With Alison Kahn from Stanford University and the Pitt Rivers Museum, we started engaging with the culture of the mysterious and little-known Naga, located in North East India. If the vision turns reality, visitors could see holograms on a trail, exhibited among the museum’s gallery collections. They could witness a ‘pop-up’ hologram of Naga natives to understand better and through story telling the meaning of the historical artefacts. Dr Alison Kahn, Stanford University, is now going on a field trip to the Naga communities in India to record interviews and artefacts in support of this project.
We aim to apply multiple methods for the 3D reconstruction, including photogrammetry and 3D scanning in order to create realistic 3D reconstructions in a Hololens of the witnesses and their chosen cultural artefacts. Photogrammetry is the process in which 3D models are created with the textures of the existing objects by taking many overlapping images from different angles in order to generate a point cloud. For a purpose like we have in mind, 30-60 degrees are usually deemed suitable, requiring about 50-80 photos per object in order to keep capturing time to a minimum.
Additionally, we intend to use 3D scanning (using an Occipital Structure Sensor) to directly recreate 3D models on an iPad. Compared to optical photogrammetry, it is faster and easier to reconstruct high-resolution meshes.
Considering the final quality, however, each mesh and texture is at risk of stretching and distortion, especially for thin and shiny objects with reflective surfaces. Where this poses a problem, we will have to built the affected parts manually according to photographs instead of relying on 3D scans and photogrammetry.