The GigaMesh Software Framework is a

free and open-source software Free and open-source software (FOSS) is software available under a license that grants users the right to use, modify, and distribute the software modified or not to everyone free of charge. FOSS is an inclusive umbrella term encompassing free ...

for display, editing and visualization of 3D-data typically acquired with

structured light upright=1.3, A structured light pattern projected onto a surface (left) Structured light is a method that measures the shape and depth of a three-dimensional object by projecting a pattern of light onto the object's surface. The pattern can be ...

structure from motion Structure from motion (SfM) is a photogrammetric range imaging technique for estimating three-dimensional structures from two-dimensional image sequences that may be coupled with local motion signals. It is a classic problem studied in the fiel ...

. It provides numerous functions for analysis of

archaeological Archaeology or archeology is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of Artifact (archaeology), artifacts, architecture, biofact (archaeology), biofacts or ecofacts, ...

objects like cuneiform tablets,

ceramics A ceramic is any of the various hard, brittle, heat-resistant, and corrosion-resistant materials made by shaping and then firing an inorganic, nonmetallic material, such as clay, at a high temperature. Common examples are earthenware, porce ...

or converted

LiDAR Lidar (, also LIDAR, an acronym of "light detection and ranging" or "laser imaging, detection, and ranging") is a method for determining ranging, ranges by targeting an object or a surface with a laser and measuring the time for the reflected li ...

data. Typically applications are unwrappings (or rollouts),

profile cuts Profile or profiles may refer to: Art, entertainment and media Music * ''Profile'' (Jan Akkerman album), 1973 * ''Profile'' (Githead album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Pat Donohue album), 2005 * ''Profile'' (Duke Pearson album), 1959 * '' ''Profi ...

(or cross sections) as well as visualizations of

distance Distance is a numerical or occasionally qualitative measurement of how far apart objects, points, people, or ideas are. In physics or everyday usage, distance may refer to a physical length or an estimation based on other criteria (e.g. "two co ...

s and

curvature In mathematics, curvature is any of several strongly related concepts in geometry that intuitively measure the amount by which a curve deviates from being a straight line or by which a surface deviates from being a plane. If a curve or su ...

, which can be exported as

raster graphics upright=1, The Smiley, smiley face in the top left corner is a raster image. When enlarged, individual pixels appear as squares. Enlarging further, each pixel can be analyzed, with their colors constructed through combination of the values for ...

vector graphics Vector graphics are a form of computer graphics in which visual images are created directly from geometric shapes defined on a Cartesian plane, such as points, lines, curves and polygons. The associated mechanisms may include vector displ ...

. The retrieval of text in 3D like damaged cuneiform tablets or

weathered ''Weathered'' is the third studio album by American rock band Creed, released on November 20, 2001. It was the last Creed album to be released until '' Full Circle'' came out in October 2009, with Creed disbanding in June 2004. It is the only Cr ...

medieval

headstones A gravestone or tombstone is a marker, usually stone, that is placed over a grave. A marker set at the head of the grave may be called a headstone. An especially old or elaborate stone slab may be called a funeral stele, stela, or slab. The us ...

using Multi Scale Integral Invariant (MSII)

filtering Filtration is a physical process that separates solid matter and fluid from a mixture. Filter, filtering, filters or filtration may also refer to: Science and technology Computing * Filter (higher-order function), in functional programming * Fil ...

is a core function of the software. Furthermore, small or faint surface details like

fingerprints A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surf ...

can be visualized. The polygonal meshes of the 3D-models can be inspected, cleaned and repaired to provide optimal filtering results. The repaired datasets are suitable for

3D printing 3D printing, or additive manufacturing, is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer ...

and for

digital publishing Electronic publishing (also referred to as e-publishing, digital publishing, or online publishing) includes the digital publication of e-books, digital magazines, and the development of digital libraries and catalogues. It also includes the ed ...

in a

dataverse The Dataverse is an open source web application to share, preserve, cite, explore and analyze research data. Researchers, data authors, publishers, data distributors, and affiliated institutions all receive appropriate credit via a data citation ...

