Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Hello. Good morning, everybody. I'm Markus Bingenheimer. Welcome to this panel. We are going to hear three GIS-related papers this morning.
And all speakers have 20 minutes, and then we leave 10 minutes for discussion. Our first speaker is Jennifer von Schwerin. She's assistant professor at the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico.
Jennifer's research focus is the art and architecture of ancient Mesoamerica, and today she's going to present on her research in Mesoamerica for exactly the Maya Arch 3D project.
It's probably not good for the recording. They ask us to always use the microphone.
We have an opportunity to talk about the project of von Schwerin and her role as a developer.
Von Schwerin's research is kind of easy, and it's a little bit of a problem for people in America.
And I'm now going to be talking about whether it's a part of all of Mesoamerica.
Thank you.
Okay. So, as a case study, Query Arch 3D was built for researchers of Maya architecture to compare
and analyze 3D models and related archaeological data in the context of a geographically referenced virtual reality landscape.
So, our prototype version is available today on the University of New Mexico's website if you log on right now to mayaarch3d.unm.edu.
And you can see here, you can actually, if you click here on the webpage down below, you can get into the prototype right now and take a look at it as I'm speaking.
So, what I plan to do today is to first talk about the gap.
How do I move forward here? My PowerPoint presentation is not moving forward on the screen.
Somehow it's not recognizing. I'm clicking to go forward.
I'm getting a command here, too. I don't know what's going on here.
Well, what I'll talk with you about today is introduce the problem of the split between GIS systems and 3D modeling.
And then I'll introduce the tool and go over the tool in terms of the data that we have in the tool, the types of research questions, research analyses we can do with the tool, some of the problems we faced, some new research plans that we have, and then a critical evaluation of 3D GIS systems and their application for art history and archaeology specifically.
Because those two fields deal with objects, not text mainly. And so for us, the ability to model objects is extremely important.
Here. Shall we put it on the other computer?
Okay, we'll do it this way. No, I can do it without. All right, I apologize for that delay. So this is our outline.
This split between geographic and 3D modeling systems, modern sensor and computing technologies are changing the practice of art and art history today because they offer innovative ways to document, reconstruct, and research the ancient world in three dimensions.
Maya architecture is an especially useful case study for looking at how digital technologies can work in the humanities because researchers can track the histories of Maya kingdoms and their political and social changes now down to the decade.
So for myself as an architectural historian, not a technical specialist, I correlate these changes with developments in architectural form and style over space and time.
This is challenging because the structures are in ruins. Their documentation is in different scales and different formats and is spread all around the world.
So how these technologies can assist with me in comparative analysis of my architecture is a question I've addressed since 1998 when I began working with this temple in Copan, Honduras to reconstruct the collapsed facade sculpture.
This is a piece in the British Museum. There are 4,000 pieces spreading collections around the world. So we began, as most projects do, with an archeological database, a relational database to catalog the sculpture.
And then with the help of NEH funding, we began to create 3D simulations of the temple to test various reconstructions. And using computer graphics, we can simulate how individual buildings or whole cities may have looked in the past, and these models allow us to test various lighting systems to rotate the model, things like this.
Virtual reality systems, such as the SketchUp model that we created, is it possible to lower the lights a little bit to see the image better? These allow us to place the buildings in context and help us to increase our awareness of spatial relationships and give us a sense of embodiment, a sense of place.
It's also useful, as in this case, for visualizing archaeoastronomical studies.
So another approach in the digital humanities is to make reality-based models of objects using state-of-the-art remote sensing techniques that document 3D objects to the millimeter.
These 3D models can be stored in databases or archives, and what you see here are a laser-scanned stela from the site of Copan and some aerial scans that we made with a helicopter in 2009.
So unfortunately, these models tend to be extremely complex, and there are accessibility issues that go along with them, problems with copyright or large file sizes that make them difficult to visualize via the web.
So it's difficult to share these models between users and engage in any sort of comparative study.
Moreover, the 3D visualization tools that exist implement either none or very limited query functions or any sort of relationship to scientific data, and certainly they're not contextualized in their broader landscape context.
So this becomes problematic when my colleagues and I would like to do a sort of study that examines changes in temporal design over, say, the reign of three different rulers.
To understand the significance of changes in spatial or temporal patterns, we need to be able to compare the structures in quantitative and qualitative ways and to analyze them along with their association data.
So the kinds of questions we could use for spatial temporal analyses are distribution, how did symbolism text change over time between the reigns of different rulers, accessibility, which residential groups had the easiest access to the temples,
or were there possible ritual processional routes between two different ceremonial sites?
Visibility is another sort of spatial temple question we ask, which temples were more visible from the elite residences at the city,
or how could visibility inform us about boundaries of ritual activities or ceremonial events?
Orientation, what was the spatial alignment of temples in relation to, say, mountain peaks or horizon markers?
What might this tell us about cosmological associations of space and place in ancient Copan?
So for these kinds of questions, GIS is naturally a great solution.
