We present a prototype of a 3D model viewer for cultural heritage built in Unity 3D. The Unity engine allows for the use of custom shaders that can increase realism and provide a uniquely immersive experience with cultural heritage artifacts. Examples of custom shaders that this architecture supports include image-based specular reflections and polynomial texture mapping (PTM) for translucent materials. Furthermore, the software can be built and deployed as a stand-alone WebGL application viewable in the browser without relying on third-party content delivery services. The code for this project is open source and available on GitHub.
Tyler Garcia, Zhangchi Lyu, Michael Tetzlaff, "An Online Model Viewer for Cultural Heritage in Unity 3D" in Archiving Conference, 2022, pp 50 - 55, https://doi.org/10.2352/issn.2168-3204.2022.19.1.11