Name and logo

The name "GigaMesh" refers to the processing of large 3D-datasets and relates intentionally to the mythical

Sumer Sumer () is the earliest known civilization, located in the historical region of southern Mesopotamia (now south-central Iraq), emerging during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age, early Bronze Ages between the sixth and fifth millennium BC. ...

ian king

Gilgamesh Gilgamesh (, ; ; originally ) was a hero in ancient Mesopotamian mythology and the protagonist of the ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', an epic poem written in Akkadian during the late 2nd millennium BC. He was possibly a historical king of the Sumer ...

and his heroic epic described on a set of clay tablets. The central element of the logo is the

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

sign 𒆜 (kaskal) meaning street or

road junction A junction is where two or more roads meet. History Roads are a means of transport, historically linking locations such as towns, forts and geographic features such as river fords. Where roads met outside of an existing settlement, these junct ...

, which symbolizes the intersection of the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including Philosophy, certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term "humanities" referred to the study of classical literature a ...

and

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

. The surrounding circle refers to the integral invariant computation using a

spherical A sphere (from Ancient Greek, Greek , ) is a surface (mathematics), surface analogous to the circle, a curve. In solid geometry, a sphere is the Locus (mathematics), set of points that are all at the same distance from a given point in three ...

domain A domain is a geographic area controlled by a single person or organization. Domain may also refer to: Law and human geography * Demesne, in English common law and other Medieval European contexts, lands directly managed by their holder rather ...

. The red color is derived from

carmine Carmine ()also called cochineal (when it is extracted from the Cochineal, cochineal insect), cochineal extract, crimson Lake pigment, lake, or carmine lake is a pigment of a bright-red color obtained from the aluminium coordination complex, compl ...

, the color used by the Heidelberg University, where GigaMesh is developed.

Development and application in research projects

The development began in 2009 and was inspired by the edition project ''Keilschrifttexte aus

Assur Aššur (; AN.ŠAR2KI, Assyrian cuneiform: ''Aš-šurKI'', "City of God Aššur"; ''Āšūr''; ''Aθur'', ''Āšūr''; ', ), also known as Ashur and Qal'at Sherqat, was the capital of the Old Assyrian city-state (2025–1364 BC), the Midd ...

literarischen Inhalts'' (KAL, cuneiform texts with literary content) of the

Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities The Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (German: ''Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften''), established in 1909 in Heidelberg, Germany, is an assembly of scholars and scientists in the German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The acade ...

. In parallel it was applied within the Austrian Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum of the

Austrian Academy of Sciences The Austrian Academy of Sciences (; ÖAW) is a legal entity under the special protection of the Republic of Austria. According to the statutes of the Academy its mission is to promote the sciences and humanities in every respect and in every fi ...

for documentation of

red-figure pottery Red-figure pottery () is a style of Pottery of ancient Greece, ancient Greek pottery in which the background of the pottery is painted black while the figures and details are left in the natural red or orange color of the clay. It developed in A ...

. Current projects are funded by the DFG and the BMBF for contextualization and analysis of seals and sealings of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, where Thin Plate Splines are used for comparing sealings. Analog to the developments for processing cuneiform tablets there are further approaches for adaption of the combined

Computer Vision Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...

and

Machine Learning Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...

methods for other ''Scripts in 3D''. An example is the application within the Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan. In 2017 GigaMesh was tested by the DAI at an excavation in Guadalupe, near

Trujillo, Honduras Trujillo is a city, with a population of 22,750 (2023 calculation), and a municipality on the northern Caribbean coast of the Honduran department of Colón, of which the city is the capital. The municipality had a population of about 30,000 ( ...

for immediate visualization of in-situ acquired findings with different 3D-scanners including a comparison with manual drawings. Since then GigaMesh is permanently used by the excavation team, their feedback led to numerous changes to the GUI, improving the user experience (UX). Additionally online tutorials are published having a focus on tasks required to compile excavation reports. The ''Scanning for Syria'' (SfS) project of the

