling your data and other assets can directly affect the quality of the digital twins.

4. Consider a combination of methods

In some cases, you might need to consider using a combination of methods to capture data for 3D reconstruction. A Civetta itself usually produce a very high-quality 3D result. Yet, if you might want greater accuracy for a particular area or object, you might want to use the Civetta with I-Detic, DSLR, lidar, laser or other devices. The drone is also considered a good option as it helps the 3D reconstruction algorithm better recognise each panorama image’s relationships. Commonly, you might need people(or team) from different specialities to operate these devices. Good communication and a clear plan are always the core for a multidisciplinary team.

Suppose one would like to better manage all different sources of data they collected for the scene. In that case, they might want to consider using the Visual Asset Management VAM2 system to store the captured data and showcase the post-processing result. Notes that the VAM2 enables you to showcase and manage all types of assets via a single web-browser. You can still benefit from VAM2 if you have no access to the Internet. The VAM2 provide a stand-alone version specifically for users who have no Internet access or have high-security requirements.

5. Clear communication with the local staffs or responsible person

Local staffs are usually the only support one could get when capturing data in an extreme environment. They are experienced, familiar with the environment, and know what to do to make your work easier. It is important to have someone in the team clearly explain what one expected to do during the entire capturing process, how long it will take and what you would like to avoid. No one wants any surprises in an extreme environment, same for the local staffs. In some circumstances, one might even need to make sure their staffs are trained with safety instruction.

Feel free to let us know your thoughts about this topic. What are your tips for 3D photogrammetry data capturing in an extreme environment?

Author: Christiane Zhao

Due to the COVID-19 restriction, many education facilities have closed and moved the entire teaching and learning experience online. Yet, many schools and universities are finding new ways to help their students, staff, and visitors walk into their buildings or education spaces online. 360° digital twins and 3D models became the most straightforward replication for viewers to generate direct experience while prohibited from entering the school space. Creating a virtual, living digital portfolio for school and university also unleashed a greater potential for virtual learning, virtual conference, virtual training or even virtual community. Once a virtual format of the school or university was created, people can also quickly move beyond the idea of virtual reality to mixed reality and augmented reality —- in which all of these has been applied in education to a certain extent even before the pandemic.

Here are some of the questions one will have when we consider creating digital twins for educational space.

1. What does the “digital twin of school” means?

A digital twin is the virtual representation of a physical object (or a system). It captures real-time data and other sources to enable learning, reasoning and dynamically re-calibrating for improved decision making(ref). Therefore, producing a digital twin of school does not only limited to taking photos or capturing 3D model of the school region but also using these data along with other materials, like recording, reports, historical photos, audios, to represent the figure of the school in a virtual format. The digital twin of a physical property should also include the measurement data and other physical information, and it is the key to classify a virtual tour as an actual digital twin. The digital twin of the school does not only act as an important piece of documentation but also enable better decision-making for all stakeholders in their focus areas. It will be discussed in detail in the following sections.

2. What can we do with the 360 virtual reality tour?

The first thing to notice when answering this question is that there are different types/quality of 360 VR tour. You can either choose a RICOH 360 camera (with a thousand pixels) or choose a professional camera like the Civetta (with 230 megapixels). The more precise the camera, the more valid data it captured for different purposes beyond viewing.

Given a virtual reality tour, visitors can explore in 360-degrees and move in-between spaces. Each virtual reality tour can be made of a combination of 360 panorama images, where all of them are connected via URLs or hot spots. It simulated a real walking experience, while virtually, via mouse and image viewers. But of course, there are a lot more you can do with a virtual tour. Many virtual reality viewers commonly enable one to attach additional images, videos, and documents to the tour, like Matterport or VAM2.

3. How to explore the enormous potential of digital twins?

A digital file will never be a digital twin if one cannot connect it with another digital file to create real meaning and influence the workflow or decision-making process. Therefore, connecting the 360 virtual tours to other related documents or files is the first step to unleash the digital education facility’s potential. The education entity can also consider collaborating with stakeholders with different backgrounds, which can maximize its existing digital twins.

Given the functionalities explained in the last question, a digital twin like a virtual reality tour can become the story-line to connect all different types of digital assets together in a logical way.

School and university can use 360 VR tour for marketing, storytelling or engagement purposes. One can explore the education facility and discover some related stories or news materials that can best represent its culture or history.

One can also connect the virtual reality tour with class materials to create a virtual classroom. It comes with the idea of mixed reality or argumental reality. Teacher or instructor can simply benefit from hardware like Blackmagic ATEM, and integrate their own figures into a virtual environment. It can improve the learning experience. It also means instructors can simulate a school environment and act like they are standing in a classroom.

Another question might come along: Why would one need to spend money to produce a virtual tour or 3D model when we already can use Zoom to simulate a fake background? Several points come along, one thing is a 360 panorama background enable the user to walk around the entire scene, yet a fake zoom background cannot do it. Another point is that with 360 HDR images as background, you have much greater freedom in adjusting the background image’s lighting. (HDRI- High Dynamic Range Image) An issue with mixed reality is the difficulty of adjusting the lighting of the integrated figure and the background to make them look similar so one can simulate a viewing experience that makes the viewer’s brain believe it is real.

4. What can the university/education entity get from investing in its digital twins?

• Enable a dynamic record of school/university’s history goes beyond building’s appearances and geographical location and the building’s measurement data, related documents, supportive sources, and else more.
• Better marketing and storytelling experience for upcoming students and parents, especially during/post-covid era.
• Better management of its physical assets.
• Create a virtual engagement space for students and staffs.
• Enable digital planning, maintenance and safety inspection.
• Advanced and upfront school/university culture in adopting new technologies.

5. What are some of the successful examples?

There is no other visual asset management platform that can produce comprehensive and reliable digital twins like VAM2. Many schools in the United States have commonly used VAM2 for safety inspection and emergency response. With the entire school space digitalized with Civetta to produce 360-degrees HDR panorama(VR) and 3D model, VAM2 helps connect all different files with these visual files.

Schools can further use these precise and information-rich images and 3D file for management, maintenance, resource planning; they also collaborate with government facilities like the police station to plan for quick responses in cases like tourist attack or natural disasters.

When the pandemic comes into place, schools and universities are forced to close, and the classroom turns virtually. It is also where the VAM2 portfolio takes places, enabling the teacher to simulate a real-life 360-degree classroom background with Mixed Reality.

6. How can a virtual facility(digital twins) integrate into the existing learning experience?

Once the connections between the virtual tour/3D model with other types of assets are clearly established, it is not difficult to integrate the digital twin of a school into its existing learning experience. For instance, here are some examples.

