Visualising Climate Change Effects on Built Cultural Heritage

My Dissertation project consists of researching novel visualisation techniques to be used in connection with heritage and more specifically heritage that is threatened by climate change.

By implementing these visualisation techniques to show the public, as well as the professionals, what the specific effects are climate change could have on cultural and built heritage, action undertaken might be more specific to the threat at a certain site. The visualisation could also be used to show how mitigation and adaptation will protect and/or affect the site in the future.

The visualisation software researched in this project was Houdini. A procedural and parametric 3D modelling software that is currently mostly used for visual effects in the movie industry. The renders that can be exported from the software can be very realistic and the simulations are generated within the software instead of animations generated frame by frame by the animator.

To conclude my research project I can say that the software is certainly the most interesting choice because it offers a wide variety of parametric options for the simulations. But this research also comes with the warning that Houdini is not a software that can be learned in a few days time, and to generate the best images and most realistic render sequences a device with considerable graphic and computational power should be provided.

Houdini Water Simulations

Houdini Fracture simulations

Houdini Castle Simulations