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DS Learn

About DS Learn

BCDS' DS Learn provides digital scholarship learning resources created by the Boston College Libraries Digital Scholarship Group. Visit our to learn more about BCDS learning opportunities and our to learn more about DS methods and concepts. For questions or comments, please .

Tutorials

All tutorials were created by BC Libraries' Digital Scholarship Group.

Digital Exhibits

¶ Digital Exhibits

Getting Started with Digital Exhibits

Getting Started with Digital Exhibits provides an introduction to digital exhibit creation. Much of the information here originated with a workshop () and is related to found in the Digital Scholarship Handbook.

This tutorial is not platform-specific. These , however, will help you get started on the commonly used platform where you can apply what you learn here.

Considerations

Before starting the exhibit creation process, you need to consider closely your topic, desired effects, and objectives with the understanding that the decisions you make might change as you progress.

1.) Determine the Topic

What is the main focus or theme of the exhibit?

Some examples: a historical period or movement, an event, a person's biography, a process or technique (e.g., silk screen printing), an idea or concept (e.g., the law of gravity), an industry (e.g., whaling), a single object (e.g., a specific book, painting, or musical instrument)

2.) Determine the Desired Effect

Effects to consider (as cited in Barth, et al. 2018):

Aesthetic: designed to showcase the beauty of objects
Emotive: designed to elicit an emotion in the viewer
Evocative: designed to create a specific atmosphere

3.) Determine the Objectives

What do you want people "walking away" with? This means considering things like:

What is the motivation for creating the exhibit? (Why this exhibit?)
What are the intended learning outcomes?
How do you want visitors to be able to apply what they learn beyond the exhibit?

References

Barth, G. L., Drake Davis, L., Mita, A. (2018). . Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference Technical Leaflet Series no. 12.

Basic Steps

After considering the topic, desired effects, and objectives follow the steps below. (The order is suggested and not entirely necessary.)

1.) Select the objects that will be featured

The object selection process requires careful consideration and includes determining whether any digitization is needed and whether there are any intellectual property concerns. (See the Intellectual Property libguide for more on the topic.)

2.) Determine how you want to organize your objects

The order objects will go in, the way they are grouped, and how they are juxtaposed are major components of the curation process. It is helpful to play around with the order, even if only to ensure your chosen order is the best one.

3.) Select your exhibit platform

Choose the most appropriate for the content and the desired type of interactivity.
- You may already know which platform you plan to use or the one you have to use based on what is available to you. If not, it can be helpful to base your platform selection on the content you have as opposed to shaping your content to fit into a given platform.

4.) Write your text

for the introduction page, object labels, and group labels. (Also see a topic that applies when writing for an online audience.)
- Introduction page: Information that introduces or "sets the scene" of the exhibit
- Object labels: Information that describes and contextualizes exhibit objects

5.) Determine the site organization

Design the site's information architecture (structure, navigation, taxonomy, page layout, etc.) (See ).
- The choices made here shape the flow of the exhibit and the interactive experience.
Organization choices have a major impact on exhibit .

6.) Make Design Decisions

Make design decisions, e.g., choose , , landing page image(s), etc. (Read ).
Design decisions have a major impact on tone and .

Site Organization

Major Concepts

The following are some major concepts that should be considered when creating the site in which the exhibit lives.

Information Architecture (IA) - The structure of the site (e.g., the site hierarchy, the way pages link to each other) and the labeling of information so that it is understandable and navigable. (Read and see below.)

Taxonomy - A component of IA that involves the language chosen to label menus/navigation bars, page headers, etc. (Read

Usability & Accessibility

In addition to the design and structuring of the exhibit site, usability and accessibility are also necessary aspects to consider when building your project.

Usability means how effectively users can interact with and navigate a site.
Accessibility means how effectively users with disabilities or technological disadvantages (e.g., slow internet access) can use a site and how equivalent their experience is with the experience of users who do not have such challenges. Often steps taken to better serve the disabled also serve those who are technologically disadvantaged, e.g., video transcripts can serve the hearing impaired and those who do not have the internet bandwidth to play a video.

Key Basics

Visual Design - A good rule to follow is to keep it simple. A lot of different colors, decorative elements, and busy layouts can make the exhibit more difficult to navigate and the information more difficult to process. This is especially true for those with disabilities.

Page Organization and Layout - Breaking up the text into logical sections makes it easier to read. (Avoid having a "wall" of text.)