1. Documentation and maintenance

clients from all industries come to Weiss AG for Civetta, and VAM2 solutions are mainly because they are looking for precise measurement for documentation and maintenance of the building. It is getting more critical to achieving properties management with a distance across many groups via Weiss AG’s solutions. It is the same for school and university, especially for many types of properties in many campus regions. With VAM2, schools and universities can combine their VR, 3D models, live web-cam, and many other documents and file sources in one platform. With periodically tracking, the maintenance history has been recorded with words and captured with media. It also helps with maintenance budget planning, construction planning, staff management and more.

2. Information exchange and communication

Visual Asset Management platform like VAM2 is more than just a cloud/local space where stored all types of resources. Still, a powerful source to help with direct communication and references. With buildings or scenes turns digital twins, one can directly use the digital twin as a reference to visually point out a broken door or window directly on a VR scene in their email. This method has already been commonly used in the oil&gas and aviation industries, which is also growing famous in university and retail management. If one uses a cloud or SaaS version of the VAM2, they can also benefit from real-time updates, where two parties in different areas have access to the same version of the file.

3. Virtual e-learning with Mixed Reality

With the virtual reality created by a high-resolution panorama camera like the Civetta, instructors can benefit from a high resolution 360*180 background images in mixed reality teaching. Instructors can walk around in a green screen studio while pretending it is in a classroom, lab, playground or more. It gives students a realistic feeling in an online course. Everything the school need is a single web-browser, as VAM2 enables a user to direct access to all the files via a browser, with no installation needed.

7. What are some of the cost of generating digital twins for school?

– Cost & time of data capturing

– Time, human resources and hardware for data processing or sorting (3D model)

– Purchase VAM2 licence or SaaS subscription services

Other invisible costs involve the time and energy to retrieve resources from other stakeholders and parties to complete a visual asset management portfolio for the school or university.

8. How to manage all the digital contents created?

As explained in the previous article, producing a school or university’s digital twin is not just capturing all the scenes and producing a virtual tour, but much more than that. Managing all the related digital content is the first step before connecting them up logically and paint a full picture of decision making in the future. Like database management, you might need to consider how to categorize them and name them to make them accessible and searchable. Besides, you can also use hotspot or URLs to connect any type of assets in VAM2.

Unlike Matterport or other visualization tools, VAM2 goes beyond just simply adding a button on your 360 or 3D model; but enables you to change its symbol, colour, add a description to the hot spots, and much more.

It is also essential to consider the accessibility and documentation of your digital management platform(DAM) to make sure the assets are well-protected or managed. It also extended beyond the idea of the virtual tour. With VAM2, you can decide which user will be editor, administrator or viewer only. Each level has different authorities and access rights. With VAM2, it will not automatically delete any file when you uploaded a new file with the same name. This protective system has been commonly used by Weiss AG’s other clients like Shell, BP, FBI and more.

9. What are some of the factors to consider before producing digital twins for your space?

Here are a few questions the school or education entity can consider before producing a digital twin.

– What is the digital twin used for?

For marketing, for fun, for emergency measures, for documentation or digital management? Based on this question’s answer, the school can be very certain which kind of equipment or team they will recruit for digitalization. It can be as cheap as an Apple scan or as expensive as Civetta, Z+F or more.

– What are some of the other contents that the school can collect to produce a digital twin?

Again, a digital twin is not just about scanning and digitalizing the building. There are also other documents that the admin team can collect, students, parents or other stakeholders. It can help list out these digital assets, collect them and upload them into the same visual asset management platform along with the virtual tour or 3D models.

– Do you expect to use the digital twins in the long term?

If yes, it is essential to find at least one staff or even a team to actively manage the digital assets in VAM2, regularly update it, and encourage other participants to share new materials with the admin to ensure the VAM2 portfolio of your school is valid. If there is a recent renovation or new building, one can also consider recruit a scanning team or use the Civetta to scan the new scene and upload it to the VAM2 for comparison and updates. With the SaaS subscription version of the VAM2, school and university do not need to worry about managing the cloud space or any hardware. Still, they only need simple access to any web-browser to achieve digital asset management.

10. Why accurate digital twins portfolio is also essential for school and university?

Even before the pandemic, many schools already implement the Visual Asset Management Platform (VAM2) for their digital twin portfolio. VAM2 has also been a great example that was commonly addressed in NBC News in the US. Accurate digital twins, including reliable measurement data and geographic information, can be used beyond the scope of marketing and education and for building maintenance, reconstruction, safety management, emergency response, and law enforcement.

Author: Christiane Zhao

Author: Christiane Zhao, Marketing Specialist
Organisations involved: Agisoft, Weiss AG
Hardware used: Civetta 360° (Weiss AG), Phantom 3 Professional (DJI)
Software used: Metashape (Agisoft), CivettaUtility (Weiss AG)

Creating point clouds, textured meshed models and orthophotos with Weiss AG Civetta -230 megapixels 360° HDR camera

Introduction

The Civetta is an automated 360° HDR (High Dynamic Range) capturing system, that produces 360° x 180° images with 230 megapixels resolution and a 32 bit (HDR) colour depth, making it the perfect tool for photogrammetry and 3D reconstruction applications. The Civetta is used across a wide range of industries and organisations to capture high precision calibrated 360° full-spherical images.

Developed by Weiss AG in Germany now available in the 5^th version, Civettas all around the world are in daily use at clients like Shell, ATF, BP, Guardia civil, FBI, Nvidia, BMW and many more.

The system was designed to be absolutely reliable in also extreme environmental and light conditions.

The power of working with calibrated 360° images from the Civetta is that the location is captured once and can be converted to 6 different results:

Process with the CivettaUtility software:

1. Capture HDR images with 230 MPixel and 32 bit colour depth
2. Perform tonal compression to cover the light and the dark areas in one 8bit image
3. Take measurements in m or ft in 360° stereo pairs without further calibration

Process with the Metashape software:

1. Create coloured point clouds (8 bit, 32 bit)
2. Create textured 3D models (8bit, 32 bit)
3. Create orthophotos (8bit, 32 bit)

The excellent image quality and the prior calibration make the output of the Civetta the perfect basis for 3D reconstruction.

The aim of this report is to use HDR panorama images from this high precision camera, and process them with Agisoft Metashape to create a measurable 3D point cloud for documentation and reconstruction. This study shows that the Civetta is one of the most accurate and simple capturing devices to use for highly automated point cloud generation.

Content

01. Background
02. Tools used/Software used
03. Our tasks
04. Building/region
05. Challenges
06. Photo capture
07. Camera settings
08. Hour worked: Field hour/ office hours
09. General workflow
10. Deliverable
11. Conclusion
12. Acknowledgement

01. Background

This study aims to showcase and analyze Civetta’s standardized workflow to achieve a high-quality digital twin production in combination with Agisoft Metashape.

