Research
Publications
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  • Digital Hammurabi: Design and Development of a 3D Scanner for Cuneiform Tablets 1.5 mb pdf
    Electronic Imaging Conference, San Jose, CA, January 2006
    Daniel V. Hahn, Donald D. Duncan, Kevin C. Baldwin, Jonathan D. Cohen, Budirijanto Purnomo

    ... we describe a 3D scanner capable of acquiring the shape, color, and reflectance of a tablet as a complete 3D object. ...The scanner utilizes a camera and telecentric lens to acquire images of the tablet under varying controlled illumination conditions. Image data are processed using photometric stereo and structured light techniques to determine the tablet shape; color information is reconstructed from primary color monochrome image data. The scanned surface is sampled at 26.8 micron lateral spacing and the height information is calculated on a much smaller scale. Scans of adjacent tablet sides are registered together to form a 3D surface model.

  • iClay: Digitizing Cuneiform 2.5 mb pdf
    Java applet (+ cuneiform) 2.8 mb
    Java applet (- cuneiform) 700 kb
    VAST 2004 Conference, Brussels, December 2004
    Jonathan Cohen, Donald Duncan, Dean Snyder, Jerrold Cooper, Subodh Kumar, Daniel Hahn, Yuan Chen, Budirijanto Purnomo, and John Graettinger

    Advances in digital technology for the graphic and textual representation of manuscripts have not, until recently, been applied to the world's oldest manuscripts, cuneiform tablets. This is due in large part both to the three-dimensional nature of cuneiform tablets and to the complexity of the cuneiform script system. The Digital Hammurabi Project and the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding announce success in encoding Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform in Unicode while also demonstrating advances in 3D scanning and visualization of cuneiform tablets, showcased by iClay, a cross-platform, Internet-deployable, Java applet that allows for the viewing and manipulation of 2D+ images of cuneiform tablets.
  • Final proposal to encode the Cuneiform script in the SMP of the UCS 1.6 mb pdf
    June 2004
    Michael Everson, Karljuergen Feuerherm, Steve Tinney

    This is the formal proposal submitted to Unicode and the ISO 10646 Working Group 2 for approval as the international standard for the computer encoding of the Sumero-Akkadian script.
  • Seamless Texture Atlases 8.7 mb pdf
    Proceedings of 2nd Eurographics/ACM Symposium on Geometry Processing. pp. 67-76. 2004
    Budirijanto Purnomo, Jonathan D. Cohen, Subodh Kumar

    Texture atlas parameterization provides an effective way to map a variety of color and data attributes from 2D texture domains onto polygonal surface meshes. However, the individual charts of such atlases are typically plagued by noticeable seams. We describe a new type of atlas which is seamless by construction. Our seamless atlas comprises all quadrilateral charts, and permits seamless texturing, as well as per-fragment down-sampling on rendering hardware and polygon simpli cation. We demonstrate the use of this atlas for capturing appearance attributes and producing seamless renderings.
  • GLOD: Level of Detail for the Masses 300 kb pdf
    technical sketch 108 kb pdf
    movie 39.7 mb
    poster 292 kb pdf
    poster writeup 56 kb pdf
    song 108 kb pdf
    website
    March 2003
    Jonathan Cohen, David Luebke, Nathaniel Duca, Brenden Schubert

    We present GLOD, a geometric level of detail system integrated with the OpenGL rendering library. GLOD provides a low-level, lightweight API for level of detail operations. Unlike heavyweight scene graph systems, GLOD supports incremental adoption and may be easily integrated into existing OpenGL applications.
  • Digital Preservation of Ancient Cuneiform Tablets Using 3D Scanning 1.2 mb pdf
    Proceedings of Fourth International Conference on 3D Digital Imaging and Modeling. pp. 326-333. October 2003
    Subodh Kumar, Dean Snyder, Donald Duncan, Jonathan Cohen, Jerry Cooper

    We describe our project and the requirements for constructing and publishing large digital libraries of these ancient tablets. We also present visualization requirements and algorithms for producing them.
  • Perceptually Guided Simplification of Lit, Textured Meshes 5.5 mb pdf
    Proceedings of 2003 ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics. pp. 113-121. (selected for cover image)
    February 2003
    movie 96 mb
    Nathaniel Williams, David Luebke, Jonathan D. Cohen, Michael Kelley, Brenden Schubert

