The Central government plans to complete 3D digitisation of all museums under its administrative control by the year end for better conservation of artefacts.
This includes the Salar Jung museum, Hyderabad, the Allahabad Museum in Prayagraj, the Indian Museum, Kolkata, the Victoria Memorial Hall, the National Museum and the National Gallery of Modern Art.
The Culture Ministry has under its ambit 10 museums, including those mentioned above. Apart from these, the Archaeological Survey of India also has site museums at 44 locations spread throughout the country in proximity to important archaeological sites.
Besides aiding conservation, 3D digitisation in the museum space can offer visitors new ways to access and explore the collection. 3D models can be used in augmented reality and virtual reality learning experiences, and facilitate 3D printing.
3D scanning
The digitisation process involves 3D scanning which means analysing a real-world object or environment to collect three-dimensional data of its shape and possibly its appearance. The collected data is then used to construct digital 3D models.
Sources in the Culture Ministry said the entire process was being carried out by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY). A Memorandum of Understanding has been signed between the MeitY and Union Culture Ministry for this.
The 3D digitisation would be done using the JATAN virtual museum builder software which has been designed and developed by Human Centres Design and Computing Group, Centre for Development of Smart Computing, Pune.
JATAN is a digital collection management system for Indian museums. It is a client server application with features such as image cropping, watermarking, unique numbering, management of digital objects with multimedia representations. It can create 3D virtual galleries and provide public access through web, mobile or touch screen kiosks.