The Civetta automatically records a 230 MPixel HDR 360° within 40 seconds, with a focus area of 0.3 m / 1 ft to infinity. Agisoft were the first software developer who integrated the reconstruction functionality from 360° images in their software, based on the Civetta images provided by Weiss AG. The combination of Civetta with Metashape can provide accurate and reliable 3D point clouds for clients in oil & gas, aviation, cultural heritage, entertainment, e-training, law enforcement and more.

02. Tools / Software used

Hardware: Civetta from Weiss AG, DJI Phantom 3 Professional

Software: CivettaUtility (comes with the purchase of Civetta), Agisoft Metashape 2020

Install Agisoft Metashape : Agisoft installer

03. Our tasks

A long-term user of Weiss AG technologies has been hired to record a district of a rural area. The 3D point clouds and HDR panorama images were then used for different departments in the documentation, construction planning, urban planning and digital reconstruction. The 360° image pairs and the 3D point cloud are provided on VAM2, a web-platform to enable the end-user to investigate and take measurements of streets, doors, windows, walls and other relevant objects in the scene.

04. Building / region

– Region: Long Hu Gu Zhai, Chao Zhou, Guangdong Province, China

– Streets: The total length of all streets covered in this project is 3 KM in total. It includes seven main streets (1.5KM) and three side streets (1.5KM). There are 154 panorama pairs captured by the Civetta.

– Building: 1 ancient temple (area covered 45*57m), there are 58 panorama pairs captured by the Civetta.

05. Challenges

– 3D documentation and measurement are difficult as there are passengers, bikes and other factors disrupt the static photo capturing of the scenes.

– Difficulties in capturing the street and building of the area, due to parked vehicles, tables and other objects might block the vision.

– Lighting variance, the region was having high sun exposure with many dark areas in holes and under the roofs

– Drafters can only collect a certain amount of data and dimensions on each trip.

06. Photo capture

With the photogrammetry method, here are a few key points to address if you are considering using panorama images to produce 3D models:

1. The higher the number of photos captured, the more redundancies occur with object point overlaps. Ensure any zone has been captured by the Civetta from at least two spots. Most practical is a capture from an upper and a lower position what can be easily realised with the calibrated measurement tripod that comes with every Civetta.

2. As 360° images cover every direction the registration of 360° one to each other is very fast and accurate.

3. Using the Civetta capturing the full sphere the number of image-captures on-site is heavily reduced. It also minimized the profession and experience required for the staff in the capturing process as it is nearly impossible to forget a view.

07. Hours worked

Some of our clients work alone some work in teams of two whereas one mainly takes care to keep the area clear of people and vehicles.

Field Hours: 3 days capturing for 2 persons to capture ten streets and one building

For one street: The staff captured approximate between 17 and 20 image pairs with the Civetta, along with 100 photos captured by the drone to capture the roof topside only. Each street requires approximately one hour to capture all the data.

For the ancient temple:The staff captured 58 image pairs with the Civetta, along with 140 photos captured by the drone at the same time to cover the roofsides, not visible from the ground. The entire field work was done in 6 hours.

Office Hours, -download and processing of the 360° images: Back in the office the 212 image pairs were downloaded from the Civetta, and the backup storage. As the Civetta has an internal storage for about 800 captures only one download was necessary on location.

Back in the office the 212 image pairs were downloaded from the Civetta, and the backup storage. As the Civetta has an internal storage for about 800 captures only one download was necessary on location.

Downloading pre-processing and processing are fully automated by utilizing CivettaUtility and does not require human monitoring.

On a Standard PC (e.a.: i7, 16 GB RAM, SSD, USB 3) the download, pre-processing and post-processing steps, are ready in about 90 second per 360° end-result.

For the streets:

Agisoft Metashape requires 3 hours to process data from each street, with density points as the final output (requested by the clients). The project produced 13 point clouds; each point cloud contains more than 3 hundred millions data points.

For the ancient temple:

Agisoft Metashape requires 8 hours to process its 3D point clouds.

08. General workflow

For the 360 Panoramic Photogrammetry technique, the Civetta was positioned to have the best coverage of the structures. Typically, the distance between each measurement pair is between 5-10 meters. Civetta always acquires HDR images to cover very bright and very dark areas in a scene. The project requires capturing measurable data for 3D models and panorama images, so the panorama images were acquired by the Civetta from the same spot from the upper and lower positions.

The tripod is pre-calibrated to ensure an exact 600 mm distance between upper and lower position. It means you can add measurement values to the point cloud by adding 600 mm in the distance field when processing it with Agisoft Metashape. In addition you can take measurements in the 360° images without further calibration when working with VAM2.

The total time of 212 panorama pairs (with measurement data) captured was around 16 hours, which included setting up the camera, and the automatic capturing process operated by the Civetta itself at each spot. It does not include transportation time and the time waiting for passengers to leave the area. As a photogrammetry method, it requires to secure 60% and more overlap between the panorama images captured from different spots.

The data processing and registration were conducted using Agisoft Metashape, a high-quality software product for photogrammetric processing of digital images and generating 3D spatial data. Before uploading the photos, users can use the mask function in Metashape to cut out the bottom tripod area of the 360° images. After importing all the panorama images into Agisoft Metashape, users can input the distance values into Agisoft for a pair of panorama images captured on the same spot. Users shall assign proper camera type, a Spherical camera, for the corresponding image groups in the Camera Calibration Dialog of the Tool Menu. It goes through the general workflow of data processing, including aligning photos, building dense point clouds, mesh, texture, tiled model, digital elevation model, and export result. The result can be a sparse point cloud in the viewer with the camera positions’ position estimations indicated as bubbles.

09. Deliverables

10. Conclusion

Civetta has produced accurate colored point clouds with data processed by Agisoft Metashape. In the past 12 years, Weiss AG’s Civetta has been used by a wide range of professionals across different industries, including but not limited to Oil & Gas, Aviation, Cultural Heritage, Factory Planning/Maintenance/Re-production, as well as those in the Museum & Galleries, Gaming, and Movie industries. Within only one button on the hardware’s body, it is easy to use with almost no prerequisites on the person who uses it.

The combination of Agisoft Metashape and Civetta can help you with:

● Detailed documentation with fast scanning time
● Quality point cloud data and panorama images for reconstruction, rendering, and modeling
● A full pack of assets for digital management, maintenance, and virtual training

11. Acknowledgment

Weiss AG has been in the field of photogrammetry for more than 12 years; ever since then, Weiss AG and its users have been a group of users of the Agisoft Metashape Software to produce stunning results for a variety of purposes in their professional sectors. We sincerely appreciated Agisoft Metashape for supporting panorama images in 3D model construction, and for providing essential support and guidance for this study.

