Original title: Taiyuan University of Technology set up a cultural heritage digitization team to use digital technology to bring overseas cultural relics "home".
Science and technology reporter Han Rong.
Wearing VR glasses and holding a remote control handle, you can be in the Xiangtangshan Grottoes in an instant, and the vivid and serene Buddha statues and colorful murals with smooth lines slowly emerge in front of ......youThis is the result of the work of the cultural heritage digitization team of the School of Arts of Taiyuan University of Technology on the digital collection of cultural relics in Xiangtangshan Grottoes.
During the Spring Festival holiday, the Tianlong Mountain Grottoes located in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province are full of tourists. While admiring the sculpture art of Tianlongshan Grottoes, people also admired the digital technology to reproduce the cultural relics scattered in many countries. Not long ago, the Xiangtangshan Grottoes in Handan, Hebei Province realized the "reunion" of statues due to the digital restoration of cultural relics, which once caused heated discussions. And this is inseparable from the cultural heritage digitization team of the School of Arts of Taiyuan University of Technology.
Technological means help cultural relics to regain their style.
Located in Handan, Hebei Province, the Xiangtangshan Grottoes, excavated in the Northern Qi Dynasty, are the first batch of national key cultural relics protection units announced. However, due to historical reasons, some of the grottoes in Xiangtang Mountain have been damaged to a certain extent, and some cultural relics have been lost overseas. In order to restore the past style of Xiangtangshan Grottoes, from 2017 to 2018, the School of Art of Taiyuan University of Technology launched the digitization of Xiangtangshan Grottoes to digitally collect and sort out the grottoes themselves and the cultural relics lost overseas.
However, the road to "home" for cultural relics has not been smooth. Due to its large scale, the team needed to perform point cloud processing based on the collected data, obtain the complete point cloud and triangulation surface of the grotto surface through scanning of multiple stations, and add complex post-processing to complete the reconstruction of the grotto model.
Data collection is laborious, digital restoration is laborious, and the absence of a statue should appear in what form and in what position all require precise evidence. Zhao Hui, academic dean and professor of the School of Art of Taiyuan University of Technology, told reporters that in order to do a good job in the digital collection of Xiangtangshan Grottoes, the team not only read a large number of documents, but also collected data on the spot four times and established hundreds of site scans. From the early data collection to the mapping of the 3D model in the later stage, the team completed the digital restoration of the 3rd Cave (Carved Scripture Cave) of Beixiangtang after 6 years of hard work, which provided valuable clues for the writing of the "Xiangtangshan Grottoes Archaeological Report", and also provided another possibility for those cultural relics who were exiled in foreign lands to return to their homeland.
Teachers and students relay to do a good job in the digital restoration of cultural relics.
In the special exhibition hall of "The Return of National Treasures on the Road to Fuxing" in the Tianlongshan Grottoes in Taiyuan City, Shanxi Province, the smiling "Main Buddha Head on the North Wall of Cave 8" is placed in the 3D printed cave, and its Buddha body is behind it.
Li Feng, associate professor of the School of Arts of Taiyuan University of Technology, introduced that the School of Arts of Taiyuan University of Technology established a cultural heritage digitization team in 2012 and explored a set of ways to digitally restore cultural heritage. In 2015, the school carried out the 3D scanning and digitization of the Tianlongshan Grottoes, reconstructed the 3D digital model of the grottoes, and combined with the overseas statue digital model, the Tianlongshan Grottoes were digitally restored.
Although a lot of experience had been accumulated in the early stage, the digital restoration of the Tianlongshan Grottoes was a big challenge for the team at that time. Li Feng introduced that the project is the first case at home and abroad to return the cultural relics scattered around the world in the form of "digital", and restore the original appearance of the grottoes with the digital combination of the site itself. There are more than 20 people in the team, except for six or seven teachers, the rest are undergraduate and graduate students from the School of Art of Taiyuan University of Technology.
If the information is insufficient, team members try to contact relevant institutions to obtain information; The equipment technology is not advanced enough, and the team members work hard and go to the site over and over again to do empirical evidence. From data collection, point cloud processing, model construction, and texture mapping, the team finally realized the digital restoration of more than 100 cultural relics in 11 grottoes.
Whether it is the digital restoration of Tianlongshan Grottoes or Xiangtangshan Grottoes, it has taken several years to achieve today's results thanks to the continuous relay of teachers and students. Zhao Hui introduced that over the years, the team has been committed to the digital protection of important cultural heritage inside and outside Shanxi Province, and has completed more than 10 digital collection and restoration projects of cultural heritage at home and abroad, collected more than 40 digital resources of cultural heritage, and trained more than 100 students.
Zhao Hui believes that the digital restoration of cultural relics is actually an effective way for the digital return of China's lost overseas cultural relics. In addition, through the digital restoration model of statues and grottoes, people are closer to cultural relics, so that more people can revisit history and re-understand the original appearance of cultural relics, which is also the significance of digital restoration of cultural relics.
More and more young students are now involved in the conservation project, which gives us hope for the future of heritage conservation work. Zhao Hui said that the team will continue to deepen this field, leave a real historical and cultural record for future generations, and let more endangered monuments "live" and "walk" out.
*:Technology**.