Walking with Olympians

The Hellenic Ministry of Culture leant the Powerhouse Museum, in Sydney, artefact material for an exhibition as part of the Sydney 2000 Olympics. It was decided that a 3D virtual reality tour of Olympia, in 200BC, would be used to supprot the more 'traditional' aspects of the exhibition. This project involved:

- creating a virtual facsimile of the Statue of Zues from the Athens Museum
- designing and installing 3D display systems
- making the material available on the supporting website
- producing a CD-ROM version for distribution to schools in Australia

To complete this task field surveys were undertaken to connect archealogical plans to topography. Every building on site in 200BC was constructed in a 3D CAD package from the field measurements and the archealogical plans. These models were exported to the animation package, 3D Studio Max, modified, texture mapped and incorporated into the site model.

For the tour visitors decided which way to turn at various decision points controlled by a mouse. Photographic panoramas of the site were include at specific locations within the Olympia tour. The 3D 'interactive' experience used polarised glasses and filters to facilitate te experience.

The second part of the project was to construct the Statue of Zues, which was done by using a laser scanner to measure a set of data points over the statue. This data was then used to facilitate the modelling of the statue in the animation package.