D. Marini et al., VIRTUAL-REALITY AND WEB TOOLS TO CONVEY THE VISUAL INFORMATION OF ANCIENT MONUMENTS, Computer networks and ISDN systems, 29(14), 1997, pp. 1655-1660
Visual communication and visual knowledge are areas that can take impo
rtant benefits from mature CG technologies. This paper demonstrates a
methodology to give new insights into cultural heritage which is based
on virtual reality techniques, Web navigation tools, advanced image a
nalysis and photorealistic image synthesis methods. A VRML model of th
e ancient Roman Theatre of Aosta is the basis to explore multiple data
types describing the current status of the building and to examine po
ssible restoration and conservation choices. JAVA scripts increase the
degree of interactivity with the data collected by the experts. Photo
metric and colorimetric data are derived by analysing stones. Image an
alysis and surface reconstruction algorithms are used to obtain a geom
etric representation of stones, necessary to produce photorealistic sa
mples of both the present status and the past and future conditions of
the building. The final rendering, using VRML tools, has been impleme
nted by adopting texturing as well as photorealistic methods. (C) 1997
Elsevier Science B.V.