The Digital Mont'e Prama project is a collaborative effort between CRS4 (Visual Computing Group) and the Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici Sardegna (ArcheoSAR, the government department responsible for the archaeological heritage of Sardinia), which aims to digitally document, archive, and present to the public the large and unique collection of pre-historic statues from the Mont'e Prama complex, including larger-than-life human figures and small models of prehistoric nuraghe (cone-shaped stone towers).
The Mont'e Prama complex is a large set of sandstone sculptures created by the Nuragic civilization in Western Sardinia. More than 5000 sculpture fragments were recovered after four excavation campaigns carried out between 1975 and 1979. According to the most recent estimates, the stone fragments came from a total of 44 statues depicting archers, boxers, warriors and models of prehistoric nuraghe came out of these first excavation campaigns. New excavations are ongoing and have already led to the discovery of other statues. These can be traced to an as-yet undetermined period, which goes from the tenth to the seventh century BC. Restoration, carried out at the Centro di Restauro e Conservazione dei Beni Culturali (CRCBC) of Li Punti (Sassari, Italy) resulted in the partial reassembly of 25 human figures with height varying between 2 and 2.5 meters, and 13 approximately one-meter-sized nuraghe models. Following modern restoration criteria, reassembly was performed in a non-invasive way (no drilling or bolt insertions into the sculptures). Definitely joining fragments have been glued together using a water-soluble epoxy resin, and all the gaps on the resin-filled surface were covered with lime-mortar stucco. Custom external supports have been designed to sustain all the parts of a statue in order to ensure stability to all the components without the use of mechanical attachments, while minimizing contacts with the statue and maximizing visibility. All supports allow a 360 degree view of the statue.
CRS4 is a leading Italian research center focusing on state-of-the-art computational technologies and on their application to problems stemming from natural, social and industrial environments. Visual Computing activities focus on the study, development, and application of scalable technology for acquiring, creating, distributing, exploring, and analyzing complex objects and environments, as well as for integrating them in real-time interactive visual simulations and virtual environments. CRS4 Visual Computing research is widely published in major journals and conferences, and many of the developed technologies have been used in as diverse real-world applications as internet geoviewing, scientific data analysis, surgical training, and cultural heritage study and valorization.
In the context of the Digital Mont'e Prama project, thanks to synergies with several other past and ongoing activities at the international level, CRS4 studied, developed, and applied novel technology for the complete accurate virtual reconstruction and high-fidelity exploration of the entire Mont'e Prama collection. In particular, our research led to the following contributions:
Our research systems have been installed in a variety of temporary and permanent exhibitions that have attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors:
In addition to museum setups, simplified version of representative statues from the museum complex are available on the monteprama.it web site, the official portal created by the region of Sardinia. These simplified versions were created by CRS4 by reducing the complexity of the original models. They can be explored in 3D using a simplified viewing and lighting setup. They are accompanied by general information on the sculptural complex.
The Digital Mont'e Prama initiative has benefited from research and technology coming out of a variety of projects. We acknowledge the following contributions:
[1] Ruggero Pintus, Enrico Gobbetti, Marco Callieri, and Matteo Dellepiane. Techniques for seamless color registration and mapping on dense 3D models. In Nicola Masini and Francesco Soldovieri, editors, Sensing the Past: From artifact to historical site. Pages 355-376, Springer, 2017. DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-50518-3_17. ![]() | |
[2] Marco Agus, Fabio Marton, Fabio Bettio, and Enrico Gobbetti. Interactive 3D exploration of a virtual sculpture collection: an analysis of user behavior in museum setting. In The 13th Eurographics Workshop on Graphics and Cultural Heritage, October 2016. DOI: 10.2312/gch.20161393. Best paper award. ![]() | |
[3] Marcos Balsa Rodriguez, Marco Agus, Fabio Bettio, Fabio Marton, and Enrico Gobbetti. Digital Mont'e Prama: Exploring large collections of detailed 3D models of sculptures. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), 9(4): 18:1-18:23, September 2016. DOI: 10.1145/2915919. ![]() | |
[4] Enrico Gobbetti. CRS4 Visual Computing. In STAG 2015 Lab Presentations, October 2015. ![]() | |
[5] Marcos Balsa Rodriguez, Marco Agus, Fabio Bettio, Fabio Marton, and Enrico Gobbetti. Digital Mont'e Prama: 3D cultural heritage presentations in museums and anywhere. In Proc. Digital Heritage. Pages 545-552, September 2015. Best paper award. ![]() | |
[6] Marcos Balsa Rodriguez, Marco Agus, Fabio Marton, and Enrico Gobbetti. Adaptive Recommendations for Enhanced Non-linear Exploration of Annotated 3D Objects. Computer Graphics Forum, 34(3): 41-50, 2015. DOI: 10.1111/cgf.12616. Proc. EuroVis 2015. ![]() | |
[7] Enrico Gobbetti, Ruggero Pintus, Fabio Bettio, Fabio Marton, Marco Agus, and Marcos Balsa Rodriguez. Digital Mont'e Prama: dalla digitalizzazione accurata alla valorizzazione di uno straordinario complesso statuario. Archeomatica, 6(1): 10-14, 2015. ![]() | |
[8] Ruggero Pintus and Enrico Gobbetti. A Fast and Robust Framework for Semi-Automatic and Automatic Registration of Photographs to 3D Geometry. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), 7(4): 23:1-23:23, February 2015. DOI: 10.1145/2629514. ![]() | |
[9] Marcos Balsa Rodriguez. Scalable Exploration of Highly Detailed and Annotated 3D Models. PhD thesis. PhD School of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Cagliari, Italy, 2015. ![]() | |
[10] Fabio Bettio, Alberto Jaspe Villanueva, Emilio Merella, Fabio Marton, Enrico Gobbetti, and Ruggero Pintus. Mont'e Scan: Effective Shape and Color Digitization of Cluttered 3D Artworks. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), 8(1): 4:1-4:23, 2015. DOI: 10.1145/2644823. ![]() | |
[11] Marco Agus, Enrico Gobbetti, Alberto Jaspe Villanueva, Claudio Mura, and Renato Pajarola. SOAR: Stochastic Optimization for Affine global point set Registration. In Proc. 19th International Workshop on Vision, Modeling and Visualization (VMV). Pages 103-110, October 2014. DOI: 10.2312/vmv.20141282. ![]() | |
[12] Marcos Balsa Rodriguez, Marco Agus, Fabio Marton, and Enrico Gobbetti. HuMoRS: Huge models Mobile Rendering System. In Proc. ACM Web3D International Symposium. Pages 7-16, August 2014. ACM Press. New York, NY, USA. ![]() | |
[13] Fabio Marton, Marcos Balsa Rodriguez, Fabio Bettio, Marco Agus, Alberto Jaspe Villanueva, and Enrico Gobbetti. IsoCam: Interactive Visual Exploration of Massive Cultural Heritage Models on Large Projection Setups. ACM Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH), 7(2): Article 12, June 2014. ![]() | |
[14] Fabio Bettio, Enrico Gobbetti, Emilio Merella, and Ruggero Pintus. Improving the digitization of shape and color of 3D artworks in a cluttered environment. In Proc. Digital Heritage. Pages 23-30, October 2013. Best Paper Award. ![]() |
Illustrative video of the Digital Mont'e Prama project: acquisition, 3D model creation, physical reproduction, 3D exploration, museums and installations.
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Illustrative video presenting our simplified user interface.
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