Press release: MellaniuM creates 3D museum art 100 times more detailed than Second Life

HAMILTON, Ontario — Virtual design firm MellaniuM has developed a process to to import extremely detailed objects into spaces running on the AvayaLive Engage browser-based virtual world platform. As a demonstration of this process, the company has imported two well-known statues from classical Greece — Aphrodite of Milos and Winged Victory of Samothrace.

The mesh models for the two statues became available late last year, when artist Cosmo Wenman uploaded highly detailed 3D scans of the statues to the MakerBot Thingiverse 3D design and printing community under a Creative Commons license. These two uploaded mesh models were composed of 20 million polygons each — too large for import.

MellaniuM converted these models into a format and size that could be used in AvayaLive Engage. They are accessible to the public at ArtGallery25 on the AvayaLive Engage platform through a browser-based viewer. A small, free plugin download is required.

These two models, now rendered with approximately 850,000 polygons, still possess clear details of the folds in the draped fabric and the exquisite sculpturing of the feathers.

“Most game designers would state categorically that models with over 64,000 polygons simply cannot be imported into a gaming engine,” said MellaniuM CTO Mark Melaney. “This may be true in a certain sense but we have developed a procedure to unite sections of larger mesh models to circumvent this limitation.”

The MellaniuM application allows for the importation of high polygon models and rich textures to create the realism necessary for believable immersion.

In addition, comprehensive descriptive metadata relating to the original source, age, design and existing knowledge on associated artifacts can be connected effectively to any 3D item in the environment.

About AvayaLive Engage

AvayaLive Engage is an online, immersive collaboration environment platform that runs in the browser on the Unreal gaming engine. For more information, visit avayalive.com/Engage.

About MellaniumM

MellaniuM is a virtual design firm that leverages the AvayaLive Engage virtual environment platform for importing all 3D file formats with photorealistic textures generated both by photogrammetry and laser scanned items and monuments for archaeological and educational use.