    We present a new algorithm for best-effort simplification of polygonal meshes based on principles of visual perception. Building on previous work, we use a simple model of low-level human vision to estimate the perceptibility of local simplification operations in a view-dependent Multi-Triangulation structure.
  • Appearance-Preserving Simplification 3.4 mb pdf
    Proceedings of SIGGRAPH 98. Orlando, FL, July 19-24, 1998. pp. 115-122
    movie 35 mb
    webpage
    Jonathan Cohen, Marc Olano, Dinesh Manocha

    We present a new algorithm for appearance-preserving simplification. Not only does it generate a low-polygon-count approximation of a model, but it also preserves the appearance.
  • Cuneiform Text Input Method movie (14 mb)
    February 1, 2005
    Dean Snyder

    This is the first demonstration of a cuneiform text input method we are developing for Mac OS X. ... Sumero/Akkadian cuneiform has over 900 separate characters (commonly called "signs" by Assyriologists), and since standard computer keyboards have only about 100 keys, we must provide some way to input the many cuneiform characters. The method chosen is very similar to that used for inputing Japanese syllabic text; one merely types in the Roman transliteration of the intended cuneiform sign and our input method converts that sequence of Roman characters into the corresponding cuneiform sign. This video simply illustrates the process happening on a computer screen as we enter a cuneiform sign into a Unicode plain text document.
  • Digital Hammurabi Progress Report 2003 5.6 mb pdf
    Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 49, British Museum, June 2003
    poster 2.3 mb pdf
    Dean Snyder

    The Digital Hammurabi Project is developing new hardware and software aimed at enhancing research on cuneiform documents. The first nine months of our $1.65 million, three-year grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation has seen progress on all research fronts. We are concurrently developing new 3D surface scanning hardware technology, new computer algorithms for visualizing 3D models of cuneiform tablets, a new international standard computer encoding for cuneiform text, and the beginnings of a digital archive and library for 3D cuneiform tablets.
  • Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding 2 4.4 mb pdf
    "got wedges?" t-shirt logo 2.7 mb pdf
    June 2003
    Dean Snyder

    The second conference of the Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding, ICE2, convenes cuneiform scholars, Unicode experts, software engineers, linguists, and font architects from three countries to discuss methodological issues related to encoding Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform. The goal is to insure that cuneiform is expertly encoded in Unicode, thereby allowing modern software tools to work with the world's oldest writing system.
  • ICE at American Oriental Society Conference 72 kb pdf
    April 2003
    agenda - 60 kb pdf
    Dean Snyder

    Attendees at the 2 hour ICE luncheon meeting at AOS in Nashville included Richard Averbeck, Giorgio Buccellati, Jerrold Cooper, Madeleine Fitzgerald, William Hallo, Cale Johnson, Piotr Michalowsk, David Owen, Dean Snyder, Matthew Stolper, and Niek Veldhuis. We discussed methodological issues related to encoding cuneiform.
  • The Digital Hammurabi Project 6 mb pdf
    Museums & the Web Conference
    March 2003
    Lee Watkins, Jr. and Dean A. Snyder

    At the end of the first four months of our three year NSF grant, we can report significant develpments in the project.
  • Digital Hammurabi Progress Report 2002 1.2 mb pdf
    Rencontre Assyriologique Internationale 48, Leiden
    June 2002
    Digital Hammurabi handout 734 kb pdf, poster 1.2 mb pdf
    ICE handout 1.7 mb pdf, poster 3 mb pdf
    Dean Snyder

    There are at least two major technological obstacles to more productive cuneiform research: the current inadequate state of the graphic representation of cuneiform tablets and the lack of a standard computer encoding for cuneiform text.
  • Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding 1 5.9 mb pdf
    November 2000
    "Because It's Cool" t-shirt logo 184 kb pdf
    Dean Snyder

    The Initiative for Cuneiform Encoding (ICE) is an international group of cuneiformists, Unicode experts, software engineers, linguists, and font vendors organized for the purpose of proposing a standard computer encoding for Sumero-Akkadian cuneiform, the world's oldest attested writing system.
  • Project Summary from NSF grant proposal
    November 2001

    Though the full realization of these goals will take several years, our thrust for the next three years is to develop a working high resolution scanner, computer algorithms for multi-resolution rendering of 3D tablets, and the beginnings of the digital library infrastructure to support an accumulating archive.