Real-Time Rendering Engines Help Visualize, Model, and Animate Ancient Cities: An Example in Antioch

Abstract

This study aimed to revitalize ancient cities’ history, culture, and social life, along with their physical environments, through computer-aided, three-dimensional (3D) images. This study will become an instrument for visualization in 3D ancient cities whose historical remains are not intact and are perhaps known only through books, maps, pictures, and inscriptions. Following historical investigations and comparative analyses of similar examples, objects or structures subject to change over centuries, partially damaged, or lost were visualized through the production of models that reflect their original historic design. The images obtained were converted to animations of 3d models with motion, sound, light, and related effects. In addition to animations, this study implemented another technique concerning cities: the Ancient Antioch—the modeled space was installed in a game engine to obtain simultaneous images. Despite certain limitations, the study findings, adequately based on scientific evidence, provide rich visual content for practical use in the three domains of presentation, research, and education. The hope is that this socio-historical, scientific, and esthetic study, established to model, visualize, and animate city life from approximately 1800–2000 years ago, will be instrumental to the further development of its mixed methodologies and provide a new synthetic process for an ongoing feedback loop. Perhaps the most important output of this study was the use of almost all of the images obtained in the Hatay Archaeology Museum. After the final stage of preparation, the presentation of Ancient Antioch is planned to be done in 2023 of March and opened to visitors on special platforms with Unity 3D. An actual excavation area’s data can be constantly modeled and remodeled, thus improving the scientific feasibility, quality, and uniqueness of excavation work and the dissemination of scientific results.