An interesting piece looking at new software which shows how ancient buildings would have looked when illuminated by their original lighting, which has applications throughout many areas of archaeology.
The software maps lighting details onto virtual recreations of places The project, developed at Warwick University in the West Midlands, brings ancient architectural features to life through a revolutionary sophisticated modelling of light. This allows archaeologists to study how buildings and artwork would have really looked at the time, right down to the differing lighting provided by the types of candles used.
"What you need to do to get an accurate image is model exactly the physics of the light - what colour the light source is, how it moves within the environment, and how it reflects and refracts off all the different surfaces," said Alan Chalmers, professor of visualisation at the Warwick digital laboratory. "Once you've modelled the physics right, you're modelling closer to what nature does - and you're achieving a realistic, physically-based image, and you can use that as a tool to understand what the environment really was like." . . .
But while such efforts may appear only of interest to a select group of archaeologists, Professor Chalmers insisted they have relevance to ordinary people too. "I think people are always interested in the past - if they go to Rome or Pompeii and see the frescoes, they think, 'what did this look like in Roman times?'," he said.
See the above page for details.
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