PARMA BAPTISTERY AND DUOMO SHOOT: CASE STUDY
What others are saying:
"We are incredibly excited to see our technology applied in a project of such amazing quality and importance," said David Urbanic, Founder and President of Zoomify, Inc. "The Parma Project expertly combines leading-edge technologies, the highest-quality photography, and artful design to bring every amazing detail of these historical treasures to a worldwide audience in the manner worthy of their cultural significance. Magnifico!"
David Urbanic, Founder and President, Zoomify, Inc.
"Kaidan is extremely proud to be a sponsor and associated with the VRWAY Parma Baptistery VR Project and Case Study. The level of VR image quality and production values has created a new standard, a benchmark that illustrates the power and impact of VR technologies. In a time when most people are familiar with the average, utilitarian ho-hum real estate virtual tour, here's an opportunity to experience a truly breathtaking location. Somehow, the term virtual tour seems inadequate."
Jim Anders, President, Kaidan Incorporated
“The Parma Baptistery project is a very fine example of the excellent results that can be achieved using REALVIZ Stitcher. We have been showcasing the Case Study on our own website since its launch, to illustrate to the large community of professional photographers and expert users out there, the stunning results attainable at the highest-possible resolution. This is the kind of project Stitcher was born for."
Patrick Dumas, COO, REALVIZ
The magazine's editorial director, Marco Trezzini, believes the 600,000,000-pixel size is a first for the Internet. "Zoomify technology allowed us to bring incredible detail to users, regardless of their Internet connection speed," he said. "Normally, ultra high-resolution pictures like these are bandwidth intensive, but we wanted these VRs to be accessible to everyone."
From Dennis Sellers article in MacCentral
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Client
Ascom (Italian Association for Commerce) through the INPARMA Internet portal, which was designed to offer a comprehensive online reference to the cuisine, accommodation, theatre, arts, shopping, real estate, conventions and services available in Parma, Italy. The portal is uniquely structured to integrate and coordinate specific information for not only the inhabitants of Parma and the province, but for the increasing number of tourists who are making this historic city a preferred travel destination.
Assignment
Production and post-production of VR's of the Baptistery, the 12th century Duomo, and the Piazza Duomo, as well as two theatres (Teatro Farnense and Teatro Regio) and commercial shops.
Challenges
To shoot the highest resolution cubic panos possible in order to capture the full majesty of this ancient architecture. To prepare the content for delivery over the Web, enabling the viewing of very high levels of photographic detail using standard browsers, and to make the content accessible over both dial-up and broadband connections.
Obstacles
Access to these sites for photographic purposes is tightly controlled so site visits had to be scheduled in advance. Authorities accompanied the team for the duration of the shoot. Subdued lighting had to be used to protect the fragile artwork in sites like the Baptistery, requiring additional expensive lighting options. Dramatic changes in outdoor lighting conditions and unpredictable weather required the shooting to be done very quickly.
Photographer
Giuseppe Pennisi (giuseppe.pennisi@swiss.vrway.com)
Media Integration/Project Leader
Marco Lüthi (shen@webidentity.com)
Background
 Parma, Italy
The city of Parma is located in north central Italy, mid-way between Milan and Bologna. Known as the city of art and music, it is nestled in the fertile valley of the Po River in the Italian province of Emilia-Romagna. Here, grain and vines are cultivated, the silk culture is highly developed, as are the leather, cheese, and tobacco industries. Parma is steeped in art and culture, and has been the home of many famous people over the centuries. One of the great Italian composers, Giuseppe Verdi, was born just outside Parma in the town of Roncole, and the Archduchess Marie Luise, Napoleon's second wife, was passionate about her city. Antonio Allegri - known by art lovers as Correggio - called Parma home, and one of the most admired symphony conductors of all time, Arturo Toscanini, was a native of this fair city.
Baptisteries: A General History
Historically, the earliest existing Baptistery was erected in its original form under Constantine, and round or polygonal baptisteries had been employed from the fourth century on throughout the Roman Empire. The Baptistery in which the Sacrament of Baptism was solemnly conducted seems to have been derived from Roman architecture, and in ancient times the term was applied to a basin, pool or other place for bathing. Christian baptism was a ceremony that occurred only three times a year, so it required a building large enough to accommodate huge numbers of the faithful.
