CMC Associates, UK participated in 3D-ICONS as a provider of content and expertise on business models.
CMC Associates was formed in 2005 by experienced multimedia staff who had originally (1992) been part of the National Museums of Scotland and then the Arius3D Europe group. Retaining their former production capacity, all content and media staff became associates of CMC and they continue their longstanding commitment to high quality content and media. CMC Associates specialise in organising rich content for the cultural sector; developing the correct media solutions for exhibitions, websites and digital publications.
CMC have a detailed understanding and experience of various 3D digitisation technologies for the medical, engineering and cultural sectors, including both polygonal and pointcloud scanners and processing software. Since the early 1990s, CMC have explored the use of online repositories for the redistribution of rich media in 2D and 3D and were co-founding members of SCRAN (Scottish Cultural Resources Access Network) in 1995. They continue to be involved in forming large picture libraries, building image banks containing 3D models of interest to a wide variety of users. Unique collections from the National Museums of Scotland were catalogued with associated datasets in a scalable database for the EC research project KIST in 2002 leading the way for new approaches to exploring museum artefacts. CMC were also major contributors to the Research Roadmap for the EC project ORION in 2003 focusing on 3D image quality control and assurance.
CMC have extensive knowledge of managing 3D object scans at scientific resolution, with highly accurate colour and geometry, along with extensive experience of IPR issues in the cultural sector. CMC is currently participating in the 3D-COFORM project, exploring business applications of 3D collections.
Collaborations with The British Museum and Silicon Graphics in 2005 resulted in the hugely successful exhibition ‘Mummy: the inside story’ which advanced research techniques by using 3D digitisation to investigate both external and internal features of a 3,000 year-old Egyptian mummy. CMC has this year (2011) opened a ground breaking exhibition at Russborough House in Ireland presenting the stereo-photography of Sr Alfred Beit. Exhibits include a state of the art 60 seat 3D Cinema and many 3D viewing platforms.
CMC has, since 2009, been working with both archive and modern photogrammetry to record and digitally model both objects and monuments. This has included archive investigations of Scottish World Heritage sites and we are currently developing a programme of work on the Hadrian’s Wall.