A Content-Centered Methodology for Authoring 3D Inter-active Worlds for Cultural Heritage
Fabio Pittarello , Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy
Augusto Celentano , Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy

Short Paper: Short Paper 2: 3D Worlds and Digital Environments

The application of 3D visualization technologies to cultural heritage has deeply evolved along years, shifting from the static renderings of scenes to be used as a complementary support to presentations performed with other media, to the dignity of a new media.

In spite of this evolution often the modalities of production of 3D worlds reflect the old situation. 3D modelers are often deputed to the whole construction of the interactive worlds, while in many cases the focus of 3D worlds is not simply on geometry and demands the specific contribution of experts belonging to different realms.

In this paper we propose a new framework for the produc-tion of 3D interactive environments for cultural heritage, including a more appropriate definition of subjects and skills involved; we have call this methodology content-centered because of its strong attention towards profes-sional skills of content experts.

The proposed methodology has been applied to the design of guided tours presenting cultural events, in order to test its benefits; the experimental results demonstrate that this methodology enables content experts to produce significant 3D experiences collaborating with a team of computer sci-entists and other collaborators, but without knowing the peculiarities of the implementation language and low level implementation details.

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