Virtual 3D Reconstruction of Chudov Monastery of the Moscow Kremlin

EVA 2015 SAINT-PETERSBURG, RUSSIA

VIRTUAL 3D RECONSTRUCTION OF CHUDOV MONASTERY OF THE MOSCOW KREMLIN.

Maxim Mironenko History faculty Department of historical-IT MSU of Lomonosov Moscow, Russia [email protected]

Monuments of cultural heritage are ruining. One It was a famous center of political and religious way to save them in our mind is creating of their digi- influence. It was built by Russian metropolitan Alexy tal copy after his returning to Moscow from Horde. This mon- In 20th-30th of the 20 century were ruined a lot of asterylocated on theterritory of the formerKhan’s court. monuments inn Russia, among them Chudovmonas- The firststone buildingwas constructed in 1365,and itwas teriy. The surviving historical sourcesallow us to re- dedicatedtoMichael archangel. In 1431the vaults ofthe construct them with modern computer software as it templecollapsedand only60 years laterthey wererecovered really was. In this paper, the steps for the production in 1483. The third rebuilding of the cathedral started of complete 3D digital reconstruction in the exterior with Ivan III in 1501. The last major reconstructionof and a few the interior of Chudov Monastery are pre- the cathedraltook place in 1779under themetropolitan sented and described. Platon. The image of monastery was virtually reconstructed in Introduction this project at the moment of the end of 20th of 20th century before the destruction in December. This is the first Last years 3D technology becomes a part of our life. It attempt of a scientific reconstruction of the monastery. is not only a sphere of entertainment, but also afield fora We used many historical sources such as blueprints of lot of historical reconstructions.For a long time 3D recon- FedorRikhter,some photosfrom the collections of archives structions wereraisedas specialway, but now they become Moscow Kremlin museums, GA RF. a part of vast scientific researches. At first,author conducted a systematization and collec- Many monuments have been destroyed in the past. tion of all available sources from the GA RF and GMMK Some ofthem had suffered from human activities; others which were neither published before nor incur multicenter were destroyed by the impact of an aggressive environ- study.[1] ment.. 3D technology enables us to maintain or virtually In this project weused Rhinoceros 3D™ software for restore what has been lost. Certainly, it will not be like the monastery modeling. original object, but very close to it The next step was visualization and texturing which The general idea of this project is to developverifi- was made in Autodesk 3Ds Max™ with Vray™.From the able architecture-exact historical 3D model of theChudov historical sources, we know that monastery buildings at monastery, which was destroyed in 1929. 1929were painted with red colorwash.

110 Section 3. Virtual 3D-Reconstructions

Fig. 1. Vizualisation of the Chudov monastery (XXth century) (fragment).

Fig. 2. Vizualisation of the porch of the Chudov monastery (XXth century) (fragment).

At the beginning, we decided to create this project as ments in virtual sphere.All results will be presentedon the scientific reconstruction but also this model can be used website of the Moscow Kremlin museums. for educational purpose at schools and museum exhibi- Nowadays, this project is very relevant according tions. This is a convenient way to tellup-dated genera- to Russian President Vladimir Putin`s proposal of re- tion of youth the history of their country and culture. Also constructing theChudov monastery. We can see now the such reconstruction can help us to save crumbling monu- growing interest to our cultural heritage.

111 EVA 2015 SAINT-PETERSBURG, RUSSIA Digitalizing and Modeling

The project of geometrically documenting of the Chudov Monastery started in 2013 and lasted for about two years. We started with reconstruction of Michael Archangel cathedral for the period of 1920th. First step of reconstruction is digitalizing of blueprints in Autodesk AutoCAD™. Previously some of them were scaled and cropped in Photoshop. All blueprints were with defects: faded colors, paper cast and so on. Second step is modeling in Rhinoceros. Firstly we created main form of all buildings. Secondly,we modeled in- ner walls for creating interior of this monastery. There are some problems with interpretation of historical sources. Some of them contains various readings andwe prefer photo if there are some sources. Most of problems deals with decor elements. [2]

Vizualisation

All surfaces were exported from Rhinoceros to 3D Studio Max for the photorealistic rendering to be car- ried out. In this program we created all material (texture maps based on real images)accordingto historical sour ces or survived analogs and visualized model via Vray plugin(Fig.2-3)[3] Using this 3D technology we don`t seek to replace of the real historical objects with this model. No, even the most rigorous scientific reconstruction, can not act as the equivalent of a genuine monument. The purpose of the renovations - is to recreate (stored in electronic form) that has been lost. The digital model has one indisputable ad- vantage - it does not get old, does not break and can be kept forever. Project results will be present as a part of virtual museum of lost Moscow.

References

[1]Maxim S. Mironenko, Peter S. Mironenko. Virtual 3Dreconstruction of the cathedral of Michaels Archangel Miracle Monastery of the Moscow Kremlin. //Historical Information Science. 2013 №1P. 28

[2]Ibid.P. 34-36.

[3]Mironenko Maxim. Modern approaches to3Drecon- struction ofobjects of cultural heritage: the problemof vis- ualizationand perception(for example,the MoscowPassion MonasteryandChudov Monasteryof the Moscow Kremlin) //Electronicscientific and educationalmagazine”History”. V.6 2015 (in print)

112