Unlike Egyptian pyramids, the Maya built their temples layer by layer outward, so to understand them, researchers tunneled into the structures to understand the earlier phases of construction. I arranged the guided versions of the virtual tours in a rough chronology, moving from the highest to the lowest and oldest areas: the hieroglyphic stairway composing the largest Maya inscription anywhere, the Rosalila temple that was buried fully intact, and finally the tomb of the Founder of the city, Yax Kʼukʼ Moʼ.
I've been working to build on top of the Matterport SDK with Three.js--and then reusing the data in Unreal for a desktop experience or rendering for film (coming soon to PBS).
Blog about process: https://blog.mused.com/what-lies-beneath-digitally-recording...
Major thanks to the Matterport team for providing support with data alignment and merging tunnels while I was living in the village near site.
I’m a 3D artist that is currently encountering staunch resistance of generating 3D models from drone captured photogrammetry of historically protected sites in Pennsylvania, USA.
I’ve had resistance from the state and county level in pursuing take off and landing permission at historical sites. Communicating my intentions of digital historic preservation with photogrammetry has been a difficult “sell”.
I’m a licensed commercial remote pilot - however I need property owner permission to take off and land. Many sites are in state/county owned property in my area.
When I hear "digital" I don't exactly associate long-term preservation with it. Do you also have a strategy for the "digital preservation" part? Websites don't live long. Storage media don't last long either.
Should such a program be made together with a partner that has a strategy for long-term (outlook of centuries) storage of digital content? Because otherwise I don't see the "preservation" aspect. The monuments will likely survive all the digitized data created from them, easily.
It's not just the data, but also ways to use it. Imagine this was done twenty years ago and it was all saved as Adobe Flash media.
I think preserving the digital media plus ensure that it will still be usable (hardware and digital format) is a monumental effort, in comparison creating the digital representation is not the hard part.
I really haven’t figured out a solution to host 3D models that isn’t tied to a web based private company. I.E sketchfab.
Curios if there could be an avenue of resin 3D prints of the 3D models. I always seem to loop back to “why does someone want/need this?” Which may in turn be the reason for state/county property owners refusing permission to access property.
The digital capture is indeed the easy part at the scale I’m working in - thanks again for this insight