Digital Humanities

Creating 3D Meshes from 2D Photographs

Tools

  • Autodesk Memento

  • Video: Camera and shooting recommendations for Photogrammetry

    • Avoid glossy, transparent, mobile objects (a polarizing filter can help with shiny objects)

    • Fixed (not zoom), glass (not plastic) lenses produce superior results

    • If the lens is zoom, lock in a certain focal length – never zoom in or out with the camera

    • You can use zoom into the object by moving yourself (the camera) not the lens

    • A small aperture (large depth of field – F16, vs F2, for example) is very important as the entire scene (including the background) must be in focus

    • Diffuse, shadowless light is best

    • Try to use a tripod (and a monopod for above object shots) and a remote shutter release

    • Place a ruler in the scene if scale is important to you

    • Shoot at 5 to 10 degree intervals (72 photos per circle of the object)

    • You can move around the object, or have the object rotate in front of the camera

    • If the object is not rich in color/texture, add other non reflective items into the frame to help use for reference when generating the mesh

    • The order of photos is very important. Do not break the sequence – stick to a single rotational direction

    • An object that is rich in details should have a transitional sequence moving into and then rotating around the object to focus in on details

    • A flat object should be shot by changing positions, not by staying on one spot and creating a ‘panorama’ series of photos

    • Avoid white walls and featureless, regular surfaces

    • The object should take 70% of the pixels being shot

    • Never move the object, move the camera

    • Rich objects should have 150 photos

    • 20- 50 mm lens is best

    • Shoot with RAW

    • Only ever edit in RAW

      • Open Photoshop

      • Select all RAW images

      • Amount/Radius/Detail/Masking should all have their initial sliders set to “0”

      • Tone Curve – distribute the curve

      • Basics – Cloudy, etc.

      • Save as…


Presenting 3D Models (Online or Embedded)

Network Visualization Options

Inserting Class Polls Directly into PowerPoint

Data Recommendations for CartoDB, Palladio, and other DH Mapping tools

  • Your goal is to create a .csv file with data that is uniform, consistent, and simple.

  • Avoid notes and comments within your data, or any unnecessary diacritics.

  • Do not use different fonts, colors, etc.

  • Each column header must be unique and may use letters, spaces, and numbers. Do not use any special alphanumeric characters, such as underscores ‘_’ or dashes ‘-‘

  • Do not have a gap between the column header and the data

  • No cell should be empty (use a “0” to fill empty/null values)

  • This ‘CSV Fingerprints’ tool can be very helpful in spotting any mistakes in your .csv files.

  • Dates should be entered in the following format Year-Month-Day (2014-01-01). Years must always be rendered as four digit integers. Thus years between 0 CE and 1000 CE should still be rendered as 0001 or 0999. Negative dates should follow the same format, but preceded by a minus sign (ie. -200-01-01). If using Excel, be sure to specify that the column reads as “Text” rather than dates, so that Excel doesn’t change the dates into its own format.

  • Location information should be rendered as latitude and longitude. Palladio, for example, requires that these numbers be separated by a comma: 41.95, 12.5. (This Geocoding tool may be of help for those who have a list of place names but no associated coordinates: http://gis.ucla.edu/geocoder)

Converting RAW files to .jpg

DH Resources at Fordham

Fordham DH

Fordham Library Guide: Digital Humanities

Fordham Graduate Student DH

Resources on the Web

Choosing (Map) Colors

ColorBrewer

Text Analysis

Online Publishing/ Authoring