Towards complete digital twins in cultural heritage with ART3mis 3D artifacts annotator
This addresses the problem of limited generalization and interoperability in existing tools for cultural heritage specialists, though it appears incremental as it builds on prior annotation strategies.
The paper tackles the need for better annotation and metadata attachment to 3D digital artifacts in cultural heritage by introducing ART3mis, a web-based tool that enables non-experts to segment and annotate 3D replicas with compliance to the W3C Web Annotation Data Model for improved interoperability.
Archaeologists, as well as specialists and practitioners in cultural heritage, require applications with additional functions, such as the annotation and attachment of metadata to specific regions of the 3D digital artifacts, to go beyond the simplistic three-dimensional (3D) visualization. Different strategies addressed this issue, most of which are excellent in their particular area of application, but their capacity is limited to their design's purpose; they lack generalization and interoperability. This paper introduces ART3mis, a general-purpose, user-friendly, feature-rich, interactive web-based textual annotation tool for 3D objects. Moreover, it enables the communication, distribution, and reuse of information as it complies with the W3C Web Annotation Data Model. It is primarily designed to help cultural heritage conservators, restorers, and curators who lack technical expertise in 3D imaging and graphics, handle, segment, and annotate 3D digital replicas of artifacts with ease.