David Gillespie -  Conservation Technologies (National Museums, Liverpool)

Supervisor:
Dr Hongchuan Yu

Industry Mentor:
Dr Annemarie La Pensee

The creation of a user-appropriate viewer for high resolution interactive engagement with 3D digital cultural artefacts.

Increasingly large archives of 3D digital objects are being created by the heritage sector. Access to the bulk of this content by user groups including the public, researchers and conservators, both in proximity with the original artefact, and remotely, is limited. The expectations of, and demands on, this 3D content and its associated information provision and access varies widely between these user groups and must be managed effectively by the 3D content generators and providers. This project will identify and analyse the needs of all stakeholders in, and providers of, digital 3D cultural heritage, and work with them to create a multi-platform, multi- level access interactive viewer. The resulting software solution will provide an appropriate rendering environment for  3D digital heritage in conjunction with the possibility for text, image, video information and discussion forum integration where required. The use of the same content by different user groups with differing  content access level requirements on multiple platforms will be addressed effectively, and in a way that can be managed by 3D digital cultural heritage content generators in the future.