3D line drawing for archaeological illustration

Archaeological line drawing is an essential component of an archaeological report. In this paper, we propose a multi-scale approach to generating 3D line drawing on a triangular mesh model for archaeological illustration. The discrete multi-scale representation of a given model is first constructed based on random walks. Then, we propose a probabilistic method for local scale selection based on the minimum description length (MDL) principle. Finally, the ridges or valleys are detected with the selected scales. Experimental results show that the multi-scale 3D line drawings can well depict the shapes of cultural heritage objects. Compared with the traditional manual method, our method is more accurate and convenient. Furthermore, the time cost of archaeological mapping is decreased to a large extent and the detected lines can be rendered with specific scales and view directions. The computer-generated line drawing can be used to assist the archaeologists to draw archaeological line drawing.