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“DigiGlue”

Digitization & repositioning of 2.5-D plaster fragments with Roman mural painting

Preservation of Roman wall plaster fragments in the European Cultural Park Bliesbruck-Reinheim before use in the DigiGlue project of the MusterFabrik Berlin.
Preservation of the Roman wall plaster fragments in the European Cultural Park Bliesbruck-Reinheim © MusterFabrik Berlin

On the German side of the European Cultural Park Bliesbruck-Reinheim (Saarland), about 12,000 fragments of Roman wall plaster painted in different colors have been found in recent years. The fragments are very well preserved and suggest a complex decoration.

The MusterFabrik Berlin was commissioned by the Saarland State Office for the Protection of Monuments at the end of 2019 to develop a prototype system for digitizing and virtually puzzling the plaster fragments (“DigiGlue”), following an on-site visit conducted jointly in summer 2018 with the Saarland Ministry of Culture, the Saarland State Office for the Protection of Monuments (LDA), and the Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK. The objectives of this 18-month project, in collaboration with Fraunhofer IPK, are to build a 2.5-D scanning system for double-sided scanning of fragments and to develop a computer-based assistance system for digital handling and interactive digital repositioning of 2.5-D objects.

Development of an assistance system for the digitization and repositioning of 2.5-D plaster fragments with Roman mural painting (“DigiGlue”)

Fragments with Roman wall painting before use in the DigiGlue project of the MusterFabrik Berlin.
Fragments with Roman wall painting from the European Cultural Park Bliesbruck-Reinheim © MusterFabrik Berlin

The system development is based on a prototype developed by MusterFabrik Berlin for the digitization and repositioning of glass mosaic fragments: by recording the planar front sides with motifs in 2-D and the depth information of the back sides in 3-D, the problem is reduced to a 2-D puzzle taking into account the depth information of the fragments, thus avoiding the high data volume of a full 3-D scan. The images of the front and back sides are taken in a single scan pass without rotating the fragments, thus protecting the fragile and brittle scan material from (further) damage.

DigiGlue: a prototypical system for digitizing and virtual puzzling of Roman plaster fragments

The DigiGlue system was installed at the Bliesbruck-Reinheim European Cultural Park in the fall of 2021. The initial results are extremely satisfactory. Since the start of operations in spring 2022, several thousand fragments have been digitized and individual partial reconstructions have already been formed.

Motif and render area of the front and elevation map of a 2.5-D scan in the DigiGlue project at MusterFabrik Berlin
Subject and plaster area of the front (left) and elevation map (right) of a 2.5-D scan © MusterFabrik Berlin

Videos about the digitization process and the virtual puzzle in the DigiGlue project

Digitization of the Roman mural fragments

Illustrative explanation of the individual steps in the digitization of fragile cultural assets (text only in German)

Capturing task-specific metadata

Short representation of the input of metadata that is given to each fragment (text only in German)

Further processing and virtual puzzling of the digitized objects

Detailed explanation of the various possibilities in the repo GUI of the assistance system (text only in German)

Further information on the project “Digital Repositioning of Roman Mural Paintings” can be found here:


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