Any plans for Accommodating different media?

Feature request
1

Tropy community has been well informed about its role in providing functionality as research photo mgmt application. On that basis it made sense to recognize standardized image file formats. PDFs were also seems to be in the roadmap.

However, as a FOSS user and humanities learner, i wanted to know is there deliberations on supporting other media formats that would accommodate say 3D file formats ? Since there is a increase in popularity of 3D scanning through smartphones/gadgets, there would be a massive increase in way digital preservation of artefacts, objects, manuscripts, inscripts, etc…

2

Yes, there are plans though no concrete roadmap yet. In particular, we’re specifically considering 3d-models, videos, and audio files. The UI concept of selections could be extended naturally to all three of them: for 3d-models a selection could be a certain camera configuration; for video and audio it could be a temporal selection.

Could you point us to examples of the increased popularity of 3d scanning in the field?

3

There is early adoption of 3D scanning (either as exclusive measuring instrument or through their “smart” mobile phone sensors). However this trend is not completely new, and GLAM repositories always have been trying to use it to make the artefacts, objects more Explorable and Interactable as possible. The following list is illustrative of the fact. Since OpenGLAM’s model of ‘knowledge repository building’ (w.r.t. preservation) have proposals and ideas to make it into place of sites of reproduction which hopefully can democratize the institutional approach to Archiving attracting participation from public.

  1. 3D modeling of archaeological objects: Advantages, limitations, and applications
  2. 3D modeling for Art, Architecture and Archaeology
  3. Archaeology in the Digital Age: 3D Artifact Imaging
  4. Using 3D scans to bring antiquities out of archives and into the light
  5. 3D printing and 3D scanning for archeology and museums
  6. 3D Scanning & 3D Printing in Archaeology & Paleontology
  7. 3D scanning of archaeological artefacts
  8. The Future of the Past: Using 3D Replicas for Public Archaeology

However i understand, such roadmap would transgress Tropy from Research Photo Mgmt. to Research Media Mgmt. tool. But i find the possibility of using current UI/UX design/code to be compatible with such features has a good utility.

And for relative comparison, the GIS/RS space also have accommodated 3D spatial ability without losing 2D features - which is also being used in knowledge repositories either as location metadata or data (maps) through georeferencing.

4

Another example in Europeana Archaeological project : Europeana Archaeology 3D collections

5

Thanks for this! All things considered, I think that supporting 3d-models would be a very natural (and reasonable) extension of Tropy’s current functionality.

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