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Storytelling with 3D and Virtual Tours

Museum expert Rachael Woody’s webinar, “Storytelling with 3D and Virtual Tours,” offers an introduction to the power of 3D and virtual tours in museums via two compelling examples: the Tomb of Queen Meresankh III and Art of Intimidation, Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East.
Read Transcription
Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for today’s webinar with Rachel Christine Woody. My name is Bradley and I will be your moderator for this webinar titled Storytelling with three d and Virtual Tours.

Before we start, I would like to provide some information about our company and introduce today’s presenter. Lucidea is a software developing company specialized in museum and archival collections management solutions, as well as knowledge management and library automation systems. Our brands include Sydney, Presto, Argus, ArchivEra, Eloquent, and CuadraSTAR.

Now I’d like to take a moment to introduce today’s presenter, Rachel Christine Woody. Rachel is the owner of Relicura and provides services to museums, libraries, and archives. She specializes in museum collections management systems, digitization technology, digital project management, and digital usership. During the course of her career, she has successfully launched multiple digital projects that include advanced digitization technology, collaborative portals, and the migration of collection information into collections management systems. And she is also a popular guest author for Lucidea’s Think Clearly blog, so please feel free to check out her blog post after today’s webinar. Thanks, and take it away, Rachel.

Thank you so much, Bradley. Thank you to Lucidea for hosting us today, and, of course, thank you for attending.

Today, we are continuing the storytelling series and specifically thinking about digital storytelling with the use of three-dimensional or otherwise three d and the concept of virtual tours. So we’ve got a couple exciting examples that sort of take a look at and dissect with our typical storytelling framework and many of these are things that we can replicate on our own whether using our collections management system, our museum website, or any other sort of storytelling sort of platform or technology.

So quick introduction to three d and virtual tours.

Last time we spent together, we talked about the concept of scrolly telling, which is storytelling but on a website platform where you navigate the story from top to bottom or essentially scrolling top to bottom and parts of the story will reveal or become engaging as you proceed through it.

This is a similar concept now as we’re moving to digitally recreated three-dimensional spaces and with that the concept of a virtual tour through that space. Now of course we could use this technology for the just the stated purpose of offering a three-dimensional tour using either like a virtual reality or even augmented reality for the investigation of or exploration of those spaces.

However, we’re going sort of a step beyond this to have that storytelling layer where it’s no longer just a self guided investigation of the space it is providing a story structure and of course imparting information and the typical features we see with a story as you navigate that three-dimensional space.

So with each of these we’ll take a look at the example. We’ll do a little recap of storytelling infrastructure so that you can sort of recognize the infrastructure we see in all of the different examples we’ve covered thus far.

So first up our example is tomb of Queen Meresankh III and for this particular example it’s an online exhibit is how it describes itself.

It is the exhibit for Queen Meresankh III and the particular three d space we’ll be investigating or exploring in this particular story is her tomb.

And the digital publishing platform for this example and the other one we’ll be looking at is called Mused m u s e d, muse dot com. And if you go to their website, they have dozens and dozens of examples now of sort of similar spaces and concepts that you can explore and sort of see iterations of different features being available different deployments for different three d spaces and stories so and of course a link to go check out the example because I’m sure once you see some of the stuff today there might be more you want to explore.

So for the tomb of Queen Meresankh III the storytelling in the storytelling infrastructure that we can recognize is that the story path is multiple pathways and there is a guided option for this particular story example.

So you could do it either way you could self explore or you could follow the narrative through line because you can explore the story in sort of any direction and and with multiple decisions you can make at any point.

It makes it a multiple pathways story path.

We also have some performance types with this example. With this one, it’s a more traditional written and visual performance types to Queen Meresankh III.

Even though it is incredibly impressive and advanced, it is also one of the earlier examples that Muse has put together so some of the functions and features we have are really great but they they tend to also be limited compared to others.

And then of course the sensory setting we have some different senses in this there’s of course their use of lighting and especially within a recreated three-dimensional space and one that is a tomb. It’s interesting how they’ve deployed lighting to sort of replicate if we were there in person.

We of course have great colors in this three d space. It is accurate in terms of we’re seeing colors as they’re presented or as they were scanned versus any sort of like black and white recreation and then also some great texture sort of sensory provision because again the three-dimensional space and depending on the space and how it was scanned for example if it was using LiDAR scanning we can get some great exact measurements of each and every space as well as the texturing of that space so deployed in this tomb type setting makes it just very visually rich.

And then in terms of the tools so as we’ve sort of gone through the past few examples together in these webinars we’re pointing out some very similar tools. So we have some familiar ones that we saw when we were looking at scrolly telling just in the last webinar, and then there are a couple of new ones that either due to technology or the fact that it is a three-dimensional space, there is some some exciting new ones for us to cover. So for this particular example, we are going to take a look at hot spots, which is a familiar one that we’ve looked at before in the scrollytelling platforms.

