EDVEC 3D Capture Studio
The Edinburgh Virtual Environment Centre (EDVEC) has won substantial funding to establish a National 3D Data Capture Centre. The £380K award is from the Scottish Higher Education Funding Council (SHEFC) as part of the Joint Research Equipment Initiative. This award combined with matching funding from industry amounts to £610K in total. The 3D Capture Studio will create a facility unique to Scotland and the UK that gathers together a comprehensive array of all the latest most advanced technologies for 3D data capture. It will be run by a highly competent support team who are currently conducting research into all aspects of virtual reality. The Capture Studio will enable researchers from any discipline to create 3D models and build virtual environments. This will significantly improve the current facilities at Edinburgh University and in Scotland as a whole and, by enhancing the quality and productivity of research, contribute to the physical infrastructure for research within the University.
The main roles of the studio will be to:
- provide facilities to satisfy the impending huge demand for 3D models and scenes of all kinds given the advent of 3D technologies on the web and low-cost hardware on PCs to:
- enable course providers and researchers to create 3D models and virtual environments for teaching and research across the academic spectrum including the sciences, medicine, engineering, the arts, and humanities
- support heritage, tourism and education by providing the means to scan objects and model museum artifacts, besides the reconstruction of buildings, streets or even cities for today and yesteryear
- support manufacturing by extracting CAD models of manufactured parts, for which drawings are not available, by reverse engineering and in addition provide sophisticated modelling tools
- provide facilities for motion capture to:
- support clinical research in gait analysis, rehabilitation studies, and investigate and analyse sports actions and injuries
- support the rapidly expanding Scottish computer games, film and advertising industries by providing the means to capture 3D motion and pursue research in generic animation and virtual studios.
Description of Proposed Facilities
The 3D Capture Studio will be housed in the James Clerk Maxwell Building in the King's Buildings campus of Edinburgh University. The facilities will comprise:
- 3D laser scanner to scan objects such as museum artifacts or for reverse engineering
- 3D stereo photographic scanner for health care applications involving the head or foot, weight loss, muscle problems, pose analysis, virtual shopping etc.
- mobile robot equipped with range finder and camera to capture indoor and outdoor scenes
- motion capture suite including EMG and force platforms for gait analysis and 3D human capture for entertainment, sports and leisure
- computing facilities will include powerful graphics workstations and software for modelling, simulation and animation post-production.
The facilities will act as a focus for new research in the areas of virtual environments and virtual reality, with the aim of establishing a Centre of Excellence for Scotland in this field.
Should anyone wish to make use of these facilities or for further information please contact:
Roy Middleton
EDVEC Manager
Tel: +44 (0)131 650 4994
Fax: +44 (0)131 650 6552
R.A.Middleton@ed.ac.uk