Headers - Use headers and subheaders to help logically break up the content on a page and to introduce/frame the information to come. This will make the page more readable and easier for screen readers to navigate.

Contrast - There needs to be strong contrast between the background and text. This means the colors need to have enough difference between them (both in intensity and hue) and that text is not on top of an image that makes it difficult to read. (There are s for checking contrast.)

Fonts - Avoid using ornate and difficult to read fonts and avoid using all caps.

Alt Text - Images should have alt text. Read more:

Captions - Videos should have captions.

Transcripts - Audio files (e.g., podcasts) should have transcripts; having transcripts for videos is also helpful and necessary if captions are not possible.

Resources

The following resources provide more helpful information on accessibility:

()

Platforms

The platform you select will influence decisions about exhibit organization and design, among other things. You may start out knowing what platform you want to use, or you may change your mind about the chosen platform based on the way you want to organize your exhibit, the way you want visitors to interact with it, and whether you want to have the object available in digital collection form as well.

Some things to keep in mind while considering platforms include:

Ease of use and customization
Whether there needs to be a searchable collections component
Whether exhibits should be navigable linearly, non-linearly, or both
The types and level of interactivity desired
Accessibility for the disabled

Some common platform options:

Omeka ( and ) []
- []

¶ Digital Storytelling

While every digital tool on this site can be used for "digital storytelling," the following are tools that have been specifically designed with storytelling in mind. Also, see the for information on video and podcast creation.

Introduction to ArcGIS StoryMaps

ArcGIS StoryMaps allows you to use a variety of maps, text, and multimedia elements to present interactive narratives. Since ArcGIS has a number of helpful StoryMap tutorials and instructions available, the information here is relatively brief and often links out to those resources.

Planning Your StoryMap

Creating a good storymap requires good planning. You may find it helpful to sketch out your ideas on paper (in the form of a diagram, an outline, or a rough illustration) prior to working in the actual technology.

Creating Your Content Blocks

StoryMaps uses "content blocks," which include objects ranging from text blocks to interactive maps to images. See content for examples of content blocks.

Add Alternative Text (Alt Text)

When adding media of any kind, you are given the opportunity to add alternative text for the visually impaired. You want to do this unless the image is purely decorative and does not add to the content/narrative. ()

To add alt text, hover over the media and then click on "Options" (the gear icon). Depending on the content block type, you will see either a field that says, "Alternative text" or you will see a choice to click on "Display" or "Properties." Click on "Properties" and you will then see an "Alternative text" field.

Design Decisions

StoryMaps lets you adjust the look/design within a limited range.

You can keep your story private or publish it for your audience. You have to republish your work for any changes made to be visible to visitors. Before publishing or sharing your story you can . The publishing and sharing options (among others) can be found in the menu at the top of the page:

The URL (web address) that you get when you "View published story" is your project's front-facing URL and is the link you share out.

Getting Started

Creating an Account

If you do not already have an ArcGIS account, you will need to create one to get started. If you cannot get an institutional account, you can create a free public one. Note that free accounts have limited functionality and do not allow for embedding, incorporating audio clips, and creating image galleries.

To create your free account, click on "Sign In" in the upper right corner of the StoryMaps site, which will take you to the Esri sign-in page. Then click "Create a public account" and complete the account creation process.

Starting a New StoryMap

Once you have signed into your account, click "New Story" in the top left corner to create your StoryMap.

From the "New story" dropdown, you can select "Start of scratch," so that your project has does not preexisting block styles in place, or you can choose to start with a "Sidecar," "Guided map tour," or "Explore map tour" content block types.

Title Your Story

In the space where it says "Untitled," you can give your story a name. Feel free to add a subtitle as well. (You change them anytime, so feel free to use temporary ones.)

Saving

StoryMaps automatically saves, so there is no need to save after launching your new story or after making any changes.

Using Content Blocks

StoryMaps provides a number of content block styles to choose from. Please note that public ArcGIS accounts do not have the embed, audio, and image gallery available.

for a demonstration of the different kinds of content blocks.

Adding a New Content Block

TimelineJS

TimelineJS is an easy-to-use timeline visualization tool that uses Google Spreadsheets. (See examples.)

How it Works

Timelines created in TimelineJS are data visualization. The data is input in the spreadsheet and the TimelineJS platform translates that data into a visual representation.

Getting Started

The tool's site provides instructions. Simply click "Make a Timeline."

