An Approach for the Visualization of Crafts and Machine Usage in Virtual Environments

An Approach for the Visualization of Crafts and Machine Usage in Virtual Environments

Despite the cultural, societal, economic and traditional significance and value of Heritage Crafts and Intangible Cultural Heritage, efforts towards their digital representation and presentation, and subsequently their preservation, are scattered. To that end, this paper proposes an approach for their visualization in Virtual Environments, within which the practitioner is represented by a Virtual Human, their actions through animations resulting from Motion Capture recordings, and objects through their 3D reconstructions. Our novel approach is based on a conceptual, twofold decomposition of craft processes into actions, and of the machines used into components. Thus, in the context of this paper, we have developed a pipeline that delivers a Virtual Environment, through which a wide range of users, from museum curators and exhibitors, to everyday users interested by a craft, can experience craft usage scenarios. Via our visualization pipeline, we claim that we deliver an efficient way of visualizing craft processes within Virtual Environments, thus increasing the usability and educational value of craft representation, and opening the way to a variety of new applications for craft presentation, education and thematic tourism. In the scope of this paper, we focus on the Heritage Craft of loom weaving; however, our approach is generic, for representing any craft, after its decomposition according to our technique.