There are, pointing out of additional points of interest as well as materials from the archive, which both sort of serve to tie in related materials or related, historical resources in this case, as well as materials from the archive that have information from the exclamation of this particular tomb. So both we’ve sort of seen in different iterations in our past examples in the scrolly telling webinar and we get to see them here in a sort of a different deployment.

And then a new one for us given that it is a three-dimensional space this particular example supports views and measurement so beyond navigating the virtual three-dimensional space we also have I think it’s like dollhouse view or architectural view as well as being able to like literally get out a digital tape measure to measure some of the spaces which for us as story enjoyers may not be necessary but you can easily see how this would be appealing especially perhaps in a scholar environment or for people who are on-site attempting to plan and execute preservation of the particular site So some great tools here especially for our field.

So taking a look at the actual deployment the first one up is the hot spots tool. So this is just as you enter You can notice some of the gorgeous lighting that they have captured, digitally and have been able to accurately recreate in this three-dimensional space. So just a just it’s such a small thing that adds to the it feels like you’re really there in real time. And then the tool, of course, that we are focusing on other than the lighting, which I am apparently very excited about is the hot spots. So we have these very, light but still very visually identifiable little circles on the floor, at least for this particular snapshot.

Each of those little circles are navigation points but they’re also hot spots for information. So if you were using virtual reality goggles with the virtual reality hand selection and movement options you could move yourself there when you are in that state or if you’re just computer with mouse you can also go and click on those particular hot spots to not only get you to those different parts of the tomb but also to reveal additional information.

So as you get going you can see where you can do a multiple pathway where you can either click the next button and have the platform take you to the next point in the sequence or you yourself can direct to what you want to see next.

The next tool the additional points of interest this particular stop on the tour so to speak or stop on the story we have some textual information that helps to explain what we’re looking at as well as a link to a separate but related resource. So in this particular example, we have a link to learn more about decolonizing Meresankh with professor etc. So you can go and click on that particular scholarly article and have it be related to the actual story that you were learning more about. So it’s a great connection of resources that aren’t necessarily specifically related or incorporated, but from a subject or academic standpoint would be a point of related interest.

Another tool that we’ll see in some of these examples is the incorporation of the archives. And because this particular site is an archaeological site, the archival collection is from the excavations of the tomb.

This particular tomb was apparently rediscovered and excavated in nineteen twenty seven, so almost one hundred years ago now. And the archival collection they have contains the black and white photographs of the site as they opened the door. So you can see excuse me. You can see the dirt pile where you are standing where that would be covering up the beautiful artwork on the wall as well as some of the niche, niche areas where the statues are. And then of course you could go and check more about the excavation under that particular resource.

Now the views and measurements. So this is the newer tool I was telling you about which makes sense to deploy in a three-dimensional setting.

You are familiar with the you know you’re in it and you’re seeing the story you’re on-site as one view. You can also navigate to a few different views. So this particular one that we are looking at is the dollhouse view. So you can see the different layers essentially as if you were looking into the different floors of a dollhouse.

You’ll notice it gives you an orientation point which is very important when we’re looking through and navigating these examples. There’s a circular red dot at the very bottom basement level which is where I was at before I moved us out to the dollhouse view. So you’ve got orientation to where you’re at in these sort of stratted layers.

On the left hand side is yet another incorporation of archival material. So we’re seeing a black and white photograph of what this particular location in the what I’m calling the basement in the lower level.

In its excavation period. So some great resources happening here connection to the archives as well as a different type of view. You’ll notice in that bottom left hand corner is the person sort of in a walking stance is the sort of layout stance or the the dollhouse sort of ruler angle ruler and then an actual linear ruler on that right hand side. So the person in the walking stance that was the view we were in when we were actually in it and navigating in that default view. The angled sort of measurement looking thing is of course this architectural or dollhouse view and the linear ruler is what you could click on to use to measure the different spaces in this particular three-dimensional reconstruction.

So some great different visual tools to play with as well as ability to get additional information out of the story that’s being presented and then applied to in this case whoever was interested in taking the measurements perhaps for preservation purposes perhaps for remapping or or different sort of research.

The next example we’re going to look at is also self described as an online exhibit but definitely has a feeling of being told a story and we’ll get into that a little bit more in just a moment.

The title of it is Art of Intimidation and this particular exhibit is from Harvard Museum of the Ancient Near East and the digital publishing platform is also muse dot com so it’s Harvard Museum partnering with muse dot com to produce this particular digital story. So this is also publicly available and not behind a paywall so I definitely recommend you check it out.

Before we get into some of the visuals the storytelling infrastructure we’ve got the story path unlike the Meresankh example that we just looked at this particular one is very prescriptive While you could go off and see a couple additional points of interest in the space the dictation or intention of that story is linear so any sort of enjoyment of that story narrative will be a linear pathway.