Leiden University Leiden University (abbreviated as ''LEI''; ) is a Public university, public research university in Leiden, Netherlands. Established in 1575 by William the Silent, William, Prince of Orange as a Protestantism, Protestant institution, it holds the d ...

used GigaMesh in 2018 for 3D reconstruction of molds of tablets lost in ar-Raqqa,

Syria Syria, officially the Syrian Arab Republic, is a country in West Asia located in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. It borders the Mediterranean Sea to the west, Turkey to Syria–Turkey border, the north, Iraq to Iraq–Syria border, t ...

based on Micro-CT-scans. As a follow-up project the

TU Delft The Delft University of Technology (TU Delft; ) is the oldest and largest Dutch public university, public Institute of technology, technical university, located in Delft, Netherlands. It specializes in engineering, technology, computing, design, a ...

acquired further Micro-CT-scans for virtually extracting clay tablets still wrapped into clay envelopes, which are unopened for thousands of years. In May 2020 the SfS project won the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage of the Europa Nostra in the category research. A first version (190416) for Windows was released in preparation for presentations about new functions shown at the international CAA 2019. The

command line interface A command-line interface (CLI) is a means of interacting with software via commands each formatted as a line of text. Command-line interfaces emerged in the mid-1960s, on computer terminals, as an interactive and more user-friendly alternati ...

of GigaMesh is well suited to process large amounts of 3D-measurement data within repositories. This was demonstrated with almost 2.000 cuneiform tablets of the Hilprecht Collection of the

Jena University The University of Jena, officially the Friedrich Schiller University Jena (, abbreviated FSU, shortened form ''Uni Jena''), is a public research university located in Jena, Thuringia, Germany. The university was established in 1558 and is c ...

, which were processed and digitally published as benchmarkdatabase (HeiCuBeDa) for ''machine learning'' as well as database of images including 3D- and meta-data (HeiCu3Da) using

CC BY A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work". A CC license is used when an author wants to give other people the right to share, use, and bui ...

licenses. A baseline for period classification of tablets was established using a ''Geometric Neural Network'' being a

Convolutional Neural Network A convolutional neural network (CNN) is a type of feedforward neural network that learns features via filter (or kernel) optimization. This type of deep learning network has been applied to process and make predictions from many different ty ...

typically used for 3D-datasets. In 2023, an extension of the dataset was published containing extracted images of cuneiform characters, cuneiform lines and individual annotated cuneiform characters. The annotations are made available together with the renderings with metadata as CSV and a knowledge graph (RDF). These developments were created in the context of the DFG project "Digital Edition of Cuneiform Texts from Haft Tappeh" in Mainz. The acronym ''MaiCuBeDa'' is derived from the project location. This provided the first results for the localization of cuneiform characters and their wedges, which show that MSII rendering improves the recognition quality for photos. The

Louvre The Louvre ( ), or the Louvre Museum ( ), is a national art museum in Paris, France, and one of the most famous museums in the world. It is located on the Rive Droite, Right Bank of the Seine in the city's 1st arrondissement of Paris, 1st arron ...

showed GigaMesh based rollouts of an

Aryballos An aryballos ( Greek: ἀρύβαλλος; plural aryballoi) was a small spherical or globular flask with a narrow neck used in Ancient Greece."aryballos" in '' The New Encyclopædia Britannica''. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 15th edn ...

from the collection of the KFU Graz representing the use of digital methods for research on

pottery of ancient Greece Pottery, due to its relative durability, comprises a large part of the archaeological record of ancient Greece, and since there is so much of it (over 100,000 painted vases are recorded in the Corpus vasorum antiquorum), it has exerted a dispro ...

within the CVA project, which had its 100th anniversary in 2019. Renderings of the rollouts were on display in the second half of 2019 in the display case named ''L’ère du numèrique et de l’imagerie scientifique'' (the digital era and scientific imaging). Version 191219 supports Texture maps common for 3D-data captured using photogrammetry. This allows processing and in particular unwrapping of objects acquired with Structure-from-Motion widely used for documentation of