Author: Christiane Zhao, Marketing Specialist
Date: 11th January 2021

Showcase examples and case studies

3D models and illustrations are always attractive to people, no matter whether they work in the industry or not. Almost everyone acknowledges the importance of showcasing their successful examples to their audiences. For those who provide 3D scanners and software, it is essential to address the strengths of their products through the final result. Your example also helps you to make your company’s brand more identifiable and outlines the difference with others. With specific examples, you can put your clients in the shoes you customized for them. It can be a video recording of the 3D models, preparation or working diary, or even test examples you just tried out during your free time. These examples help to create an adequate connection between your scanners/hardware/software with the final result, so clients will get a clear understanding of what they will be expected when they purchase your products. 

Case studies are also significantly important, as it showcases the entire workflow as well as your company’s philosophy throughout the whole story. Suppose you even get authorization from your previous clients or partners. In that case, you can include their names in the story line as a character, and explain to your audiences why your involvement makes a significant difference that others cannot. 

Advice N0.2

Not just photos, but also videos and 3D visualization platforms

No matter if you are a service or product provider, you are aware that you are working in the 3D tech industries, right? There is no doubt that you will be the first one who takes advantage of 3D visualization, in all aspects. If your clients can benefit from using your technology, you can do as well. Photos are great if you would like to showcase all these details or the overall structure of the 3D models, but that is far more than enough. 

You shall consider using specific platforms to record your 3D point clouds, or even share it, such as VAM2. From my previous experience, both the LinkedIn audiences and our clients love to watch their 3D models as they are playing a game. With some web-browser based platforms (like VAM2), you can simply use your mouse and keyboard to move around and view 3D models regardless of file size or the device. Audiences always want more than just a photo, with an active 3D model online, the entire product story line will be completed. 

Advice No.3

Connect your products with the final result

“What does it mean to me if I make a purchase?”

Customers usually tend to balance between their expected result and the amount of money they invested. When it comes to professional 3D scanners, the market does favor not only those that are popular but also those with numbers and significant results. There are many different ways for you to connect your product/service with the final result, and it depends on the target audiences you are focusing on. For scanner providers, the target audience is very diverse, and obviously, they have different needs and requirements. Everyone loves an easy-to-use product with good results, so address that!

Advice No.4

Address visualization possibilities with your 3D models

There are so many things that a 3D model can achieve, no matter if it is a high precision point cloud or a quick, cheap mesh. Clients in the different levels of the market might also use the 3D model differently. An engineer might look for a high precision 3D RGB point cloud that can visualize a 0.03mm crack in a tunnel, yet an art collector will need a 6MB 3D point cloud that can quickly be loaded to showcase its gallery and collections. 

Even though our clients are usually the one who use the 3D models, it is also interesting to know that not everyone knows how to use their 3D assets wisely. A 3D marketer needs to showcase the enormous possibilities of these 3D assets, such as improving shopping experience; speed up workflow; visualize assets; enrich entertainment. This will become clearer if you see this task as gold-digging ——- finding the shiny part within the sand. After all, everyone will be impressed by the power of storytelling.

Advice No. 5

Webinar and live-streaming will make your brand alive.

Online events such as webinar and live-streaming became even more important in the pandemic. Up to now, there is still nothing that can replace the feeling of seeing a person’s face. Webinars do not only enable you to do a talk online but also enables you to showcase a specific topic in any form you like to a group of potential users. It involves some interaction as well, one can comment or share, and another one can ask and answer questions. Things became alive, and more importantly, these chat moments can be prolonged with the shares, likes and comments on the Internet. 

Advice No.6

Listen to feedback, not just the number of likes.

In social media marketing, some figures are easy to draw you or your boss’s attention away, such as the number of likes, shares, comments or followers. There is no doubt that you can never do real social marketing if you don’t keep these figures growing, but never forget the purpose of why you are doing social marketing here —– to enable your company and your clients to get to know each other, and make the brand alive. Surprise or not, social marketing channels are excellent places for you to reach out to a group of special audiences that might not come across to your business in daily activities, yet one of them might be your future clients as well. Through sharing useful news, case studies, updates, or examples, each post you created provides a related topic for your online community to discuss with. Thus, you can see some useful feedback as time goes by. These feedbacks might not be as obvious as you thought, but you will end up realizing what are some points that you did not explain or highlight, which further draw confusions to readers. Or else, which functionality really hit the pain spot of your clients. 

Advice No.7

Seek for collaboration and partnerships with other 3D Tech providers

Same as any other tech sectors, 3D-tech industries are a combination of different providers and users. Over the entire tech journey of your clients, it is often that it involves using several hardware and software to produce the desired outcomes. Finding your companions to target the right group of audiences will benefit both parties, you and the other provider as well. Considering both of you are building upon each other’s brands, it became easier for you to sell your product to a mature group of users. In return, you can also promote your partner’s product and services to those long-term users to speed up their workflow. 

Advice No.8

Think creatively, how can you help?

Providing a 3D solution is never just giving out a quality 3D model but much more than that. Nowadays, 3D assets are easier to access; some even treat it the same as other traditional digital assets, such as photo, video, audio or documentation. Understanding what role your 3D assets play in your client’s workflow can make a significant difference. To show your compassion and professional knowledge in this, you can use these 3D assets as part of the story. For instance, engineers who are working in the oil rig platform are looking for a fast, easy-to-use but also safe scanner. Therefore I will recommend using the Civetta. But what makes this scanner special? Well, we can instantly upload all the panorama images to the VAM2, so then people in the onshore center can also visualize the result on the same day! That is the main point that makes both onshore and offshore engineers favor Weiss AG’s 3D solution. In other words, try to integrate your 3D solutions to your client’s workflow in a reasonable but also personalized way.

Advice No.9

Details, details, details

In many cases, it is the details that are able to make several different functions to link together and finally be useful at work. It is excellent if you are a person that really cares about the details of your products but also bear in mind that your clients will be even more confused if you spend hours to explain the design and purpose of each component. Other than that, showing to them how these details can end up making them the critical change makers to achieve clients’ requirements. Treat these detail designs as a dessert, not the main. 

Advice No.10

Work with a team, don’t fight alone.

Almost everyone knows the importance of team work when promoting your company’s brand to the market. It does involve not only posting or design, but also a deep understanding of your client’s behaviors, workflow, as well as a bit of technological theory and practices (if you meant to work in the 3D industry). If you are starting marketing like me, as an individual without a computer science background, feel free to keep your questions in mind and try to understand your hardware/software from your clients’ perspective, as well as understand the reason why things function in such way. There is always a reason when it comes to tech. 

Conclusion

I wish these 10 pieces of advice I provided are useful for you and your team. Surprise or not, many 3D technology companies do not even do any marketing in the space. As you know, marketing is never easy. However, with the development of technology, you can do a lot more than you once can, not just reaching the guy on the other side of the table. Feel free to send me a message or email me if you would like to share your piece of advice about marketing in the 3D Tech space. 

