The building has been designed to resemble a sand dune and the interior décor will incorporate earth tones
“In many ways it’s a better experience than
being in the caves, as it’s well lit and you can see
things on the ceiling that you can’t get close to”
of the statues and cave surface models presented many challenges, but Chen managed to work through them. “At the time there weren’t any fulldome shows available that had been created from pho- tography and scans, so this was pioneering work from the very beginning,” he says. A short demo was rendered to give
the project team an idea of the results they could expect. “There were still many problems with the techniques for combin- ing different media into one high-quality image,” says Chen, “but, the demo was rendered at 3,200 by 3,200 pixels – the highest resolution at that time – and shown to a selection of industry experts.” The next step was to bring fulldome spe-
cialist Sky-Skan on board. Steve Savage recalls the four-day trip he made from Boston to the caves. “I saw 15 caves in one day and was exhausted at the end of it,” he laughs. “But it gave me an appreciation of
AM 3 2011 ©cybertrek 2011 A dome theatre was chosen to show the fi lm for its similarity to a cave’s environment
what the academy had accomplished in capturing the art in digital form, so that it can be shown in a different way rather than trying to jam all these people through the caves. We calculated that they need two 8k theatres running in tandem to handle 6,000 visitors a day, plus two large format screens for pre-shows.” In 2009, a team of 40 people worked
at the Mogao Caves for seven months to carry out very detailed laser scan- ning, high resolution digital photography and mural stitching. Thirteen caves were scanned at less than 1mm accuracy and photographed across every piece of their surface. “Bearing in mind that some of these caves are 60m (180ft)-high and 30m
(90ft)-wide, this was a phenomenal under- taking,” Chen points out. By now Chen’s team had been experi- menting with different formats for two years to ensure they got the right resolu- tion to do the incredibly detailed artwork justice. “Eventually they decided to make a 10k by 10k test,” says Savage. “We had to change our software as we’d never ren- dered anything so big, but can now deliver a 10k by 10k image on the dome in an 8k by 8k system. We looked at the images on that and it was fabulous. “In many ways it’s a better experience
than being in the caves as it’s so well lit and you can see things on the ceiling that you can’t get close to in the caves.”
Read Attractions Management online
attractionsmanagement.com/digital 33
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