FOCUS K3D - Foster the Comprehension and Use of Knowledge intensive 3D media Newsletter 1 (August 2008), download at http://www.focusk3d.eu/downloads

1. Newsletter 01
august 08
FOster the Comprehension and USe of Knowledge intensive 3D media
Topics Editorial
FOCUS K3D aims to exchange and disseminate novel ideas and
1. Application Working
techniques in the emerging research field of semantic 3D
Groups (AWGs) media.
2. Benefits of The current role 3D content Bianca Falcidieno,
3D media are digital representations of either physically Project Coordinator
Participation existing objects or virtual objects that can be processed by computer ap-
plications. 3D content is widely recognised as the upcoming wave of digit-
3. Related Projects
al media and it is pushing a major technological revolution in the way we
4. Events see and navigate the Internet. Beside the impact on entertainment and
the 3D web, the ease of producing and/or collecting data in digital form
5. Project Partners has caused a gradual paradigm shift in various applied and scientific fields:
from physical prototypes and experience to virtual prototypes and simula-
tion. This shift has an enormous impact on a number of industrial and sci-
entific sectors, where 3D media are essential knowledge carriers and rep-
resent a huge economic factor.
What is 3D semantics?
Thanks to technological advances, we have plenty of tools for visualising,
streaming and interacting with 3D objects, even in very unspecialised web
contexts (e.g. SecondLife). On the other hand, tools for coding, extracting
and sharing the semantic content of 3D media are still far from being satis-
factory. Automatic classification of 3D databases, automatic 3D content an-
notation and content-based retrieval have raised many new research lines
that nowadays represent some of the key topics in Computer Graphics and
Vision research. At the same time, knowledge technologies, such as struc-
tured metadata, ontologies and reasoners, have proven to be extremely
useful to support a stable and standardised approach to content sharing,
but the development of these techniques for 3D content and knowledge in-
tensive scenarios is still in its infancy.
Why semantic 3D media?
The FOCUS K3D consortium members believe that semantic 3D media, as
the evolution of traditional graphics media, make it possible to use and
share 3D content of multiple forms, endowed with some kind of intelli-
gence, accessible and processable in digital form and in distributed or net-
Bridging geometry and semantics: worked environments. The success of semantic 3D media largely depends
body part annotation of a virtual human on the ability for advanced systems of providing efficient and effective
search capabilities, analysis mechanisms, and intuitive reuse and creation
facilities, concerning the content, semantics and context.
The project aims to exchange and disseminate novel ideas and techniques in the
emerging research field of semantic 3D media, contribute to identify current is-
sues on knowledge intensive 3D media, trace future research and technological
directions, and establish new partnerships to promote innovative projects ad-
dressing a highly multi-disciplinary community, both from academia and indus-
try: scientists not only in Computer Graphics but in all the disciplines that make
strong use of 3D modelling and simulation; professional developers of tools for
3D content creation and management; publishers/dealers of 3D repositories on
line; creators of digital 3D content.
Bianca Falcidieno
www.focusk3d.eu

2. Newsletter 01
1. Application The project focuses on four application development. Online versions of the
scenarios. Each scenario is considered questionnaires are available through the
Working in an Application Working Group (AWG). web portal of FOCUS K3D.
Groups Activities of the AWGs will be first fo- Each AWG will also take care of the as-
cused on the identification of the re- sessment of the current practices and
quirements of the involved user com- the analysis of the needs for advanced
munities. This will be realized through 3D content modelling and processing:
the distribution of a specific question- how usable/useful semantics-oriented
naire for each of the AWGs. techniques can be in the different ap-
plication domains, what kind of services
The aim of the questionnaire is to col- the users might wish to have their dis-
lect information about the use of current posal to handle the 3D knowledge work-
methodologies for handling 3D data, flow pipeline.
