About

3D-ICONS was a pilot project funded under the European Commission’s ICT Policy Support Programme which started on 1st February 2012 and ran for three years. It brought together partners from across Europe with the relevant expertise to digitise architectural and archaeological monuments and buildings in 3D and is designed to:

  • establish a complete pipeline for the production of 3D replicas of archaeological monuments and historic buildings which covers all technical, legal and organisational aspects;
  • create 3D models and a range of other materials (images, texts and videos) of a series of internationally important monuments and buildings; and
  • contribute content to Europeana using the CARARE aggregation service.

3D-ICONS was one of a suite of projects, funded by the European Commission, to develop Europeana  and its contents. It aimed to complement the collections which have been made accessible to Europeana through CARARE, Europeana Local, ATHENA and other projects. It will play an important role by involving organisations with recognised expertise in 3D data acquisition and modelling in establishing a full production pipeline. It covered  all aspects of a 3D digitisation project from planning and obtaining permissions, selection of methods and tools, data acquisition, post-processing, publication of content online, and metadata capture to making the content available to Europeana.

The 3D-ICONS consortium contained sixteen partners. 4 academic institutions (Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Universidad de Jaen, Politechnico di Milano and National Technical University of Athens), 7 research institutions (Consiglio Nationale della Richerche, Athena Research and Innovation Center in Information Communication and Knowledge Technologies, Discovery Programme, Association pour le developpement de l’enseingement et des Rescherches aupres des universities, des centres de recherché et des enterprises d’Aquitaine, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, the Cyprus Research and Education Foundation and Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), 2 museums (Koninklijke Musea voor Kunst en Geschiendenis and Muzeul Naţional de Istorie a României) and 3 SMEs (MDR Partners,CMC Associates, Visual Dimemsion).

3D-ICONS was co-ordinated by the Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale.