Interactive Domitilla Catacomb Exploration

Information

• Publication Type: Conference Paper
• Workgroup(s)/Project(s):
  • SCANOPY - Scan Data Organisation, Processing and Display
• Date: September 2009
• ISBN: 978-3-905674-18-7
• Publisher: Eurographics Association
• Location: Malta
• Lecturer:
  • Claus Scheiblauer
  • Norbert Zimmermann
• Booktitle: 10th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (VAST09)
• Conference date: 22. September 2009 – 25. September 2009
• Pages: 65 – 72

Abstract

In this paper we present an approach for interactive visualization and manipulation of huge point clouds. Archaeological monuments like the Domitilla Catacomb in Rome lead to data sets surpassing 1 Billion points or 20GB of storage space, which makes standard techniques like mesh conversion or in-core point-based rendering infeasible. Our system uses an out-of-core octree structure and a number of interactive editing tools to enable many archaeological tasks to be carried out on the whole point cloud that would not be possible using traditional methods. We allow fast selection, insertion and deletion of points, and through out-of-core rendering, the frame rate always stays above 20 frames per second on a fast workstation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first interactive visualization of the complete data set of a large subterranean catacomb, and we show that direct point cloud visualization on the complete data set of a scan campaign is an important tool in archaeological practice.

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BibTeX

@inproceedings{SCHEIBLAUER-2009-IDCE,
  title =      "Interactive Domitilla Catacomb Exploration",
  author =     "Claus Scheiblauer and Norbert Zimmermann and Michael Wimmer",
  year =       "2009",
  abstract =   "In this paper we present an approach for interactive
               visualization and manipulation of huge point clouds.
               Archaeological monuments like the Domitilla Catacomb in Rome
               lead to data sets surpassing 1 Billion points or 20GB of
               storage space, which makes standard techniques like mesh
               conversion or in-core point-based rendering infeasible. Our
               system uses an out-of-core octree structure and a number of
               interactive editing tools to enable many archaeological
               tasks to be carried out on the whole point cloud that would
               not be possible using traditional methods. We allow fast
               selection, insertion and deletion of points, and through
               out-of-core rendering, the frame rate always stays above 20
               frames per second on a fast workstation.  To the best of our
               knowledge, this is the first interactive visualization of
               the complete data set of a large subterranean catacomb, and
               we show that direct point cloud visualization on the
               complete data set of a scan campaign is an important tool in
               archaeological practice.",
  month =      sep,
  isbn =       "978-3-905674-18-7",
  publisher =  "Eurographics Association",
  location =   "Malta",
  booktitle =  "10th VAST International Symposium on Virtual Reality,
               Archaeology and Cultural Heritage (VAST09)",
  pages =      "65--72",
  URL =        "https://www.cg.tuwien.ac.at/research/publications/2009/SCHEIBLAUER-2009-IDCE/",
}