and to identify possible gaps and desid-
erata leading new lines for the research
AWG: Medicine and Medicine on the one hand and structur- In structural bioinformatics, a domain
al bioinformatics on the other hand are concerned with the relationship between
Bioinformatics
multi-disciplinary research fields featur- the structure of bio-molecules (nucleic
ing a subtle mix of geometric and knowl- acids and proteins) and their function,
edge based pieces of information. geometric information is paramount to
understand the way molecules adopt
In medicine, geometric representations their 3D structure (the folding problem)
are directly provided by acquisition sys- or assemble (the docking problem). En-
Contact person: tems (MRI, CT, etc), and are instrumen- dowing the geometry with complemen-
Frederic Cazals tal in modelling processes. On the oth- tary attributes (precise type or family of
Frederic.Cazals@sophia.inria.fr er hand, diagnosis, therapy planning molecules, known binders, connection
and legal medicine resort to knowledge to metabolic pathways, etc) in a biologi-
based technologies putting geometric cal environment also calls for knowledge
models in biological and pathological technologies.
contexts.
AWG: Gaming and Game research involves the creation of trends. Similarly, games are no long-
Simulation virtual worlds, in which physical and hu- er just played for fun. Impressive ex-
man behaviours are properly simulated. amples exist for the gainful application
Obviously, modelling and processing 3D of serious gaming in disaster planning,
content plays an important role in this product development and education.
application area. Up until recently, re-
search in gaming was not considered The multidisciplinarity and heterogene-
an academic activity. Even though re- ity of gaming and simulation is also re-
Contact person: search institutes were active and visible flected in the initial activities of this Ap-
Wolfgang Huerst in the various subfields, like graphics, plication Working Group. Members that
Wolfgang.Huerst@cs.uu.nl artificial intelligence and human-com- expressed their interest in FOCUS K3D-
puter interaction, their focus was not on related activities so far include tradition-
gaming and there was no synergy be- al game developers as well as groups
tween these domains. Only recently it working on serious gaming, universities
was realised that gaming is a mature and research labs as well as commer-
field with a high societal and economical cial vendors, museums, publishing com-
impact, which requires multidisciplinary panies, etc. However, they all share a
research. Involved disciplines include common interest, that is creating and
computer graphics, modelling and ani- modelling realistic 3D worlds and sce-
mation, (physical) simulation, artificial narios. Identifying the differences and
intelligence and agent technology, hu- connections between these different
man-computer interaction, and seman- groups, pinpointing relations among dif-
tics. However, gaming and simulation is ferent disciplines, highlighting shared
not only a multidisciplinary research ar- interests, and specifying needs for fur-
ea, but also a very heterogeneous ap- ther cooperation and future research
plication domain. For example, digit- are important but yet very challenging
al games are no longer just played on tasks. Given the encouraging feedback
PCs or game consoles in living rooms. and positive response we got for our in-
Instead, there is clear evidence that de- itial activities, we are sure that FOCUS
velopments like mobile and ubiquitous K3D will make some significant contri-
gaming are more than just temporary butions in this context.
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3. Newsletter 01
AWG: CAD/CAE and Product Modelling is the application sec- the mechanical behaviour of products is
Virtual Product tor that contributed most to the devel- rising increasingly fast.
opment of techniques for modelling and A crucial problem in product design is to
Modelling
processing digital 3D models. It can be develop efficient and effective methods
informally defined as the whole work- for design reuse. The product develop-
flow that stretches from an idea about ment process is one of the application
a new product (e.g. an appliance or a contexts where semantic web tech-
car), to the concept development and niques and ontologies are considered
shape design, and then to a series of promising for retrieval effectiveness and
Contact person: engineering-related steps such as test- online collaboration compared to con-
André Stork ing, manufacturing or machining the ventional methodologies. In the scien-
Andre.Stork@igd.fhg.de physical object. tific literature, several proposals exist to
employ ontologies for the knowledge-
More recently, many automotive and based formalisation of conceptual de-
aerospace companies have heavily in- sign know-how and intentions in order
vested in Virtual Product Modelling tech- to improve retrieval and design reuse
nologies. Although the digital mock-up but still a lot of work has to be done
(DMU) offers numerous tools for the dig- to couple the semantic information with
ital product development process, the the geometric aspects of digital shapes.
workflow of design and redesign is sig- At present the CAD/CAE AWG already
nificantly influenced by the usage of 3D comprehends members from automo-
data. Products are not just mechanical tive, the oil and the electronic engineer-
anymore; in fact, the share of electron- ing industry who expressed their inter-
ic components and software controlling est in the FOCUS K3D themes.
