Designing scientifically-grounded paleoart for augmented reality at La Brea Tar Pits

Palaeontologia Electronica

article

Matt Davis¹  Benjamin D. Nye²  Gale M. Sinatra²  William Swartout²  Molly Sjӧberg³  Molly Porter³  David Nelson²  Alana A.U. Kennedy⁴  Imogen Herrick⁴  Danaan DeNeve Weeks⁵  Emily Lindsey⁵ 

[1] Natural History Museum of Los Angeles Count;University of Southern California;Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County;University of Southern California Rossier School of Education;La Brea Tar Pits

关键词: paleoart;    augmented reality;    Pleistocene;    La Brea Tar Pits;    museums;    3D;   

DOI  :  10.26879/1191

学科分类：社会科学、人文和艺术（综合）

来源: Palaeontologia Electronica

【 摘 要 】

Paleoart is an important medium that communicates scientific understanding about prehistoric life to both the public and researchers. However, despite its broad influence, the scientific and aesthetic decisions that go into paleoart are rarely described in formal academic literature or subjected to peer review. This is unfortunate, as paleoart can easily create and perpetuate misconceptions that are carried through generations of iterative popular media. As an example of what we hope will become a standard article type in paleontological journals, we describe the process and latest scientific research used to develop 13 new paleoart reconstructions of Ice Age animals found in the La Brea Tar Pits, including the saber-toothed cat, dire wolf, and teratorn. We adopted a stylized low polygon aesthetic for these three-dimensional (3D), animated virtual models both to support learning objectives and to optimize performance for smartphone based augmented reality (AR) experiences. We encourage all researchers to follow the example of this article by publishing paleoart descriptions for any major new work that, at a minimum, reference the aesthetic and scientific reasoning behind general posture and proportions, gross appearance of soft tissues, coloration, and behavior.

【 授权许可】

CC BY|CC BY-NC-SA