VR Renaissance Frescoes

Recording of a talk presented in spring 2019 as part of the ‘supercomputing for everyone’ series at IU.

Access the Inaccessible

The virtual environments allow undergraduate and graduate students in a 15th C. Italian Art and Architecture class to explore four masterpieces of Italian Renaissance fresco work interactively and at-scale:
1. Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s “Good and Bad Government”
2. Giotto’s “Scrovegni Chapel”
3. Piero della Francesca’s “Chapel of the True Cross”
4. Massacio and Masolino’s “Brancacci Chapel”

‘Virtual scaffolding’ allows eye-level, close-up inspection of the frescoes, and audio commentary by SmartHistory accompanies the virtual visit.

Education

The virtual environments were paired with traditional, slide-based, classroom lectures as part of a graduate and undergraduate Art History class taught at Indiana University.

Design and Development

This was the first time these spaces (or any art historical space) were photo-realistically 3D scanned and made publicly available for educational purposes as a true virtual environment. Therefore, significant testing, feedback, and iteration went into the final products before being released to the students.

Longitudinal section of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova derived from the 3D scan.

Longitudinal section of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova derived from the 3D scan.

Virtual Visits

Users can follow a guided tour by Dr.s Steven Zucker and Beth Harris of SmartHistory, or explore each virtual space at their own pace, spending as much time as they like in front of scenes or objects of interest.

Additional tours focusing on a variety of subjects, such as social and political context, architecture, and philosophy, will be added.

True-to-life

The virtual environments are accurate in scale and color to their real-world counterparts. When using a virtual reality headset, the user feels as though they are physically standing in the tall and narrow Brancacci Chapel, or immersed in the kaleidoscopic polychromy of the Capella Scrovegni.


 
 

The Digital Hadrian's Villa Project

Summary video for the Digital Hadrian's Villa Project.

Ruin to Reconstruction

As the sole 3D modeler on the project, I was tasked with researching the history and current state of the archaeological ruins of the villa.

This involved over a month of on-site survey with laser distometer, hand-drawn studies, and photography, as well as extensive study of historic plans and reconstructions.

In addition to reconstructing the architecture of Hadrian's Villa, I also 3D scanned or modeled a catalog of sculptural and decorative items known to be from the villa, as well as gardens and vegetative elements.

Education

The 3D reconstruction of the villa was imported into Unity game engine and distributed to students at the University of Virginia and Xavier University for use in a class on Roman villas.

website

As a complement to the 3D application and videos, I also designed the project website, and generated nearly all of the 360-panos, photographs, and site plans.

Digital Hadrian's Villa Project Website

Reconstruction of the ‘South Theater’

Reconstruction of the ‘South Theater’

 

 Virtual Sculpture Gallery

I have spent the past 10 years creating 3D scans of art, archaeology, and architecture - I’ve made all of these 3D models
(more than 400 in total) freely available on Sketchfab.com