From there you will be walked through four major steps:

Making a copy of a Google spreadsheet. (You can use your BC or personal Google account.)
Publishing the spreadsheet, which is necessary for it to be visualized
Cutting and pasting the spreadsheet link to visualize the timeline

Using the Spreadsheet

The spreadsheet contains a template that will guide you through the information entry process. Do not make edits to the spreadsheet's headers as they are formatted specifically for the TimelineJS platform.

The headers represent the kind of information that should go in each column. The spaces where you put the information are fields. Two of these fields, Year and Headline, have to have an entry in order for the timeline to work. The rest are optional.

Field explinations:

Year, Month, Day, Time (Year is required) - Sets the date/time to varying degrees of granularity
End Year, End Month, End Day, End Time (optional) - Sets end date/time to varying degrees of granularity
Display Date (optional) - How you want the date to appear on the timeline

Text fields:

Headline (required) - The title or name of the event
Text (optional) - The or narrative information

Media fields:

Media (optional) - Media URL (web address)
Media Credit (optional) - Text that gives credit to media creator and/or distributor; here you can create a link that takes users back to where the media originated (see "Creating Links in Fields" below)
Media Caption (optional) - Text that describes the media

Additional fields:

Type (optional) - Indicates which slide is the title slide.
Group (optional) - A way to show slides are related
Background (optional) - Change the background to a color (use ) or an image (use an image URL)

The spreadsheet is where the majority of the digital aspects of the labor occur, be it intellectual or technical, as it takes time to fill in and to do so with accuracy. The other labor-intensive aspects are selecting the events that will be addressed, the research component, writing the text, and finding or creating the media.

Visualizing the Timeline

It's a good idea to go ahead and visualize the timeline while working on it so you can keep an eye on how it is looking and to make sure there aren't any errors. To visualize the timeline you follow step 3 "Generate your timeline" and 4 "Share your timeline" Keep a copy of the timeline URL generated during this process as this is how you will access and share the timeline. This is also how you get the embed code for embedding the timeline in things like websites.

Errors

When the timeline does not work after having attempted to visualize it, it is most likely an error in the spreadsheet. Common errors include a row that sits between filled in rows is left blank or a year or headline is not included for at least one of the entries. After fixing these errors by deleting the blank row or adding the missing year(s) or headline(s), try visualizing it again.

Adding Media

Media must be hosted online as it cannot be uploaded to TimelineJS. Adding media requires that you use the specific media URL that links directly to the image or video.

To get a video found on YouTube or a similar platform, select “Share,” which is right below the video, copy the URL, and paste it in the Media field.

How to get an image URL:

On a Mac hold down the control key and click on the image then select: “Copy Image Address” or “Copy Image URL" depending on which browser you are using.
On a PC right-click on the image then select: “Copy Image Address” or “Copy Image URL" depending on which browser you are using.

It will look something like the following:

It's easy to make mistakes with images and get the page URL or a thumbnail version instead. If you get the page URL an error will appear where the image should be in the timeline. If the image appears too small, you have clicked on a smaller version of the image and copied the URL. In this case, go back and make sure you click on the larger version to get the address.

Creating Links in Fields

You can create hyperlinked text in the Headline, Text, and Media Caption fields using the basic HTML tags:

<a href="Source URL">Hyperlinked text</a>

For example, if you want to add a media caption like, Mary Wollstonecraft by John Heath, c. 1797 (Wikicommons), and you want to have Wikicommons be a hyperlink to where the image can be found on the site you would write:

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Heath, circa 1797 <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mary_Wollstonecraft_by_John_Opie_(c._1797).jpg">(Wikicommons)</a>

In the timeline caption location, the above will appear as:

Mary Wollstonecraft by John Heath, c. 1797 ()

¶ 3D Modeling & Immersive Technology

A series of workshop materials and tutorials based on subjects surrounding 3D modeling, AR, and VR

Below are several tutorials focused on different aspects of 3D modeling, AR, and VR project creation. We will be expanding on these in the coming months, so if there is a particular topic you are interested in feel free to contact the BC Digital Scholarship Team at digitalscholarship@bc.edu!

Adding 3D Models in Omeka

With the use of a couple of plugins, both Omeka S and Omeka Classic allow you to incorporate 3D models into your digital exhibits. Getting both your site and the 3D models in the proper form, however, takes a bit of work, particularly for Omeka S.

Install Necessary Plugins

While both Omeka S and Omeka Classic display 3D models using the Universal Viewer plugin, there are a few others that are necessary to ensure the framework is properly set up.