Author: Christiane Zhao

What is photogrammetry?

Photogrammetry is nearly as old as photography itself. Photogrammetry is a technique for capturing 3D photographs and assembling them into 3D models. A photogrammetry scanner can be a phone, camera or a professional high precision scanner, like Civetta.

1.    Cultural Heritage

In the past years, 3D photogrammetry scanning, visualization, and reconstruction became more popular in cultural heritage. Cultural heritage faces challenges such as natural disaster, natural ageing, destruction, armed conflicts and more. Given the travel restriction due to the coronavirus pandemic, more attention and public funding are going towards digitalization. Photogrammetry remains the best way to produce a highly precise digital twin with rich details, textures, lighting and colors. With the scanned data and 3D models, professionals can reconstruct a realistic media form for the public and academic to access. The pandemic also gave the public an entirely new opportunity to adopt a new way to engage with our historical places and heritage, both visually and spiritually.

#For these two photos, visualization and animation are made with #NUBIGON

3D Models can do a lot more than just as a digital twin of the physical heritage, but act as a map of a project —- heritage-related projects in the documentation, reconstruction, maintenance or curation. With hyperlinks, users can connect all digital assets to a specific location or even point of a 3D point clouds model.

Check out this video

2.    Museums & Art Galleries

Museums and art galleries have tasted the sweets and bitters throughout the entire 2020. Under more tremendous financial pressures and barriers to visits, museums and galleries finally decided to embrace new media and 3D technology to transform their physical presents to virtual. These museum & gallery’ experts widely use 3D photogrammetry technology to capture and document their exhibition halls and collections. Digital identity has been created not just for the museum but also for a single piece of their collection — these are later used as the raw materials for virtual tour, virtual management, and virtual curation.

Check out this video example of virtual curation

Check out this video example for virtual exhibition

3.    News & Journalism

3D photogrammetry method enables an entirely new way for the reader to explore a real environment given by the journalists, yet virtually. Since late 2019, the New York Times’ team has researched practically and implies photogrammetry for their Internet readers to interact with a 3D point cloud city block while reading a related article explaining the story and details. The team planned to use photogrammetry to report issues among neighborhoods and investigative reporting and crime-scene analysis. 

The way of interaction has been simplified to the scrolling of the mouse in an article page, yet the result is stunning. Two great existing examples have released the enormous possibilities of implying such a capture technology on these traditional online news feed.

The first example is a series of walks around town experience for the Chinatown in New York. When you are scrolling down a street in Chinatowns, frames of old photos will pump up on the street for comparison. Viewers can pay attention to the details and wander through a story non-linearity in a street, block, or even the entire city region. All of these can be done with photogrammetry. Only it can perfectly show the vibrant colors, textures or even the ever-changing light conditions of the space.

NY Times Example: NY Times Chinatown, Resilent and Proud

Another example is a 3D reconstructing journalistic scene made by the Research & Development team in the New York Times. Also, only with clicking and scrolling, you can visually explore the 360-degrees of an artists’ loft in Rhode Island. With your mouse keep scrolling down, the room’s objects will become more in detailed and shaped. It has indirectly showcased to any reader the logic behind photogrammetry —– the more usable photos you took about an object from all angles, the more accurate and complete your 3D models will be. The 360 VR experience of a 3D model is implanted in a traditional article setting, which is a strong statement of embracing 3D photogrammetry technology in future journalism.

NY Times Example:

Reconstructing Journalistic Scenes in 3D

Reconstructing Journalistic Scenes in 3D

4.    Oil & Gas Industries

Oil and Gas industries are the pioneers in using 3D photogrammetry, especially for offshore platform documentation and maintenance. While laser scanning has been used for accurate BIM documentation, photogrammetry can visualize detailed details that cannot be captured by laser scanning, such as drainage patterns, vegetation changes, color changes, soil anomalies, and formational outcroppings and more. 3D mapping (with photogrammetry scanner like the Civetta) can quickly and comprehensively obtain the entire offshore platform’s health status. These visualized data, including 360 panorama images and 3D models, can be visually managed and notes, documents, audio, and videos before sent to the onshore office. During the pandemic, traveling became significantly difficult, and the risk of infection is also high among offshore platforms. 3D photogrammetry can quickly capture all the essential details and support engineers and management team to make decisions based on virtual details but not just a single photo or notes.

See example here: https://share.weiss-ag.com/gasandoil/

5.    E-commerce & Online Shopping

The pandemic forced a big push to an online e-commerce store, where the customers are spending a greater amount of time browsing and shopping online. 3D photogrammetry has produced 360-degrees VR photo series and 3D models for customers to closely view and even interact with these products they are about to shop. Researches also show videos, VR and 3D models bring more extraordinary shopping experience for customers, and these new media are expected to get more involved in the e-commerce space. Given some automatic product capturing machine, a visual asset management platform can automatically store and distribute product portfolios.

Check here for examples of VAM2 connected with PhotoRobot: VAM2 release notes/

6.    Tourism

Certainly, 2020/21 has and is a disastrous year for the tourism industry: cancelled flights, restriction on border entry and closure of public areas. Some see it as an opportunity for growth for smart tourism and virtual tourism. Quick and precise capture of 360 panorama images, videos, and 3D point clouds enable a more comprehensive range of internet citizens to explore the space. 3D photogrammetry technology combined with other technology, such as digital mapping, creates a more digitally accessible experience, with a broader audience, more significant interaction and larger scales.

7.    Civil Construction & Architecture

While laser scanning is dominating the construction field, the industry has still foreseen the 3D photogrammetry technique’s unique potential. Photogrammetry and photogrammetric measurements have been used for material testing and measurements in civil engineering. 

8.    Marketing & Advertisement

3D models and 360 panorama images are more likely to be adopted for digital marketing in 2020. Photogrammetry technology revolves around communication and how well marketers can communicate information to their potential customers with an additional aspect — 3D. 3D models and panorama offer the market a bit more information on the webpages and help the company shape its brands using advanced technology.

Not surprisingly, some more platforms and websites gain their abilities to showcase and store 3D models. While most of these platforms can only showcase low solution files, a management system can view and keep any 3D models with the unlimited file size (like VAM2.com). With the photogrammetry technique, a 3D model can look like a real object, if you also consider online rendering Felix Render UK.