And my colleague Heather Richards Rosetta, an archaeologist, created a GIS for Copan in 2006 to study visual and spatial relationships between the built forms and the landscape.
So she investigated access and visibility study of different types of architecture, so elite versus commoner groups, and related these findings to possible levels of social interaction at the city.
But she soon realized that the 2D perspective of GIS maps, or two and a half D we call it, limited her interpretations.
For example, view sheds, so this depicts what one can see from a given point.
They are calculated in GIS, but they show us what can and cannot be seen in this particular vantage point, but one cannot get on the ground to view the results from a pedestrian perspective.
Because GIS software is created to mainly handle terrain models, two and a half D data, it falls short when dealing with real 3D models, so buildings with interiors, so to speak.
There are some 3D GIS software packages, such as Esri City Engine and CityGML, that can rapidly build virtual cities, but they have a couple shortcomings.
One, they're based on procedural modeling, so they basically render a model from a footprint and just extrude it.
And they use standard geometries and textures, and they don't perform spatial analysis.
Meanwhile, geo-browsers, which we've heard a lot about at this conference, like Google Earth and the applications with those, can visualize geo-reference data, including 3D models often, and can retrieve limited external information by clicking on selected objects or layers.
However, geo-browsers cannot visualize big and complex models, and the users cannot query the models against a database.
Because of these limitations, GIS and geo-browsers are not ideally suited to more recent approaches in archaeology and art history, like performance studies, phenomenological analysis, aesthetics, relationship of architecture and landscape.
So, while GIS and 3D tools allow many of these analyses in separate contexts, you do one type of analyses in one tool and another in another, bringing them together would allow us to analyze architecture and landscape as an integrated system,
and to discover relationships that we might not otherwise ever find.
So, together we asked ourselves, how can we combine the benefits of 3D with GIS in order to enable online, real-time comparisons?
Or, as one reviewer elegantly put it, if these two distinct approaches to modeling reality could talk to each other, one could do research inside of the 3D model, or in its hosting environment.
So, to address these interdisciplinary needs, the University of New Mexico received, as I said, two NEH startup grants to develop a new computing pipeline and a prototype tool.
And what's unique in technologically cutting edge about this tool is it enables users to integrate, visualize and edit 2D and 3D data of multiple resolutions, to link these models to archaeological data and to perform attribute and spatial queries of this data,
and to visualize, compare and analyze 3D buildings and artifacts, all in a single online, navigable virtual reality landscape.
So, the pipeline for this has been described in detail by one of my colleagues, but to summarize here, the tool has two main components.
One, the data modeling and storage in a database management system, and two, visualization.
So, the database uses PostgreSQL with a PostGIS extension as the spatial repository backend, and allows for the import and export of standard GIS formats, as well as 3D models.
The 3D models then are triangulated meshes via the common OBJ or object format.
And then we had to create semantic hierarchies for the architecture, segment it into pieces, and then to be able to link the attributes in the database to those segmented portions of the models.
So, for the interactive navigation and 3D visualization, the tool uses Unity 3D, which is a game development engine.
For the creation of 3D interactive content, access either offline or online using a free web player plugin, which is what, if you go to our website, you download that plugin in a couple minutes, and then download the Unity for the tool.
So, finally, a PHP interface links Unity 3D and PostgreSQL, allowing the data retrieval from the database and the online visualization.
So, the system is organized in four levels of detail for the different geometric structures.
So, when you enter in, you see the bird's eye view, and you just see the 3,500 structures at a basic level of resolution.
As you get closer, more detail comes up.
Then you can start to see laser scan sculpture, and then actually click and rotate high-resolution models.
So, it separates the experience based on level of detail.
So, now I'm going to run a video for you of the...
So, as for the data in the tool, you click on the site, go in, and it downloads the information.
It doesn't store on your computer, but it downloads it to run it.
So, in terms of the 3D models, we have data from the archaeological site of Copan as the test case, right?
We have the landscape, the virtual landscape of Copan, which covers 24 square kilometers and 3,000 schematic models of ancient structures,
and what we'll later see is a very high-res digital model.
As we navigate through Copan's landscape, you can click on structures or stealer or other architectural elements to query the data from the database.
So, here's a query function.
Also, you can enter through the database and query, for example, attributes.
So, we have attributes like group names, what you see here.
So, you click on El Bosque, and then the El Bosque group lights up.
Attributes include structure names, site type, building heights, building elevation, hydrogeological features, construction dates,
associated rulers, that kind of information, as well as information on about 3,000 pieces of sculpture.
So, here we're selecting the stela in the great plaza that were built during a particular ruler's reign, right?
Or we can select all structures that dated to a certain date, and were built by certain rulers.
You can do multiple queries, as well.
So, just skip forward in the video.
This video you can also see online on our website.
So, we segmented the structures, and we've linked these, of course, in the database text and photographs.
So, you can click and receive basic information on a certain building.
You can also perform line of sight analyses.