Baptistery of Parma
The City Council of Parma commissioned the Baptistery to be erected in 1196 - over 800 years ago - and even more impressive is the fact that the entire building... the vision, the design, and even the choice of materials, was the work of one man, Benedetto Antelami. As a proponent of classical simplicity, Antelami created a monument that even today is regarded as the greatest and most original work of the Italian Romanesque. The Baptistery of Parma is widely considered to be the most important medieval monument in Italy. Built on an octagonal plan and constructed of pink Verona marble, it contains an impressive selection of 13th and 14th century frescoes and paintings, and is a striking illustration of congruence between architecture, sculpture, and painting.
Hardware
Fuji FinePix S2 Pro Digital Camera
In order to capture the ultra high-resolution images needed to create these VR's, the team used a Fuji FinePix S2 Pro digital camera. The S2 Pro utilizes a newly developed Super CCD sensor which has 6.17 million effective pixels and is capable of producing 12.1 million (4256 x 2848) recorded pixels. The 3rd generation CCD is coupled with a proprietary Noise Reduction Technology, providing improvements in sensitivity (up to 1600 ISO) while significantly reducing degradation due to noise - often a by-product of shooting in low light situations. The S2 also sports dual media slots for SmartMedia and Compact Flash type II (IBM Microdrive compatible), and IEEE1394 FireWire and USB connectors for image transfer.
The S2 Pro has a Nikon F mount that is fully compatible with all AF-D, AF-G, and AF-S type Nikkor lenses, which are widely recognized for their superior optics. For this shoot, the team employed a 17-35mm f/2.8D ED-IF AF-S Nikkor, as wider lenses provide greater overlap with fewer exposures. The camera also offers four image capture resolutions (4,256 x 2,848, 3,024 x 2,016, 2,304 x 1,536 and 1,440 x 960 pixels) in three file formats (TIFF-RGB, CCD-Raw and JPEG).
Kaidan QUICKPAN III SYSTEM Spherical Camera Bracket
The Kaidan QUICKPAN III Spherical Camera Bracketenables quick and accurate single or multi-row photography through a unique adjustable friction mechanism, which keeps the camera arm solid and stable during shooting. The mechanism ensures accurate positioning of the camera while keeping the center of the lens fixed around both axes of rotation - a necessity for accurate alignment during shooting, which ultimately aids in reducing post-processing time with tasks such as multi-row stitching.
The Baptistery’s symmetrical structure was ideally suited to a cubic format, and the multi-row technique utilizing the QUICKPAN III involved taking 3 rows of 10 shots and one of the top and bottom for a total of 32 photos. The weak lighting used inside to preserve the integrity of the paintings required a longer exposure time of 8 seconds at f/5.6, and the team elected to capture in TIFF at 3024 x 2016 pixels with subsequent file sizes of 17.5 MB. Standard fixtures on the QUICKPAN III such as a twin axis bubble level, an easily adjustable built-in micro-leveler, and click stops at 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14 positions were of enormous benefit in getting the shots right the first time, resulting in this portion of the shoot being completed in under 2 hours.
Apple Macintosh Computers
Postproduction was completed with the following Apple computers.
Dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4
Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar"
256K L2 cache & 2MB L3 cache/processor
167MHz System Bus
2.0GB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
120GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive & Combo drive
NVIDIA GeForce4 Titanium
56K internal modem
Monitor: Cinema Display 22"
Dual 1.25GHz PowerPC G4
Mac OS X v10.1.5
256K L2 cache & 2MB L3 cache/processor
167MHz System Bus
512MB PC2700 DDR SDRAM
120GB Ultra ATA drive
SuperDrive (DVD-R/CD-RW)
ATI Radeon 9000 Pro
56K internal modem
Monitor: La Cie Electron Blue 22"
Titanium PowerBook G4
Mac OS X v10.2 "Jaguar"
800MHz PowerPC G4
1MB L3 & 256K L2 cache
133MHz system bus
1GB SDRAM memory
60GB Ultra ATA drive
Combo Drive (DVD-ROM/CD-RW)
ATI Mobility Radeon 7500
w/32MB DDR video memory
Gigabit Ethernet
56K internal modem
1 FireWire & 2 USB Ports
Software
Adobe Illustrator 10
Adobe Photoshop X
Macromedia Dreamweaver MX
Macromedia Flash MX
Click Here Design Cubic Converter 1.04
Click Here Design Cubic Connector 1.04
Bare Bones Software BBEdith 6.5
REALVIZ Stitcher 3.5
In order to stitch and render the captured TIFF files at the highest possible resolution, the team elected to use REALVIZ Stitcher 3.5. The world of Macintosh panoramic stitching options was dramatically improved when REALVIZ entered into the market with REALVIZ Stitcher 3.0 for the Mac in 2001, a product providing an intuitive and elegant interface designed to automate the tedious stitching process and dramatically speed up production. The next iteration of the product, Stitcher 3.1, addressed many of the shortcomings of the previous version and added improved memory management and additional export formats such as Cubic (QuickTime 5) and Shockwave 3D. REALVIZ continued with significant product improvements in version 3.5 such as lens distortion management, image sharpening, artifact removal, render cropping, hot spot generation and batch rendering (Mac OSX).
In addition, Stitcher 3.5 is one of the few solutions available capable of rendering each face of a Cubic VR at a 10,000 x 10,000 pixel resolution, effectively creating a 600,000,000 pixel VR and potentially the largest pano delivered over the web to date. This level of detail was crucial to the integrity of this project, as the major objective was to visually communicate the unique architecture of the ancient buildings themselves, and the elaborate artistry of the 13th and 14th century frescoes, paintings and sculptures contained within. Stitcher's capabilities in equalizing color composition and achieving a superb balance of color and exposure also reduced the necessary PhotoShop 7 postproduction tasks. The combination of power, speed, and an impressive feature set in Stitcher 3.5 substantially decreased the panorama creation time on this project. We recommend it highly.
REALVIZ has recently introduced Stitcher EZ, a new product that utilizes the same powerful stitching engine found in Stitcher 3.5, and offers a one-click solution for even the most novice of would-be pano creators. The REALVIZ Stitcher EZ is slated for shipment in early November 2002 for both Mac OS X & Microsoft Windows at a MSRP of 59 Euros ($59)
Zoomify
The final - and perhaps the most important - aspect of this project was to make the content accessible to all, over the web. While serving a 1.2 gigabyte file such as this may be considered a relatively minor issue to those with high speed Internet services, it would be intolerable, if not impossible, to the legion of surfers still burdened by lethargic dial-up connections. A solution to a problem that prohibits us from zooming endlessly into more and more photographic detail, and one that allows us to view huge content even if we are bandwidth deprived... this makes sense.
Zoomify takes a practical approach to solving these problems by allowing us to have the best of both worlds - resolution and size - managed efficiently for practical web delivery, even at a humbling 56K. This is accomplished through a serverless image streaming technology that allows the viewing of very high-resolution images using resolution-on-demand. The Zoomify technology enables incremental access to images at any level of quality for any part of the image. As users zoom in and pan to explore fine details, only the image data necessary for the level of resolution being viewed for the part of the image that fits in the desired display area is delivered. When zooming into a particular fresco in the Baptistery for example, all of the colors, characteristics and artistic expression are revealed in progressive levels of fine detail as you move ever closer to the fresco itself.
One of the founders of Zoomify, Pete Falco, was on the original QuickTime VR Engineering team at Apple from 1994-1995, while co-founder David Urbanic worked with companies such as Borland and Live Picture, where he led the product team for Internet client/server imaging solutions. We only mention these bios because this degree of experience and creative vision is directly related to the quality and sustainability of a product in the marketplace, and as customers that's what we want to know. Zoomify have clearly established themselves as leaders in the field of high-resolution imaging, and are taking a serious shot at making their technology a standard in the industry. This project could not have been fully realized without the significant benefits provided by Zoomify technology.
Zoomify has recently announced their newest offering, Zoomifyer for Macromedia Flash™ which allows content creators to integrate fast, interactive access to large images - even gigabytes in size - into any Flash movie. Zoomifyer for Flash includes the converter droplet, viewer component, complete documentation, updates, and support for $129.00
Email: dougderusha@mac.com
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