9.    Training & Education

While virtual training has been around for 20 years, 2020 and 2021 are the real turning points for entities to rethink e-training and education. Pandemic and quarantine bring high hope on virtual e-training and online education, especially for safety training, maintenance inspection, interactive presentation and more. E-Training usually involves 360 videos, 360 panorama VR as well as 3D models. With the maturity of VR and 3D, companies can produce interactive environments themselves. Thus, students can have an excellent user experience in specific sites via they are away in a traditional classroom or meeting room. Photogrammetry technology enables developers to build a virtual training program via a real-life setting, such as exhibition halls, playgrounds, school, oil rig platform, airplanes and more. One can also consider remix photographs, videos and 3D point clouds.

virtual e-training examples

10. Film, Gaming and Entertainment

The entertainment industries became more and more important for a lock down year like 2020 and 2021. Photogrammetry technology has been widely adopted and used in films for years, gaming and entertainment industries; artists and technicians are saving a lot of time creating scenes / shots if they are built upon on real photographs or 3D models. With the advancement of game realism, more film-like product techniques are being used in a game for visualization. As video games continue to improve their reflections of reality into the 2020s, graphical accuracy will remain a core game element. If you would like to capture a very high-quality HDR photo for gaming and film, you should consider the most precise 230 megapixels, 360-degrees camera in the market — Civetta.

Author: Christiane Zhao

Tunnel Monitoring and Measurement

With the increasing number of tunnels built around the world, the monitoring, detection, maintenance and renovation of these tunnels are increasingly important. Tunnel projects are typically huge investments. They often have a long route mileage and involve strong concealment, factors which impose heightened quality requirements on the construction and maintenance during operation. Highly accurate 3D scanning is quickly becoming the main way to document and visualize the in-progress build condition of urban tunnel projects.

Weiss AG, a European company of experts with more than 10 years experiences in 3D scanning, provides 3D scanning and digital asset management (DAM) services to support construction groups working in tunnel design and maintenance. The use of Civetta, a 360-degree camera by Weiss AG, can generate a set of panoramic HDR images to produce a 3D model. These 3D scanners allow the user to take measurements while extracting 3D coordinates and geo-reference information in relation to each panoramic picture. With the Visual Asset Management System provided by Weiss AG, the construction and management teams can establish visual connections between multimedia files, thus enabling better communication and documentation throughout the project.

Background

Weiss AG’s reseller, Guangzhou MG Data Tech Ltd, helped the Beijing Metro Group to provide on-site terrestrial scanning services for site surveys and inspections. The initial challenge of the Beijing Metro Project was to detect issues within the water percolation of the metro tunnel in central Beijing. The main goal of this scanning project was to provide accurate as-built documentation to help engineers and architects determine precise measurements on or off-site, make structural assessments and ensure the highest standards of safety.

3D Scanner and Scanning Services

3D scanning provides a more accurate and simpler way to understand and explain the status and progress of tunnel projects. For documenting as-built conditions, the density of point clouds, meaning the density of points of reference within the environment for the program to utilize, must be high enough to produce CAD drawings, 3D mesh models and panoramic point cloud pictures. A high solution scanner is needed in underground construction such as tunnel projects. As the Beijing metro tunnel needs to detect water percolation, the scanner must have an accuracy within 0.03 mm to identify crevices in the tunnel.

Civetta is preferable to use as it provides time-efficient and accurate equipment allowing the capture of high-quality images with the press of a single button. The Civetta is a fully automated 360-degree camera that can create 32-bit HDR images. Civetta takes a mere 40 seconds to record an entire spherical image, capturing all the varying light within the scene. With an impressive accuracy of +- 2mm within a 10m distance, users can take precise measurements from the captured images via the Visual Asset Management (VAM2) platform. 

Terrestrial scanning saves hundreds of hours on planning time and prevents misspent labor. This detailed and accurate information can help the company save time and money, avoid mistakes and increase transparency between different departments in maintaining, repairing and upgrading the facility.

Processing Image-Based 3D Scan Point Clouds

After performing a 360-degree panoramic scan, the raw point cloud must be processed. CivettaProcessing was selected as the software for processing the point-cloud data, as it is a compilation software that pairs up with the Civetta camera provided by Weiss AG. It avoids compatibility problems between the software and equipment and avoid the cost of purchasing software since it is part of the package when purchasing Civetta.

CivettaProcessing supports the automatic alignment of overlapping areas of point clouds to .esr and .jpg files, as well as the use of targets to geo-reference scan data. More than five hundred scans were registered together to generate one complete model space to establish a 3D mesh model, This space was based on hundreds of sets of panoramic point cloud pictures. The HDR images taken by the Civetta includes real 3D coordinates and accurate measurement distances, so it is achievable for engineers to extract this information to use in any other system. Users can also generate the measurement details through a few clicks or connect digital files with URLs in VAM2.

The Use of Visual Asset Management Platforms to View, Edit, Manage and Share Project Assets

Good as-built documentation has the potential to be very valuable to the owners and operators of infrastructure facilities and to all stakeholders in large infrastructure projects. The as-built documentation is obtained soon after project completion, or is updated during construction, and when the documentation includes a high standard of accuracy, it has a greater number of uses in the operations phase of large facilities.

With the VAM2 innovated by the Weiss AG team, it enables client groups to generate and manage digital assets throughout the tunnel construction process through tools such as point cloud collection, section deformation analysis, dislocation analysis, tunnel and track image generation, roaming video generation and other essential tunnel-related documentation.

VAM2 is completed based on cloud technology, and all data types can be accessed via a single web browser. It includes, but is not limited to 3D models, documents, CAD data, panoramic pictures, 360 videos, audio, geo-reference, maps and much more. By establishing the links between the 3D model and other files via URLs, viewers can establish a more comprehensive and realistic understanding of the construction environment, together with the amount and quality of contributions by each team or individual member.

For some construction data that is sensitive and should not be available to the public, the team can either set authorisation restrictions on the cloud, or directly request a private package to be sent. Invitation codes or passwords can be created to secure the information on the cloud. The final product was a simple URL that could be opened and shared with other authorized project participants anywhere and at any time.

Generally, it is difficult for people without engineering background to understand the information involved in surveying reports, drawings, and engineering data. For the interest of transparency, public agencies that commission construction projects must make project information available to the government officials and to the general public. It is important to know that VAM2 does not have minimum computer system requirements, nor does it require users to have any technical skills or knowledge. VAM2 can be integrated into the traditional workflow for legal entities, and can also accelerate clear work distribution between departments or groups. Therefore, VAM2 has been used by several government agencies and legal entities across the world for the purposes of documentation and management.

Author: Christiane Zhao

“First and foremost it’s important to recognize that so much heritage is natural, and so much of nature is heritage,”

~ Dr. Meredith Wiggins

said by Dr. Meredith Wiggins of Historic England. Due to climate changes and other human factors, heritage has been affected by different ways, which makes digitalised heritage so much more important nowadays.

