Virtual clones for cultural heritage applications

Digital technologies are now mature for producing high quality digital replicas of Cultural Heritage (CH) artifacts. The research results produced in the last decade have shown an impressive evolution and consolidation of the technologies for acquiring high-quality digital 3D models, encompassing both geometry and color (or, better, surface reflectance properties). Some recent technologies for constructing 3D models enriched by a high-quality encoding of the color attribute will be presented. The focus of this paper is to show and discuss practical solutions, which could be deployed without requiring the installation of a specific or sophisticated acquisition lab setup. In the second part of this paper, we focus on new solutions for the interactive visualization of complex models, adequate for modern communication channels such as the web and the mobile platforms. Together with the algorithms and approaches, we show also some practical examples where high-quality 3D models have been used in CH research, restoration and conservation.