Cultural Heritage Cultural heritage is the heritage of tangible and intangible heritage assets of a group or society that is inherited from past generations. Not all heritages of past generations are "heritage"; rather, heritage is a product of selection by socie ...

and in archaeology. The

Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties The , also known by its former name, the Nara Research Institute for Cultural Properties, is one of two research institutes that comprise the National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, an independent administrative institution created in 2001. Es ...

in Japan adapted GigaMesh for documentation and rollouts of vessels and published a tutorial, which was used to implement the workflow for ceramics of the

Jōmon period In Japanese history, the is the time between , during which Japan was inhabited by the Jōmon people, a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united by a common culture, which reached a considerable degree of sedentism an ...

within the Togariishi Museum of Jōmon Archaeology. In April 2020 the source code was published on

GitLab GitLab is a software forge primarily developed by GitLab Inc. It is available as a community edition and a commercial edition. History GitLab was created in 2011 by Ukrainian programmer Dmitriy Zaporozhets as a side project written in Rub ...

and the license changed from

freeware Freeware is software, often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines ''freeware'' unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the free ...

to the GPL. Version 200529 allows for the first time to apply the MSII filter using the graphical user interface to visualize the smallest details like fingerprints. The DFG funded ''edition of texts from

Haft Tepe Haft Tepe (also Haft Tape) is an archaeological site situated in the Khuzestan Province in south-western Iran, about 15 kilometers southwest of the ancient city of Susa. At this site the possible remains of the Elamite city of Kabnak were discover ...

'' project is using MSII filtered renderings of tablets in the so-called ''fat-cross'' arrangement of side views. GigaMesh is increasingly being used in areas that have methodological overlap with archaeology, such as

geoengineering Geoengineering (also known as climate engineering or climate intervention) is the deliberate large-scale interventions in the Earth’s climate system intended to counteract human-caused climate change. The term commonly encompasses two broad cate ...

for the analysis of

seashells A seashell or sea shell, also known simply as a shell, is a hard, protective outer layer usually created by an animal or organism that lives in the sea. Most seashells are made by mollusks, such as snails, clams, and oysters to protec ...

File formats and research data infrastructures

Primarily the Polygon File Format is supported and used to store additional information from the processing. This is not possible with the — additionally supported — Wavefront OBJ due to its specification. It is possible to export meshes in the

glTF glTF (Graphics Library Transmission Format or GL Transmission Format and formerly known as WebGL Transmissions Format or WebGL TF) is a standard file format for three-dimensional scenes and models. A glTF file uses one of two possible file exte ...

fileformat. The marking of interpolated points and triangles by filling voids in the triangular grid represents meta-information to be captured e.g. in the context of the National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) in Germany. Other metadata such as inventory numbers, material, and

hyperlinks In computing, a hyperlink, or simply a link, is a digital reference providing direct access to data by a user's clicking or tapping. A hyperlink points to a whole document or to a specific element within a document. Hypertext is text with ...

Digital Object Identifier A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; th ...

s (DOIs) can be captured. In addition, there is the ability to calculate topological metrics that describe the quality of a 3D measurement dataset.

References

, cf. doi:10.11588/heidok.00026892 , KBytes: 48600 , KBytes: 900 , KBytes: 8700
heiDATA — IWR Computer Graphics Dataverse
in der Universitätsbibliothek Heidelberg

External links

GigaMesh.eu
- website of the GigaMesh Software Frameworks including tutorials, publications and downloads
ResearchGate
- additional project website and blog
''Cuneur - Keilschrift beschriften''
an annotation tool for cuneiform tablets represented by renderings, images stacks and photographs {{DEFAULTSORT:GigaMesh Software Framework 2009 software 3D graphics software that uses Qt 3D modeling software for Linux Computer-aided design software for Linux Free 3D graphics software Free computer-aided design software Free graphics software Free software programmed in C++ Windows software Video game development software Computational archaeology 3D computer graphics software for Linux

Name and logo

Development and application in research projects

File formats and research data infrastructures

See also

References

External links