The Guangzhou MG Data Tech Ltd., a 3D company dedicated to digitally recording, archiving and sharing the world’s cultural heritage, is partnering with International experts in the field of 3D visualization and restoration to capture, process, render and preserve cultural history with unprecedented visual accuracy. For instance, MG Data Tech collaborated with the University of Applied Sciences Kaiserslautern / Virtual Design to showcase a virtual museum that is based in Shan Xi, China. The MG Data Tech did all the scanning and provided high-quality RGB point clouds for the university lab. The latter one uses Unity to reconstruct the file and produce a 3D virtual experience for visitors in Germany.

With the help of the VR glasses, it is thus possible to move freely in the three-dimensional virtual reconstruction, explore the temple and interact with other users. Besides, holograms explaining the history of the items can appear in front of the users. The magnificent frescoes that cover the interior walls of the temple were depicted in a true-to-life manner and fascinate the visitors. The extraordinary digital reconstruction was also presented to the visitors as part of the official German Chinese cultural program 2017 during the long Night of Culture in Kaiserslautern.

Photogrammetry is an essential part of MG Data Tech’s Digital Preservation process. This simple photo-based documentation method allows anyone to capture measurable data through photographs—making it easier and cheaper to document sites than ever before.

At its most basic, photogrammetry is the science of using overlapping photographs to reconstruct three-dimensional scenes or objects. While almost any camera can be used, it is essential to notice, the better the camera, the more precise the model. MG Data Tech further provides a 360-degree panoramic camera(Civetta) for their photographers and clients who have a significant needs in accurate, high-quality digitalization. With a single-click and 40 seconds waiting time, the Civetta can scan the entire environment and produce a 230-pixel HDR panoramic photo of the scene. Since the Civetta has only one button, it is elementary to use for staff with any background.

A MG Data Tech project can capture more than thousands of photographs per day in the field. With “structured camera”, the computer became easier to find the common points in-between the images. Thus, in other words, the photogrammetry device and software provided by the MG Data Tech offers a much higher resolution, better color accuracy, and strong dynamic range which reduce the number of photographs required to document a historic site. Reliability and extraordinary image quality are also realized by the Civetta, effectively eliminating the possibility of shutter failure and motion blur in the field.

The Guangzhou MG Data Tech Ltd believe that both archaeologist and digitalization specialists have a common interest in igniting such wonder, as we hope that public interest will aid us in preserving the past. We keep experimenting with different ways in digital storytelling, which convey various aspects of the past. Digitalization and the advancement of technologies form a more intimate connection between the past and present, mainly when it contains rich details about the past. The future of digital heritage looks promising.  

Experience and view it by yourself in VAM2, our Visual Asset Management Application.

The Kaihua Temple in Virtual Reality Project has been mentioned in the MIT Press.

A literature review that mentioned the Kaihuasi Temple VR project as an outstanding example in the Wiley Online Library.

Author: Christiane Zhao

Wherever you bring the game, you can have your very own museum in the pocket.

Due to the COV-19 epidemic, museums and art galleries are not able to open their doors to the public. This has a serious impact on the museums’ ticket revenue and public exposure. This issue is significantly important when museums are heavily reliant on donations from nonprofit organizations, and public exposure is a great measure to determine the amount.

Before Nintendo Switch, many of the museums had never imagined that the gaming industry could redefine the value of a museum. Due to the high exposure of the game “Animal Crossing”, many museums began to use this game’s built-in functions to carry out virtual exhibitions on the cloud. The freedom, personalization and contextualization made a game the best storyteller for exhibitions and museum collections. In short, the gaming industry is providing museums and art galleries with a new way to present themselves.  

“An increasing number of museums are seeking innovative solutions to better exhibit and communicate the tangible and intangible heritage they preserve while engaging visitors in an educational yet leisurely experience.”

When gaming became a symbol of many people’s lives, personalization, imagination and communication have advocated gaming to become part of the business. How can museums integrate the methods and concepts of gaming into the museum business-strategies effectively? This is a core question that requires an answer. Will the differences between art galleries and museums affect the way they implement gaming into their business? Moreover, how can gaming become a part of the museum visiting experience and how can visitors benefit from the game? This is not about simply using a game in an exhibition setting but actually building up an exhibition or even an entire museum floor on the cloud via a gaming setting.

Monterey Bay Aquarium (California, USA), the first museum to take the leap and use the game “Animal Crossing” to provide public education. This world-renowned aquarium, which opened in October 1987, owned 300,000 living species in a building with 30,000 square meters.

After “Animal Crossing” was released to the public, Monterey Bay Aquarium was one of the first to go live on the Nintendo Switch. During the live stream, it provided a general education session about natural science. Afterwards, it collaborated with the Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH) in Chicago to give a fossil tour in the museum inside the game. It also offers its professional opinion on whether the islands in the game will experience any geographical movement or not.

The museum does not only store its collection in a digital way inside a gaming space, but more importantly, the participant can control the museum curation process, and connect their digital life with the exhibition online. It means they can visit an exhibition with their friends, share artwork or even bring a copy back to their digital house. They can do anything with the exhibition that they can do in reality, and even more.

It is also worth mentioning the Tyrannosaurus Rex fossils in the Owl Museum of the “Animal Crossing” were a prototype of “SUE”, which is the best-preserved Tyrannosaurus Rex fossil in the world to date, collected and maintained by the Field Museum of Natural History. It reflects the fact that the virtual museums in the game can cross-connect its digital and real identities with the visitors. The visitors are the same. They are also able to connect with the museum both in the digital space and reality. Thus, gaming is forming a closer connection for both when its digital identity is comprehensive enough to create meanings. Among them, 3D modelling and virtual reality are just a means of reaching this realization.

As “Animal Crossing” gradually became popular, more museums became involved. These included the Metropolitan Museum of New York, the Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, as well as the Victoria and Albert Museums in the United Kingdom. These museums released their respective QR codes through the Nintendo Switch Online App, enabling visitors to transfer photos of these artworks or cultural relics to the game through one of its functions.

It is undeniable that museums games, as a popular and powerful storytelling method, are worthy of learning from museums and art galleries. The museums’ successes with “Animal Crossing” is due to the freedom and personalization of the game.

What if everyone could be a curator?

Curators need many characteristics, including a certain level of expertise in the field and clear logic. But at the same time, the museum community does not completely deny that visitor-led exhibitions are also a space for development. More importantly, would the world be different if everyone becomes curator? We are certain that the museum industry could make this a reality.

In a way like “Animal Crossing”, a large number of museum collections can be digitized through 3D technology and be stored in the cloud. Through providing a free virtual space for the public, attendees can invite friends or netizens to visit their exhibition space via an invitation code. It should be an interesting topic that deserves further discussion. In such a case, the only media that can provide such high transmissibility is gaming.  Games provide both a virtual space for exhibitions and the ability to share all contents with digital friends or online communities. This is important for the virtual exhibition.

How does 3D technology participate in the gamification aspect of museums and art galleries?