Plugins/Modules to Install in both Omeka S and Omeka Classic

Intro to Photo Processing with Agisoft Metashape for 3D Model Making

Introduction

Agisoft Metashape (available in the Digital Studio) is a stand-alone software product that performs photogrammetric processing of digital images and generates 3D spatial data (point clouds, meshes, etc.) to be used in GIS applications, cultural heritage documentation, and visual effects production, as well as for indirect measurements of objects of various scales. Its user-friendly workflow sets it above many of the other 3D model-processing platforms.

To create a 3D model from photographs takes only a few easy steps, which are nicely summarized for you in Metashape's "Workflow" dropdown. It even grays out options that are not available to you yet!

In this introduction, we will go step-by-step through the creation of a simple 3D model, in this case using photos taken of the Doug Flutie "Hail Flutie" statue taken outside of Boston College's Alumni Stadium in Fall 2020 (evident from the mask on Doug's face). This model will be "in-the-round," as it were, but not a full 360 degrees, as the statue is fixed in the ground.

These steps are:

Adding your photos
Aligning your photos/building a dense cloud (if necessary)
Building your mesh

Let's get started!

Adding your Photos

Once you are finished taking photos of an object with your camera or camera phone, you will want to copy the images off of your device and place them in a recognizable location on your computer.

For this example, I have created a folder called "Flutie" and placed it on my desktop. Inside of it are all the photos I took of the statue. For tips on taking photos of objects either inside the Digital Studio lightbox or "in the wild," check out our page on or our .

Now that the photos have been offloaded to the computer, it is time to add them to our Metashape project. Our Workflow drop-down makes this easy, as you are able to select individual images to add to the project or an entire folder, which works great in our case.

The photos will load (185 in our case). Metashape will then ask you to choose what type of scene you want to create. For our case, Single Cameras is the proper option, as each image represents a single photo of the object.

The second option, Dynamic scene (4d) is for the reconstruction of dynamic scenes captured by a set of statically mounted synchronized cameras. For this purpose, multiple image frames captured at different time moments can be loaded for each camera location.

Now you can see that your images are loaded in the Photos pane at the bottom of your screen. This is a good time to save your project. It's suggested that you save the project in the same folder as the images, as the project and images are now linked together.

Aligning your Photos

Now that the images are loaded, it's time to actually start processing! We return to our Workflow dropdown and now notice that the Align Photos option is available.

Aligning the photos is the part of the process which takes the longest. At this stage, Metashape finds the camera position and orientation for each photo and builds a sparse point cloud model based on matching pixel groups between images. This point cloud will become the basis of our digital model.

Choosing Align Photos from the dropdown gives you a few options. The default options are generally fine, although the Accuracy setting will determine how long the process takes. In general, using the High accuracy is a good choice unless you have a very large number of photos (>200), in which case Medium may be a better choice. But really it depends on how much time you have. Aligning photos for the Flute statue with 185 photos took 20-30 min.

At this point, the processing box will appear and let you know as the software aligns your photos, starting by Selecting Points, then Selecting Pairs, Matching Points, which will take the longest, and Estimating camera locations.

Since the pixel groups used for matching are randomly selected, aligning photos several times may produce different results. If you are having difficulty getting your photos to align, try reprocessing (make sure to click Reset current alignment from the Align Photos options)

Sparse Point Cloud, the result of our photo alignment, can be seen above. Notice that the general shape of the statue is already apparent, which means that the photos were taken reasonably well. The blue squares represent the calculated locations of where the images were taken. Clicking on an image in the Photos pane will highlight the image chosen on your model, useful for troubleshooting issues. Finally, small checked boxes will appear next to the images that have successfully aligned; if a number of your images have not aligned, you will want to rerun the Align Photos process or retake your images to cover the portion of your object that is having issues. In our case, all the photos were aligned, which is fantastic!

If processing in the Digital Studio, be aware that inaction on the computers may eventually log you out and cause you to lose your work. Keep an eye on the processing, especially in the Aligning Photos stage!

Bonus: Cleaning your point cloud

You might notice from the image above that there is a lot of the surrounding environment that appears in our point cloud, particularly the concrete surface surrounding our statue. This can often take place if it is difficult or impossible for your object to take up the majority of each picture taken.

