Envisioning Antarctica : Gaussian-splatting Experiments
This page will host my experiments with Gaussian-splatting pipelines. I finally found some time to get round to setting up the environment – pretty straight-forward stuff – and a lot of emergent integrations that are worth exploring.
H.M.S. Endurance
My first test is based on the H.M.S. Endurance NeRF work I explored a few months ago. First impressions are that it is much less ‘instant’ – more processing time – but gives much more user-friendly interactive results. Framerates are high, floaters are largely eliminated – and will hopefully be much easier to remove. I’ll post some more examples below as I work out some pipelines – I have a few interesting experiments in mind.
4k #gaussiansplat test of Shackleton’s Endurance. This is rendered from NerfStudio and uprezzed via Topaz VideoAI to a 60fps loop. Needs a lot more work, obviously, but the results are extremely promising and indicate that one can undertake novel #archaeological observations on trained models based on #underwater #video #drone #submersible data. A key step would be to preprocess using e.g. cnn deconvolution or physics-based approaches like the see-thru algorithm (https://lnkd.in/gE_44fzE ). Public Source data: https://endurance22.org
One can think of all sorts of interesting applications for e.g. benthic trawl videos and volumetric reconstruction of sea-floor communities, archaeological surveys of submerged ancient cities, inspecting dams and lakes…
S.Y. Endurance Unreal Engine Cinematic
A #gaussiansplat #visualization #cinematic proof-of-concept in #unrealengine5 of the stern of Ernest Shackleton’s famous ship S.Y. Endurance. The wreck was discovered by Mensun Bound and the Endurance22 expedition – a remarkable achievement (read about it @ wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endurance_(1912_ship). The original render is 2.39:1 Prores 422 at 3840 x 1608 . I’ve added 35mm grain in the vain hope that YouTube compression won’t entirely wreck it. I’m happy with it for a long afternoon’s work of what I think of as ‘YouTube Marine Archaeology’ – version 0.1. Lots more can be done, obviously. Note that this is entirely unrealistic – artistic license apparently allows tropical fish to exist over 3000m below the surface of the Weddell Sea off Antarctica. [irony] We can regard these as an invasive species [/irony]. It is deliberately slow, because it’s a visualization – it’s about looking, a sense of what it would be like to be there in person in the aphotic zone, in complete darkness, where sunlight never reaches. For those interested in technical details I’ll add some more soonish. Music by Glenn Rogers #marinearchaeology #archaeology #ernestshackleton #envisioningantarctica
Mawson’s Huts, Antarctica
An experiment in revisiting footage I shot whilst working as a conservation expeditioner at Mawson’s Huts, #Antarctica in 2009-10. NeRFs and Gaussian Splatting enable novel ways of interrogating databases of images and video in unprecedented detail, enabling new insights into heritage and remote sites. Digital heritage is as significant as physical heritage. Of course, there’s no reason this can’t now be rendered #stereoscopically, for #fulldome or #XR devices, especially with #generative fill trained on #loras.
#nerf #gaussiansplat #digitalheritage #archaeology #xr #omniverse
