Digital Preservation of Traditional Crafts and Three-Dimensional Modeling Technologies

The cultural heritage preservation requires that objects persist throughout time to continue to communicate an intended meaning. Digital technology and specifically 3D digital technology is naturally a critical component in preservation. Yet once in the digital world the object's persistence is inextricably linked to data persistence and current 3D technologies do little more than capture a silhouette of the original object. HyperFun is a simple geometric modeling language which realizes two valuable qualities key to historical preservation: absolute data persistence, as HyperFun describes objects with mathematical functions; and secondly, by using a new approach called Function Representation (FRep), HyperFun provides a uniform method to model both surface geometry and internal composition simultaneously, making it is possible to preserve a very complete structural understanding of any object. We illustrate the properties of this new modeling system using several case studies involving the digital capture of traditional objects and craft patterns, which we also reuse in modern designs.