CARARE - D5.4: 3D/VR Training Materials (Final)

This training manual describes how to make 3D resources for Europeana through the use of 3D PDF files. Chapter 2 refers to deliverable D5.1 and describes the requirements and possibilities of PDF as a 3D delivery platform as well as other solutions for 3D delivery that could be used instead of or in addition to 3D PDF when specific opportunities or issues are present for certain 3D content providers. This manual provides a detailed description of the workflow for creating 3D PDF resources through Adobe Acrobat X Pro which is a commercial but not so expensive software application. Appendix 2 lists the 3D file formats commonly used for cultural heritage applications that can be converted to 3D PDF. Appendix 3 provides links to other PDF authoring environments.

The capabilities of the 3D PDF are described in technical detail in Chapter 3, which analyses how these capabilities can be used to support typical functionalities for the cultural heritage domain in general, and for archaeological and architectural monuments in particular.

Chapter 4 describes the consecutive steps in the process of how to make the 3D data ready for transformation into a 3D PDF file. This chapter outlines many of the potential issues and provides a general approach to design a specific workflow that each 3D content provider needs to fine tune to their own data, available software and organisation structure. One aspect of this workflow is the conversion of the file formats that are provided by the 3D content provider into 3D PDF. Appendix 2 provides a list of 3D PDF file formats, commonly used in cultural heritage, which can be imported directly into Acrobat X Pro. Other formats need an additional conversion step.

Chapter 5 provides a step-by-step guide to creating different types of 3D PDF resources. This is supported by the large amount of examples that are available in the section Resources/Virtual Reality of the CARARE website (see overview in Appendix 1).

Chapter 6 discusses the preparation and creation of metadata for the 3D resources, which is a parallel process to the creation of the 3D resources itself.

Finally, Chapter 7 outlines the different steps and issues of delivering the 3D resources to Europeana.

Appendix 4 describes a Case Study for the Hellenistic-Roman theatre of Paphos, Cyprus.

To road test these materials, a two hour training session was been provided twice for CARARE partners at the Plenary meeting in Vilnius at the end of September 2011.