MAKARS SUMMER SCHOOL VOL.I
THE FIRST TRAINING COURSE FOR DIGITAL FABRICATION AND CULTURAL HERITAGE IN VENETO REGION.
On Monday 3rd July 2017 we started Makars Summer School, based on “Makars” format organized by 3D Archeolab.
Makars is a real Digital Fabrication school with a focus on cultural heritage preservation and development: 150 hours of theoretical and practical lessons with a final discussion and project work with the aim of training new professionals to the use of modern and innovative technologies showing the main fields of application.
Summer School is its own distillate. A brief intense 48 hours course offering a basic but instrumental knowledge on three main subjects: 3D relief, 3D modelling and 3D printing. The teacher , Giulio Bigliardi, Archaeologist and founder of 3D Archeolab association, is a technician and one of the main Italian experts about digital fabrication and Cultural Heritage application.
The first days students, coming from all parts of Italy and from sectors close to art and history, introduced themselves and got a first theoretical introduction to the two 3D relief technologies covered during the course: digital photogrammetry, using 3DFlow Zephyr software and structured light 3D scanning with Scan in a box.
Photogrammetry allows, through a dedicated software, to extract a 3D model from a set of simple digital pictures or a video. A Light-structured 3D scanner is an instrument composed by a projectors and 2 cameras, able to relief the shape of an object in a fast and very precise way.
The afternoon lesson was held at Museo di Storia Naturale e Archeologia di Montebelluna (TV). The Museum curator, Ms. Emanuela Gilli, welcomed us with the tale of the museum and its collection history.
This institution was founded in 1984 thanks to local speleology group “Gruppo Naturalistico Bellona”, which made some interesting recoveries of naturalistic and mineralogical material, as well as many archaeological finds in Montebelluna’s hillsides dating back to different epochs from Neolithic to Roman times.
She introduced us to a series of archaeological finds, kindly provided by the local Sovrintendenza, which have been the course subject of study.
To fully understand the value of this experience, the curator explained to us the bureaucratic path the Museum had to undertake to become Makas Summer School active partner: the institutional process, such as the timing and modalities for getting regular permits to carry out our surveys, and be able to handle these delicate state-owned old artifacts.
Every activity of this type requires a precise work method. The course, in addition to provide new tools, wants to teach the students what are the standard procedures to be adopted when working in this area. Starting from the registration of information pertaining each of the examined findings through relief data sheets to be filled out.
The students, independently, began the photo-survey of largest finds, including a stone urn and stele, part of the museum’s collection, some marble slabs depicting the lion, symbol of the Most Serene Republic of Venice, and statues belonging to Villa Biagi collection, home of the museum.
3D relief through photogrammetry of large objects has been performed with normal digital cameras with the aid of tripods or scales if the object to be detected was particularly tall.
To obtain a full relief, it is necessary to take pictures by rotating 360 ° around the object.
However, in the case of stele, where only the front is of interest, we made a 180 ° detection.
Prior to the survey students placed markers at the four vertices of the find, to measure distance among them and subsequently set object correct size on the 3Dmodel.
We have learned that in order to recreate a 3D model from pictures, it is important to take at least one photo every 10 ° from at least 3 angles (central, top, and bottom) so that each part of the object appears in at least two photographs having a good degree of overlap.
