Built in the 9th century, the Buddhist temple Borobudur on the islandof Java, Indonesia, is one of the world's greatest monuments. It isalso an art complex, the walls of the giant stepped pyramid beingadorned with over two kilometers of detailed stone relief carvings.Between 1927 and 1930, Thomas van Erp and N.J. Krom publishedmagnificent black and white photographs of the narrative reliefs,high-resolution digitized images of which can be seen inthe online VRML model of Project Jigsaw.
Aerial photo of the greatBuddhist temple Borobudur on the island of Java, Indonesia. |
Supervised by ANU Professor of Art History Michael Greenhalgh,VIZLAB's Ajay Limaye has created that includes theKrom and van Erp images. The photos, applied as texture maps in theircorrect location within the temple complex, are available at variousresolutions to suit the network speeds of different users.
Screenshot from the VRMLmodel running in a standard web browser. | |
Screenshot showing navigational map. Note thequality of the relief carvings and the fact that eachtexture map is different from the others - just as at the real Borobudur. |
Ajay has also written a -based VRML viewer allowinglocal researchers to explore Borobudur within the VIZLAB'svirtual environment.