The name "GigaMesh" refers to processing of large 3D-datasets and relates intentional to the mythical sumerian king Gilgamesh and his heroic epic described on a set of clay tablets. The central element of the logo is the cuneiform sign meaning street or road junction, which symbolizes the intersection of the humanities and computer science. The surrounding circle refers to the integral invariant computation using a sphericaldomain. The red color is derived of carmine, the color used by the Heidelberg University, where GigaMesh is developed.
Development and application in research projects
The development began in 2009 and was inspired by the edition project Keilschrifttexte aus Assur literarischen Inhalts of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences and Humanities. In parallel it was applied within the Austrian Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for documentation of red-figure pottery. Current projects are funded by the DFG and the BMBF for contextualization and analysis of seals and sealings of the Corpus der minoischen und mykenischen Siegel, where Thin Plate Splines are used for comparing sealings. Analog to the developments for processing cuneiform tablets there are further approaches for adaption of the combined Computer Vision and Machine Learning methods for other Scripts in 3D. An example is the application within the Text Database and Dictionary of Classic Mayan. In 2017 GigaMesh was tested by the DAI at an excavation in Guadalupe, near Trujillo, Honduras for immediate visualization of in-situ acquired findings with different 3D-scanners including a comparison with manual drawings. Since then GigaMesh is permanently used by the excavation team. Their feedback lead to numerous changes to the GUI improving the User experience. Additionally online tutorials are published having a focus on tasks required to compile excavation reports. The Scanning for Syria project of the Leiden University used GigaMesh in 2018 for 3D reconstruction of molds of tablets lost in ar-Raqqa, Syria based on Micro-CT-scans. As a follow-up project the TU Delft acquired further Micro-CT-scans for virtually extracting clay tablets still wrapped into clay envelopes, which are unopened for thousands of years. In May 2020 the SfS project won the European Union Prize for Cultural Heritage of the Europa Nostra in the category research. A first version for Windows was released in preparation of presentations about new functions shown at the international CAA 2019. The command line interface of GigaMesh is well suited to process large amounts of 3D-measurement data within repositories. This was demonstrated with almost 2.000 cuneiform tablets of the Hilprecht Collection of the Jena University, which were processed and digitally published as benchmarkdatabase for machine learning as well as database of images including 3D- and meta-data using CC BY licenses. The Louvre showed GigaMesh based rollouts of an Aryballos from the collection of the KFU Graz representing the use of digital methods for research on pottery of ancient Greece within the CVA project, which had its 100th anniversary in 2019. Renderings of the rollouts were on display in the second half of 2019 in the display case named L’ère du numèrique et de l’imagerie scientifique. Version 191219 supports Texture maps common for 3D-data captured using photogrammetry. This allows processing and in particular unwrapping of objects acquired with Structure-from-Motion widely used for documentation of Cultural Heritage and in archaeology. The Nara National Research Institute for Cultural Properties in Japan adapted GigaMesh for documentation and rollouts of vessels and published a tutorial, which was used to implement the workflow for ceramics of the Jōmon period within the Togariishi Museum of Jōmon Archaeology. In April 2020 the source code was published on GitLab and the license changed from freeware to the GPL.