AWG: Archaeology and A large part of the European archaeo- flexibility in applications, while minimis-
Cultural Heritage logical and cultural heritage exists in ing human interaction during the mod-
digital collections (e.g. virtual muse- elling process. The association with se-
ums, digital libraries, scientific reposi- mantics is also crucial to visualise the
tories) which are becoming more and models properly and retrieve them ef-
more demanding in terms of manage- ficiently from large databases. Efficient
ment, preservation, and delivery mech- retrieval implies equipping 3D content
anisms. Images are probably the most with metadata related to both the whole
Contact person: common form of non-textual digital con- object and its subparts, developing au-
Marios Pitikakis tent stored, but three-dimensional (3D) tomatic metadata extraction tools and
Marios.Pitikakis@cereteth.gr content is expected to become predom- shape similarity mechanisms to com-
inant. This trend is, however, still in its pare objects, providing best practices
infancy. In spite of the remarkable sci- assisting the processing phase.
entific and technological advances in ar- Semantic 3D media can also be efficient-
eas like digitising 3D artefacts, archiv- ly employed for educational purposes,
ing or presenting the 3D digital content, such as virtual tourism, virtual muse-
stakeholders are making little use of it. ums and 3D visualisation of city build-
3D models and virtual spaces have huge ings and monuments. These kind of ac-
potential for enhancing the way people tivities are related to the Virtual Reality.
interact with museum collections. How-
ever, 3D content is often hard to access The main interest of this Application
and is held in multiple internal systems Working Group focuses on the organi-
with non-standard schemas and de- sation and presentation of archaeolog-
scriptions. This makes it difficult to ex- ical/cultural heritage content to “virtual
pose this rich source of information to visitors” (virtual exhibits). Other areas
be used over the Web in external appli- of interest include the development of
cations. educational and training applications for
real and virtual artefacts, landscape ar-
3D semantic modelling can be benefi- chaeology, recreation and 3D represen-
cial to provide documentation in case of tation of the past landscapes and past
loss or damage, and interactions with habitation environments, restoration,
precious artefacts without risk of dam- reconstruction and visualisation of arte-
age. These kind of activities require the facts. Members of this AWG include Uni-
acquisition and reconstruction of arte- versities and research labs, museums,
facts, providing high geometric accura- educational organisations and 3D ven-
cy in the digital models, photo-realism, dors/creators.
full automation, low cost, portability and
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4. Newsletter 01
2. Benefits of FOCUS K3D aims at bringing togeth- deployment of the new knowledge
er researchers and industries in Europe technologies under development
Participation that are capable of identifying the needs To be actively involved in the activities
of the users regarding 3D shape knowl- of the AWGs, please contact the project
edge representation and processing. coordinator or the leaders of the AWGs
Moreover, through its dissemination ac- (see pages 2+3). It is also possible to
tivities it will create awareness of the register online through the web portal
benefits deriving from the re-use, and where you have access to a pdf-version
preservation of valuable scientific knowl- of the questionnaire and other informa-
edge and resources in terms of 3D mod- tion about the project. Other advan-
els, software tools for 3D manipulation tages for active members of the AWGs
and processing, ontologies and metada- are:
ta.