In general, three-dimensional and virtual reality can provide essential grounds for gamification for museums. In general, virtual museums can be produce via two main ways.

For virtual exhibitions that are created based on a real-world existing exhibition, 3D tech company can scan the exhibition scenes and works and simultaneously store image data and measurement data into the cloud-based virtual asset management system (MG Data Tech). Therefore, the curator or audience of the museum can design their exhibition based on the original exhibition.

However, a completely digitized virtual exhibition that is built only on the cloud may be more popular. Museum groups can scan collections from several museums and store digital copies in the cloud. Visitors can become curators by themselves, select artwork from the digital database and further showcase it through a CGI light-source setting.

The museum’s successes in Animal Crossing is not just a symbolic moment but emphasises the importance of adopting multimedia and digitalisation. On one hand, such a combination can enable games to achieve more and widen their boundaries. Alongside this, it can effectively attract more people to engage with the museum industry.

Weiss AG does not reserve the right of these images used in the article, please contact info@weiss-ag.com if you own the copyrights of these images.

Author: Christiane Zhao

In the past few years, the Chinese government has invested in the museum industry, building up more than 5000 museums which is a 1400 percent increase compared to the last 40 years. But this good story might come to an end due to the coronavirus outbreak and other influential factors. The Chinese economy is slowing down and the Chinese government is expected to cut its funding for the museum industry. The museums were planning to seek extra funding to support their daily operations, while trying to prove their value to the government.

Unfortunately, there is more bad news. The younger generations are showing greater interest in social media and live streaming, rather than their ancient heritage or traditional Chinese clothes that sit in the museums. For the museums, there is nothing more difficult than convincing citizens to visit the museum and support the museum store to boost their revenue. Museums do not only need to increase their ability to interact with new audiences, but also face challenges to produce high quality exhibitions with a limited number of available collections.

For these reasons, the museum industry in China is focusing on virtual exhibitions, or more specifically, exhibitions that are built on 3D modelling and rendering.

In past years, the increased use of multimedia techniques and virtual reality methods created a new form of presentation for museums’ exhibitions: virtual exhibitions. Virtual exhibitions are acknowledged as a unique and complementary way for the museum to promote their brand. It is not only because it can overcome the limits of time, location and space restriction, but also because hypermedia and multimedia are becoming the main portal for museums to promote their brand and increase visits. In the past, many museums in China tried to present virtual exhibitions by listing a collection of work on their websites, but the feedback was not great. However, 3D technology and model-rendering enable a realistic presentation of work via a person’s smartphone.

While it is widely known that the existing 3D technology is often good enough to trick our minds into believing it to be real, virtual exhibitions are not just a digital copy of a traditional exhibition. More importantly, how can virtual exhibitions reshape the brand of a museum, and how can it achieve things that traditional exhibitions cannot achieve?

Virtual exhibitions can provide an interactive experience beyond that of a traditional exhibition. Virtual exhibitions can be composed of text, image, video, voice, 3D model, virtual reality and other multimedia. Attendees can access and view the 3D model of a piece of work via the mobile phone at any time, in any place. Through clicking and rotating, attendees can observe the collection in full 360 degrees, unrestricted by a glass window or balustrade. It also means the attendees can understand the exhibition from a completely new direction through interactive activities such as games. The museums can adjust their content to satisfy the market-need or translate content according to the audience. Even more interactively, museums such as the Whitney Museum in New York provides two-sided information exchanges during their exhibitions, recording visitors’ comments and displaying them as part of the exhibition.

Many museums believe that exhibitions which enable information exchange is an essential criterion for a good exhibition. It means the attendee is no longer an anonymous individual, but somebody that can bring an impact to the exhibition, or even the wider population who visited the museum. In order to promote the museum’s brand and encourage more people to visit the museum, it is necessary to let the audience know their voice matters and their values can affect the meaning of an exhibition. Of course, this cannot happen when the virtual exhibition is fully based on imagination. In order to achieve two-way information exchange, it is necessary for a virtual exhibition to apply 3D technology and rendering to make virtual settings seem real, or at least relatable to a real-life context. When the attendee is able to link the virtual exhibition with their real-life experience, they are able to consider it at a deeper level and are expected to produce better thoughts and feedback.

The idea of applying 3D technology in a virtual exhibition is to reduce its limitation of providing “unreal” content while empowering the attendees to view, interact or even change the content of the work. When the person is a part of the exhibition, they are also touching that exhibition, leaving their own personal marks. Since the concept of enabling visitors to “edit” the traditional exhibition isn’t entirely new, some ask why a virtual exhibition is essential in promoting this concept today. It is true that many traditional museums provide some form of interaction in their exhibitions, but that interaction is always limited. The traditional exhibition can only be represented in the form of photos or videos, but virtual exhibitions enable the attendee to interact with 3D models in virtual and augmented reality.

More importantly, any interaction in a virtual exhibition is inherently different from a traditional exhibition. Virtual exhibitions provide a completely new way to explore and search for new information within a space without physical limits. In such circumstances, attendees are limited to their senses of light and color. There are museums which employ a professional 3D technology team to scan and build up 3D models for collections and render them to look real in a virtual exhibition setting. These factors do not only guide them through the exhibition but also influence how they reshape the exhibition.

Virtual exhibitions also enable greater collaboration than the traditional exhibition. It is not limited only to the attendees and the collection of work, but also offers exchanges between museums, or between curators. In a traditional curation setting at a Chinese museum, curators always define the theme of an exhibition based on the collection of work they currently have at hand. Not only does this caused pressure to these large, famous institutions, but especially the smaller and medium-sized museums that have just established themselves within the past few years.

Virtual exhibitions can change this.

Virtual exhibitions only require the curation team to borrow or lend the digital form of a historical collection. The curator can even combine their own collection with some new work to form an entirely new virtual exhibition, thereby increasing its exposure. It means that museums located far away from the city center, or those with limited collections, are able to more effectively promote their brand online because their virtual exhibition contains one or two famous painting or sets.

In addition, virtual exhibitions encourage museums to build up a virtual community for visitors to interact with, share or even consume exhibition-related products in their social groups. In recent years, the younger Chinese generation is adopting this new culture in tracing pop-idols. The virtual community is the main way to encourage people to spend money to support these public figures virtually. Now is the perfect time for Chinese museums to learn and adopt such a business model. Through virtual exhibitions, museums can promote famous IPs and direct virtual attendees to visit their online store.

In short, China is entering a new era that is heavily reliant on multimedia and mobile devices. It is also true that museums and galleries are facing competition from other social media or entertainment portals. It is known that the business model for Chinese museums is completely different from those of museums in the Western world. A virtual exhibition should not only be categorized as a digital form of traditional exhibitions, but an entirely new sector for museums to explore.

Author: Christiane Zhao