The storytelling performances, we have a couple. We have oral tradition, which is the story being told to us as an oration or a narration.

We have then also the more traditional written and visual elements of the story.

We then for the sensory setting, we have color but we also have the addition of sound both for the narration but also for some of the other storytelling elements that we’ll see in just a moment. And then of course another beautiful recreation of texture for this particular story. It is focused on ancient Sumer and so the areas and reliefs that we’re seeing are incredibly textural three d relief type things so the deployment of it in a three-dimensional space to be recreated makes a lot of sense.

All right, there are two main tools here so a little less tools than Meresankh but also the deployment of these few tools is pretty impressive so you can see for deployment of these few tools is pretty impressive. So you can see perhaps why they narrowed in on the deployment of just a few.

The first one which is new for us as we’re exploring these tools is the concept of the tour guide or the narrator.

This is essentially an animated narrator that’s going to guide us through the story of this particular space and collection and is the application of that animation within a real space really takes us I think to a next level in terms of the deployment of three-dimensional space with also the deployment of creative art on top.

And then another tool is the animation through augmented reality. So we’ll be looking at essentially literal space and literal objects but they’re incorporating animation of some of those reliefs to help tell and further animate in a different descriptive way the story and reliefs that we are looking at.

So here’s a tour guide narrator.

He is introduced on the landing page. This is what you see as you navigate to the website and so they this particular narrator is described as I think a palace guard and he’s the one that’s going to lead you around essentially like the palace courtyard under the sort of storytelling pretense that you are there to make some sort of appeal or visit with the king. So while you’re waiting the tour guide is taking you through and telling you all about the king’s triumphs, his lineage, any sort of accomplishments or memorable stories about the king as you wait to meet him.

So once you click the start button, the tour guide will move with you to prescribed points along the pathway within that space.

While the storytelling concept is that we’re sort of back in this ancient courtyard, we of course can visually recognize that we’re in Harvard Museum. And so in this case, it’s a three d space that is recreated of the museum space but also recreation of the reliefs and artifacts that are in that space.

As we go through the narrator will both audibly tell you as well as have text appear above in terms of what you’re looking at and how that connects to the story.

You see the reliefs behind the tour guide and these reliefs I think it is important to mention when we see them in this day and age most of them are usually stone colored you know very similar to when we think about the sphinx or Grecian statues even those were all painted back in their original time and of course over the years etc the painting or the coloring has gone away and so all we have is these the stone reliefs. So it’s notable here that in the use of augmented reality tools, they are not only applying color here where color was likely implemented, and instead there’s a whole subset of scholarship in terms of the testing they can do to actually accurately determine the colors used.

And so they are applying color here, but they are also going one step further. And so these reliefs while they’re sort of frozen in time when we are looking at them with the tour guide the augmented reality animates these reliefs and it’s mesmerizing.

So as you go through the story that’s being told in the reliefs will animate as the narrator is explaining to you what is happening in each of these reliefs and ultimately the overall or deeper meaning to us understanding the king. So an amazing deployment definitely go check it out.

So for us we covered the concept of three-dimensional space and telling stories within it and very much using a virtual tour concept with Meresankh it was that sort of self guided or like multi pathway sort of navigation through the space whereas with our exploration of the king’s palace it was a more prescriptive tour but still very much you’re in that three-dimensional space and you’re receiving a story by virtue of touring through.

Great examples I encourage you to check them out because I only showed you a small snapshot of all the cool stuff that’s in there let alone the dozens and dozens of examples on muse dot com.

Just as a reminder we looked at the tomb of Queen Meresankh III and we looked at the art of intimidation from Harvard Museum. So I encourage you to check those out get inspiration even if you don’t have all the tools and technology available right away I think the execution can still provide quite a bit of inspiration for whatever sort of technology you do have access to and then of course your amazing collections that you’re the steward of that are ripe with stories for you to tell. So I hope you play around and enjoy.

Before I let you go the new book that lucidity and I have collaborated on the discover game changer is now available and you can get a free e copy courtesy of Lucidea Press this is a great book if you are thinking about your data and ways that you could further enhance your data to improve and facilitate discovery within your collections So if that is something exciting or appealing to you, go and grab a copy.

And with that, I will turn it back over to you, Bradley.

Thank you, Rachel, for the wonderful presentation. And if you’d like to learn more about our museum collections management system called Argus, please feel free to visit our website or reach out to us at sales@lucidea.com, and we’d be happy to have a chat with you.

And if you have any more questions on any of our software or our company, our contact details are listed on the screen. And please stay tuned for more webinars and content related to this to this series.

On behalf of the Lucidea team, I thank you all for attending today, and until next time. Thank you.

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