Movable Books As Animated Machines. Creating 3D-Models of Historical Children's Books

The project BeWeB-3D deals with specific paper-made objects: movable or pop-up books. It aims at designing a computer-made model of 19th century paper-engineered objects, which facilitates interaction. Contrary to ordinary books these objects contain what you could call an interface. Therefore, interaction is a main goal of our 3D realization. BeWeB-3D was launched in February 2017. It is located at Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (Berlin State Library) and funded by Germany’s Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF, Grant No. 01UG1652X). Aside from theoretical questions the technological part of the project is a challenging task. This is particularly so for the following (four) reasons. 1) Our average scientific user demands a low-threshold handling which asks for at least a plug-in free solution. 2) The quality of the original invites to reflect on how to live up to this standard best. 3) The implementation as a dynamical 3D model necessitates the use of game-engines like Unity. 4) The research context requires sustainability, long-term preservation and an open international standard