Digitizing Wildlife: The Case of a Reptile 3-D Virtual Museum

In this article, we design and develop a 3-D virtual museum with holistic metadata documentation and a variety of reptile behaviors and movements. First, we reconstruct the reptile‘s mesh in high resolution, and then create its rigged/skinned digital counterpart. We acquire the movement of two subjects using an optical motion capture system, accelerometers, and RGB-vision cameras; these movements are then segmented and annotated to various behaviors. The 3-D environment, virtual reality (VR), and augmented reality (AR) functionalities of our online repository serve as tools for interactively educating the public on animals, which are difficult to observe and study in their natural environment. It also reveals important information regarding animals’ intangible characteristics (e.g., behavior), that is critical for the preservation of wildlife. Our museum is publicly accessible, enabling motion data reusability, and facilitating learning applications through gamification. We conducted a user study that confirms the naturalness and realism of our reptiles, along with the ease of use and usefulness of our museum.

在本文中，我们设计并开发了一个具有完整元数据文档以及多种爬行动物行为和动作的三维虚拟博物馆。首先，我们以高分辨率重建爬行动物的网格，然后创建其绑定/蒙皮的数字模型。我们使用光学运动捕捉系统、加速度计和RGB视觉摄像机获取两个对象的运动；然后将这些运动进行分割并标注为各种行为。我们在线存储库的三维环境、虚拟现实（VR）和增强现实（AR）功能可作为工具，用于对公众进行动物相关的互动式教育，这些动物在其自然环境中难以观察和研究。它还揭示了有关动物无形特征（例如行为）的重要信息，这对野生动物的保护至关重要。我们的博物馆是公开可访问的，实现了运动数据的可重用性，并通过游戏化促进了学习应用。我们进行了一项用户研究，证实了我们的爬行动物的自然性和逼真度，以及我们博物馆的易用性和实用性。