Consequently, FOCUS K3D will provide Face-to-face interviews by FOCUS
benefits to the communities involved K3D members
by: Participating in FOCUS K3D events
(workshops and the final FOCUS
Extending relations and collabora- K3D conference)
tions between the research com- Participating in training sessions on
munity and industry to enable a methods for knowledge process-
much better knowledge transfer to ing or the Digital Shape Workbench
industry, giving companies a lead- (DSW, www.aimatshape.net/re-
ing edge over competitors; sources)
Identifying and understanding driv- Providing examples of 3D con-
ers and inhibitors for the develop- tent typically used in their activity
ment and distribution of user-cre- and other related resources to be
ated content; shared via the DSW
Fostering a dialogue between IT Pointing out major events in the
tools developers and 3D content field and other people/organisa-
creators/owners to identify a road- tions that FOCUS K3D may contact
map for an effective uptake and for wider dissemination
3. Related AWG Medicine and AWG CAD/CAE and Virtual
Bioinformatics Product Modelling
Projects
There are several projects CO-ME (http://co-me.ch/) SWOP
funded by the European Com- 3D anatomical human RTN (http://www.swop-project.eu/)
mission which are related to (http://3dah.miralab.unige.ch/) SEVENPRO
the goals of FOCUS K3D. The (http://www.sevenpro.org/)
Consortium members will or-
ganise an information and AWG Gaming and Simulation AWG Archaeology and Cultural
communication channel to ex- Heritage
change experiences. GAMETOOLS
(http://www.gametools.org/)
EPOCH
IPerG
(http://www.epoch-net.org)
(http://www.pervasive-gaming.
ERATO
org/)
(http://server.oersted.dtu.dk/
VirtualLife
www/oldat/erato/)
(http://www.ict-virtuallife.eu/)
NetConnect
SALERO (http://www.salero.eu/)
(http://www.netconnect-project.
Victory (http://victory-eu.org/)
eu/)
ViHAP3D
(http://www.vihap3d.org)
DELOS
(htttp://www.delos.info)
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5. Newsletter 01
4. Events with Past Events
Participation Date Event FOCUS K3D Activities
of FOCUS K3D April 36th Annual Conference on Computer Applica- FOCUS K3D presented a
2-6 tions and Quantitative Methods in Archaeology poster and participated in
2008 „On the Road to Reconstructing the Past“ three round tables.
Budapest, Hungary
http://www.caa2008.org/
July ESDA 2008 A FOCUS K3D presentation
7-9 9th Biennial ASME Conference on Engineering has been given in the indus-
2008 Systems Design and Analysis trial applications track within
Haifa, Israel the session „new technologies
http://mecadserv1.technion.ac.il/public_html/ and systems in industry“
ESDA08
Upcoming Events
October VSMM 2008 FOCUS K3D workshop about
20-26 Conference on Virtual Systems and Multimedia Promoting Semantic 3D
2008 Dedicated to Digital Heritage Media
Limassol, Cyprus
http://www.vsmm2008.org/
December 3D Physiological Human organized by MIRALab A FOCUS K3D presentation is
1-4 University of Geneva, Switzerland planned
2008 Zermatt, Switzerland
http://3dphysiologicalhuman.miralab.unige.ch/
December Workshop on Semantic 3D Media (S-3D), Workshop on the FOCUS K3D
3 in conjunction with SAMT 2008 themes organised and spon-
2008 Koblenz, Germany sored by the project
http://www.focusk3d.eu/s-3d/
March Eurographics Workshop on 3D Object Retrieval A FOCUS K3D presentation is
31 Munich, Germany planned
2009 http://3dor.ge.imati.cnr.it/
5. Project CNR-IMATI-GE
Institute for Applied Mathematics and Information
Partners Technologies,
Branch of Genova, National Research Council
(CNR-IMATI-GE)
Coordinator:
Center for Research and Technology - Thessaly
Dr. Bianca Falcidieno
(CERETETH)
Istituto di Matematica Applicata e Laboratory for Information Systems and Services
Tecnologie Informatiche (LISyS)
http://www.lisys.gr/
Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne (VRlab-EPFL)
Via De Marini 6, http://vrlab.epfl.ch/
16149 Genova, Italy
e-mail: Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research
http://www.igd.fhg.de/igd-a2
bianca.falcidieno@ge.imati.cnr.it
http://www.ge.imati.cnr.it/
INRIA
Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et en
Automatique
http://www.inria.fr/
Université de Genève - MIRALab (MIRALab), Switzerland
http://www.miralab.unige.ch/
STIFTELSEN SINTEF (SINTEF), Norway
http://www.sintef.no/
Utrecht University (UU), The Netherlands
http://www.uu.nl/
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