Abstract:

Teaching of computer graphic (CG) courses involves creation and processing of graphical content by students. While the main goal of using specific content is to well present aspects of specific topics and techniques, it is a proven fact that students are more interested in doing projects that operate on interesting and potentially useful content.

The preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage involves more and more aspects from the computer graphics area. That relates especially to 3D scanning, processing and presenting of various cultural heritage artifacts. That field of cultural heritage has especially grown in importance in the current pandemic time as the safe alternative to visiting museums or heritage sites. While 3D digitizing of heritage objects is rather a specific utilization of computer graphics, it involves in majority typical techniques that are commonly used in different CG fields.

The CG course is regularly taught during the 4th semester of the 1st degree Computer Science studies at Lublin University of Technology. The authors are describing an attempt to include cultural heritage related aspects into standard CG teaching in order to improve student’s interest in the course and at the same time encourage their involvement into exploring and preserving cultural heritage. The Silk Road heritage was chosen as the source of materials for the modified course thanks to the long term cooperation with Samarkand (Uzbekistan) museums, and ongoing digitization activities.

A research question has been set: Whether a synergy of acquired skills can be obtained by extending the standard computer graphics course by the basics of cultural heritage models processing, without harming the main goal of the course. The discussion about student’s projects effects and grades acquired in comparison to the former editions of the course is presented. In the authors' opinion providing examples of real-life artifacts models not only gave students the opportunity to be involved in the professional applications of CG and acquire experience useful during the heritage digitization, but also improved their engagement during the classes.

Keywords:

Computer graphics teaching, cultural heritage, Silk Road, 3D models processing.