MA: Using Photogrammetry and Augmented Reality for Virtual Reconstruction of Ancient Statues

Ancient statues are often damaged and rarely complete. How an original statue looked like is often unknown. However, different variations and copies of the same statue sometimes survived the ravages of time. The goal of this thesis is to make use of this fact and to create a virtual reconstruction of a statue and display it at the exhibit in the museum using augmented reality. To achieve this, this thesis is split into two areas, reconstruction and depiction. For reconstruction, several 3D-models of a single statue type are created from several real statue variants using photogrammetry. To create a most complete version from these 3D-models, a prototype is designed and implemented. The purpose of this prototype is to allow the import, merge and export of 3D-models. For the depiction of the reconstructed statue in augmented reality, a mobile application prototype is designed and implemented. The prototype should give basic information about the museum and allow the user to track a marker next to the statue and view the reconstructed statue in augmented reality.

Model Merger (ReConStruct)

The goal of the Model Merger is to combine similar 3D models with different features to create a combined 3D model with all features. All 3D models share a common body, but each model has some distinct features. The Model Merger application was implemented in C++. As application framework the Qt framework is used. The Model Merger performs several tasks. First, the models are imported. Second, the models will be aligned to each other using the ICP algorithm. Then, the aligned models are merged and exported in order to be used in the mobile application. To render the 3D models, the OpenGL API is used. The first picture depicts the application logo. The second picture shows the main application window with two statues currently imported and the third picture shows the merge of the two statues from the main window.

Mobile Application (ὅλος)

The mobile application is the practical utilization of the combined models generated by the Model Merger. It was developed to be used in the "Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke" in Munich. It is the connecting piece that unites the generated virtual objects with the actual statues in the museum. The goal is to display the missing parts directly at the exhibit in the museum. It allows a visitor to enjoy the possibility of seeing how the statue might have looked like. The mobile application is developed for android and tested on a Galaxy Tab A. The camera of the android device is used for tracking. The missing statue parts are then rendered attached to the statue on the display of the android device. This application is based on tracking the statue and calculating the positions of the virtual enhancements. Unfortunately it was not possible to use a software which is able to track real three dimensional objects directly due to limited resources for this project. For this reason, this problem was solved by tracking a 2D marker attached to the statue. The missing parts of the statues are virtually displayed based on a measured offset between the 2D marker and the real 3D object. The mobile application is named ὅλος (from ancient greek: whole). The logo for the Mobile Application is depicted in the first picture. The mobile application was developed with the Unity3D engine and uses Vuforia for Unity as tracking framework. The second picture shows the main menu of the Mobile Application. The third picture is an example for the virtual reconstruction of a real statue in the museum.

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