Modeling and Interacting with the Cathedral of St. John the Divine

 The Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Laboratory

Sinem Güven and Steven Feiner

Project Students: Wensi Connie Shi, Sheil Kumar, Jonathan Uy and Henry Kung

Columbia University
Computer Graphics & User Interfaces Lab

Introduction

We present our research work on transforming the Cathedral of St. John the Divine into an interactive and multimedia-enhanced landmark. Having built a detailed 3D model of the cathedral, we used our MARS Authoring Tool to create several Situated Documentaries that provide more information about the cathedral, or tell stories of events that took place on the site.

Users can view these 3D narrative experiences using our experimental wearable MARS backpack, which uses a tracked see-through head-worn display to overlay 3D graphics, imagery, and sound on top of the real world. Using a wireless handheld trackball, users can interact with different parts of the cathedral to visualize the relevant multimedia information, as well as control a simulated recreation of how the cathedral was constructed.

Example Pictures

Each thumbnail image is a link to the originally captured (mostly VGA resolution) image in JPG format. Note that the gamma values for the images are not adjusted. The images may need to be processed (gamma, contrast) before they can be used. Please contact Prof. Steven Feiner if you are interested in obtaining permission to use the images.

© Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab, Columbia University


Western Front - before texturing
Western Front - after texturing
Western Front - full view
Chapels & Crossing - animation at frame 450.
Chapels & Crossing - animation at frame 500.
Chapels & Crossing - animation at frame 650.
Chapels, Crossing & Nave (birds-eye-view) - animation at frame 1100.
Chapels, Crossing, Nave & Western Front (birds-eye-view) - animation at frame 1300.
Chapels, Crossing, Nave & Western Front (birds-eye-view) - animation at frame 1480.
The MARS Authoring Tool for creating the cathedral situated documentaries.
Screen-stabilized image being presented.
World-stabilized image being presented together with its associated Virtual Field of View (FOV) so that the user can align their line of sight to perceive an enhanced overlay.
WIM showing different nodes of the cathedral situated documentary.

Publications

Wensi Connie Shi, "Modeling and Interacting with the Cathedral of St.John the Divine," Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science Research and Design Symposium, Columbia University, New York, April 29th 2005. (Poster)

Acknowledgments

We thank the following people for their valuable contributions: Wensi Connie Shi researched the cathedral archives for multimedia material, extended the 3D cathedral model, and helped design the narratives presented in this work. Sheil Kumar, Henry Kung and Jonathan Uy provided 3D modeling and animation support.

We also thank Zachariah Munoz and Hrvoje Benko for their ground work on building the 3D cathedral model. Finally, we would like to thank Professor Stephen Murray of the Department of Art History and Archaeology for assisting and guiding us during the development of the narrative stories.

This research is supported in part by Office of Naval Research Contract N00014-04-1-0005, NSF Grants ANI-00-99184, IIS-00-82961 and IIS-01-21239, and gifts from Alias Systems and Microsoft Corporation.

Any opinions, findings, and conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or any other organization supporting this work.
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Please send comments to Sinem Güven at <sinem@cs.columbia.edu>