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

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