Discover how the EUreka3D project supports 3D in the data space for cultural heritage

About the project

The EUreka3D project began on 1 January 2023 as a data space supporting project funded by the European Commission’s Digital Europe Programme. The project aims to support the digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector, with a specific focus on 3D. Its work is in line with the recent European Commission Recommendation that demands Member States and cultural institutions make an urgent effort to digitise heritage in 3D, and make it available online for reuse.

However, cultural heritage institutions face various challenges concerning the creation, storage, visualisation and preservation of 3D models of cultural heritage, which are significantly more complex than 2D collections. EUreka3D is working to provide support, capacity building and some solutions to these challenges. This will be achieved through the development of the EUreka3D platform, a pilot e-infrastructure including various useful features that institutions can use in managing their 3D assets and related information, and by producing training resources. In addition, at the end of the project, EUreka3D will aggregate around 5,000 new digital records to Europeana.eu, and develop editorials and example re-use cases for this content in areas such as education and tourism.

The EUreka3D platform

The EUreka3D pilot platform offers solutions to cultural institutions for data, metadata and paradata management and for delivery of 3D collections to users. The platform currently under development aims to include various features, such as,

• Secure authentication and authorisation mechanisms, to protect 3D objects from manipulation or unauthorised access;

• Storage of models in original formats (often with very large file sizes), and conversion/visualisation features that enable the object to be displayed online;

• Metadata and paradata models compatible with the Europeana Data Model;

• Interoperability with established tools and procedures like MINT and METIS:

• Harvesting functionality to provide the individual object or datasets to Europeana for publication;

• Integration with EOSC, the European Open Science Cloud for research.

A demo event organised in December 2023 presented the progress of the development midway through the project timeframe, allowing for feedback, advice and recommendations to be collected. The image below depicts the EUreka3D workflow, covering three big blocks: the digitisation process (capture), the upload and management of data in the platform (cloud) and the release of data and services to end users and external applications (delivery).

Building capacity in the data space - and beyond

During 2023 Eureka 3D organised several events to support and build capacity in cultural professionals, students and technology partners who want to work with 3D: the information and resources from these sessions are available on the project website, and more events will be organised during 2024.

At these events, project partners also gained feedback and insight from participants, especially about requirements for 3D, such as: the need to access tools and resources (especially storage); the need to better understand the formats available for different purposes of preservation and reuse of 3D models; the need to better understand what types of information on the creation process (i.e. the paradata) are important to be collected and why they are important. These requirements need to be taken into account for further training actions.

The next step of EUreka3D in the future will be to build applications that will use the EUreka3D platform to enable the creation of cultural experiences with the content, for research, educational, touristic, social and entertainment activities, in the data space and onsite.

Impact of 3D collections, and inspiring examples

As part of Eureka3D's capacity building activities, the project is developing use cases to show how 3D offers new ways to stimulate interest in cultural heritage, by enabling the creation of more advanced collections to represent not only cultural objects but also the story and memories associated with them. This enhances storytelling and knowledge sharing, also breaking borders related to age, social status or cultural background of the public (especially digital natives), to support the mission of heritage institutions.

For example, partner CRDI is providing a 3D collection of pre-cinema heritage equipment and objects precursors of film that are on display at the Cinema Museum in Girona, but cannot be touched or interacted with. Having detailed 3D models will support the Museum in boosting visitors’ engagement, for example by creating 3D printed replicas of the objects, to be used by visually impaired visitors or to view internal parts and fragile mechanisms; by creating new virtual scenarios onsite and enriched experiences for online visitors; and by giving access to a complete and realistic vision of the cultural object with all the knowledge associated with it.

Other institutions in the project are undertaking 3D digitisation of different types of objects: Cyprus University of Technology is currently working on reproducing the advanced 3D model for an historical boat in Limassol, and other monuments will follow; Bibracte is creating a collection of artefacts as exhibited in their museum, and also terrain models for the archaeological site; and Museo della Carta di Pescia is preparing 3D models from the collection of ancient paper mould, a type of heritage almost unknown relating to the traditional paper manufacturing industry.

These are just examples of the possibilities of 3D, and there are plenty of opportunities to further explore: EUreka3D aims to foster dialogue between stakeholders in the cultural sector (institutions, but also professionals, researchers, creative industry) to build together knowledge and ideas that unlock the potential of 3D digitisation for all the communities, which is in line with the remit of the data space for cultural heritage.

Find out more about the project

Find out more about EUreka3D and its progress on the project website and Europeana Pro project page. You can also find out more about Twin it! 3D for Europe’s culture.

This post was written collaboratively by Valentina Bachi, Antonella Fresa, David Iglésias and Ignacio Lamata Martínez, project partners of EUreka3D.