ReVitAge: Realistic virtual heritage taking shadows and sky illumination into account

Today's modern organizations are striving hard to trace the beginnings of human civilization and maintain cultural heritage throughout the world; as a result the need for an integrative technique materializing this dream is felt more than ever. Realistic historical buildings in outdoor rendering Augmented Reality (AR) systems require sophisticated effects such as shadows, lighting and the ability to reveal the effect of sky dome illumination on virtual as well as real objects. In this project, the sun position and sky colour are simulated using Julian dating and Perez model respectively. The historical buildings are pre-created using LightWave 3D. An AR system is created using a new marker-less camera setting. The sky illumination is exerted on the virtual historical buildings using a Hemicube Radiosity technique. We have tested the proposed method on Portuguese Malacca heritage building (Melaka, Malaysia) in different places to reveal the auto-adjustment of the system in the case of shadow positioning, lighting and the sky's illumination. The final system could be installed on HMD (head mounted display) or in our device called ReVitAge to show the realistic reconstructed virtual heritage buildings, taking the main outdoor illumination components into account. Throughout this method, listed heritage buildings can be revived in the minds of people from different backgrounds who share the same ambitious dream. It is strongly hoped that this idea can make historical buildings a virtual reality; closer to people's hearts.