And we have a computer graphics model, this one, of Temple 22, that we brought in, and had to reduce, of course.
And as you move closer, the more high-level models appear, and you can click on these models to access the scans.
And as you can see, we're still in the process of filling the database.
That's the never-ending work that all of this depends upon.
And you can rotate and click on the models, then, for more attribute information.
And actually, we've segmented these models, too, so you could indicate where this piece was from in an excavation, things like this.
So, another tool that has been developed is a simple measurement tool.
So, you can click on two points and receive the distance in meters.
It's a basic measurement 3D tool.
So, for permitted users, the database can also be edited online via a separate website using the Copangui that has been created.
And beta testing was carried out in the fall of 2011 with about 100 researchers and students and educators in the humanities at five different universities in Europe and the United States.
The testers were uniformly enthused about the tool, particularly with the ability to enter and manage information online and to work in real time to query the data,
particularly to navigate online through a virtual model of an ancient Maya city and to have access to higher-resolution models of objects and to query the archaeological database via the model and vice versa.
The suggestions for improvement centered on decreasing the initial download time, it can be up to 12 minutes, depending on your broadband.
Improving the user interface changes to the navigation commands, adding a 2D navigation map to move more quickly through the space and a text search box,
adding more data, of course, to the database, adding textures to the models, which is a research problem still.
Implementing a broader base of spatial queries, adding a time slider, because there are lots of suggestions for how to improve the model.
Fortunately, we have this prototype shell, but now we have just received funding from the Bay MBF, the German Ministry for Education and Research,
for the next three years to relocate a portion of the project to Germany.
And this will be a partnership with the German Archaeological Institute, where I will be located,
and the Institute for Scientific Computing at the University of Heidelberg.
And we'll be working together to develop this tool and to do the massive amount of data collection, standardization, and data entry that's required.
So the archaeologists, we will be redesigning the conceptual data model, collecting data in the field, more scanning, more analysis,
refining it, structuring the data, talking about the query functions that are most important for our research,
and then designing the virtual research environment, at least conceptually, and testing sample analyses.
The Geoinformatics team will be considering what new software we might want to consider.
I'll talk about that in a second. Redesigning the database and defining a data model,
and particularly how to implement textures that are contained in the object format into this tool.
And then, of course, designing a range of spatial queries that we still would like to have that are typical for GIS systems.
So one of the main research problems that needs to be addressed is Unity 3D.
Unity 3D, being a game engine, has been developed for low-resolution 3D models, both in geometry and texture, that are loaded quickly during a video game.
Therefore, for applications like QueryArc 3D, the main drawback is the size of the 3D data that can be loaded and displayed on the screen.
We've overcome this limit by splitting the models into submodels as layers of detail, and optimizing high-resolution models into less detailed polygonal models.
But another limit, as I mentioned before, is that you have to load all the data at the beginning of the application.
So this is frustrating for people in countries like Honduras, where we've tested it, where they don't have the high broadband connection.
So, to critically evaluate what we are looking at in terms of possibilities that we see for 3D Web GIS and humanities research, there's a few critical issues.
First is, to build this, it's necessary to build a team that includes experts in geomat informatics, database systems, remote sensing, all of these things,
and to find ways that this project has done a stimulating research problem for all the members of the team,
and to make sure that we're all in close and continual collaboration throughout the project.
But our project has proceeded well because of the excellence of our partners and because of their individual commitments to the project.
Another challenge is that 3D technologies can be expensive, but this is changing quickly as we see.
One reviewer pointed to the recent addition of WebGL to the Chrome browser.
And everybody's concern with technology, of course, is the question of how future-proof is it.
With regard to Quarioc 3D, it uses the Unity 3 game engine, which is great, but it's not open-source software.
And we can't rely on this free plug-in forever. We don't know how long that will be available.
So to address this, we're looking for open-source software options,
and we're using standards for data collection and storage formats so that we can import the data to the next latest and greatest tool.
And of course, the whole thing relies on the quality of the data that you have in the system,
and that is a massive amount of work that needs to be done by trained individuals in the field.
But on the positive side, in the future, WebGIS will have significant implications for all kinds of digital humanities work
that require visualizing and analyzing 2D and 3D data in a georeferenced spatial-temporal context.
The tool enhances their ability to answer their research questions more effectively,
and by combining these two systems, you bring together the strengths of both the humanities and the sciences
so we can quantitatively measure, but we can also offer a tool for aesthetic and experiential analyses.
And this will challenge us to develop new space-based research questions and methods for studying ancient environments.
One of my colleagues said, just being able to walk around in ancient Capon, see things I hadn't seen before,
elicits new questions and new ideas.
So in sum, tools like Quariark 3D can provide users with a virtual reality experience on their laptop computers
that links 3D models to Quariark archaeological data, thus enhancing art historical and archaeological analysis
and fostering the circulation and comparison of ideas.
This is the most important result of our startup project, that 3D WebGIS is indeed poised
to offer a new level of international collaborative work in art history and archaeology.
Thank you.