Posts Tagged ‘Cultural Heritage’
While doing work on the National Geographic special “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” a significant archaeological find was made. Philippe Martinez discovered what we have been calling “Stela M” that contains the first description ever found of how the 1000 ton obelisks were moved. Philippe needed gigapixel detail documentation of the surface so that he could have a good record of the surface for later study. Unfortunately the Stela had fallen over from it’s original position and was facing the ground making a “head-on” photo impossible.
While working on the National Geographic Special “Sunken Treasures of the Nile” we were very interested in how we could represent the terrain of the surrounding area. Unfortunately there were no DEM (Digital Elevation Models) of this remote area and we were unable to charter an aircraft due to the designation of military air-space. The only method we had available to us for re-creating this kind of terrain was through the use of Kite Aerial Photography and Photogrammetry. We were able to capture 57 million 3D points of the terrain from this simple aerial platform and a DSLR.
Yosemite Valley experiences numerous rockfalls each year, with over 600 rockfall events documented since 1850. Due to the pulverization of the rockfall mass, evaluating and quantifying rockfall characteristics has proved challenging without any high-resolution baseline imagery of the Valley walls, which could act as a useful datum for before/after comparisons.
The USC School of Cinematic Arts has had an ongoing relationship w/ TBS producer Norico Wada, specifically in the Division of Animation and Digital Arts, where xRez Studio partner Eric Hanson instructs 3d computer graphics and visual effects classes. She introduced USC to the work of Mr. Masaaki Tanabe, a Japanese filmmaker who lived as a child adjacent to the famed “Peace Dome” building at the time of the blast.