Digital Transitions for a Comprehensive 3D Documentation: European Trends for Heritage Preservation

The main objective of this paper is to present an overview on standards, procedures and protocols to Cultural Heritage digitization in 3D, based on a critical review of the State-of-the-Art in data capturing, data processing and data storage/access within the overall framework of Heritage Documentation. In fact, achieving a rich and comprehensive digital documentation of the Cultural Heritage has been among the main European challenges since long and the use of 3D has been significantly fostered in last years. Currently we are witnessing the transition from the adoption of 3D in research and high-level scenarios to a more widespread use of these technologies, also requiring a systematic approach to the storage, preservation and access of these 3D digital assets. Latest and most advanced documents and studies on the 3D Digitisation of Tangible Cultural Heritage have been critically analysed. Based on these, major trends have been identified as well as the main areas of next developments have been drafted.