This moment allows for the opportunity to clean up the point cloud before building your mesh. There are a variety of ways to clean the point cloud, but the easiest is to use the Select and Crop tools, which works the same way as cropping an image

First, use the Select tool to roughly select the object itself. Once the area you want to keep is selected, use the Crop tool to crop everything else out. Easy!

The Delete tool seen above works in the opposite way of the crop tool. Clicking the X will delete whatever points you have selected, which offers a second way to clear out unwanted points!

Bonus: Build Dense Cloud

For objects with a lot of detail, which need a very high-resolution mesh, it may be necessary to build a Dense Cloud after aligning your photos. A dense cloud is simply what it says, a denser point cloud created from points, which align between your photos.

Choosing this option will again ask you how high you want the accuracy of your dense cloud to be. Note that the dense cloud process can take several hours depending on the number of photos taken, so be sure you have the time available before starting it.

If working to build a full 360 degree model, building a dense cloud is often necessary to merge the top and bottom of the model. This process will be covered in a future tutorial.

In the dense cloud seen above, note how some cleaning of the point cloud using the Delete and Crop tools would be useful before moving on to the creation of the mesh, as described in the section above.

Building Mesh

Now that your photos are aligned, a new option appears in our Workflow dropdown, building the mesh of our digital object. Fortunately, this process is much faster!

In short, this step takes your point cloud, which simply represents a group of points floating in space, and turns it into an actual 3D surface, a mesh, by connecting these points together.

The Build Mesh options are not too complex. It allows you to choose your point cloud (Sparse or Dense, if you made one) and pick the number of faces you want your mesh to have. The final option is Surface type, which should generally remain on the Arbitrary (3D).

The other option, Height field, is optimized for modeling planar surfaces, such as terrains or base reliefs. It should be selected for aerial photography processing as it requires a lower amount of memory and allows for larger datasets processing.

Building Texture

The last major step in processing our model is to build the texture. The texture is the colored overlay, which will sit on top of our created 3D mesh. Again, we simply return to our Workflow dropdown and select Build Texture!

The options are a bit more complex than other steps, though in general, the default options are fine. The breakdown is as follows, though in general, you are fine with the defaults:

Texture type: Diffuse map (Default) is the normal texture mapping, Occlusion map is used for calculating ambient lighting so is not necessary for basic models
Source data: will change based on the texture type. For our regular Diffuse texture, it will be the images
Mapping mode:

Unsure? Just use Generic and see how it looks

Blending mode:
- Mosaic (default) - implies a two-step approach: it does blending of low-frequency component for overlapping images to avoid a seamline problem (weighted average, the weight being dependent on a number of parameters including proximity of the pixel in question to the center of the image), while high-frequency component, that is in charge of picture details, is taken from a single image - the one that presents a good resolution for the area of interest while the camera view is almost along the normal to the reconstructed surface in that point.

Unsure? Go with the default Mosaic first; if you are getting weird blendings of color, try Average instead

Texture size/count: Specifies the size (width & height) of the texture atlas in pixels and determines the number of files for texture to be exported to. Exporting texture to several files allows to archive greater resolution of the final model texture. Again, the default is probably fine for beginning models

Bonus: Scaling your model

In some cases, you will want your model to be "to scale" so that it can easily be used in other immersive technologies (gaming, AR, VR). This process is quite easy in Metashape, as long as you have taken a few distinct measurements of various portions of the object you are modeling.

In some cases, high-tech cameras or drones that incorporate GPS technology into their workflow may automatically provide spatial information for scaling your model. No need to worry about the manual process performed here in that case!

In order to scale your model, you need to pick precise points which you are measuring between. This can be done either from the model itself or from individual pictures. Simply right click and select Add Marker

Each marker will have a name (point 1, point 2, etc). To tell Metashape the distance between these two points, you need to swap from the Workspace pane that you have been using so far to the Reference Pane. This can be done at the bottom left of your Metashape window.

Your reference pane will look something like this. Notice that it already contains the two markers we just created (point 1 and point 2). The images listed at the top will contain spatial information for your photos if your camera automatically includes GPS data.

To add the length between your two points, select both points in the reference pane, right click, and choose Create Scale Bar. This will add a scale bar to the bottom portion of the pane, where you can then type in the distance you measured between the points.

Note that the measurements are in meters, so be sure to convert appropriately!

Once you have added your scalebars, it's time to see how much error your model has! Simple go up to the reference toolbar (right above the list of images in the reference toolbar, and click the Update Transform button. Now, taking your measurements into account, the software will scale your model and tell you how much error it has.

I only estimated the measurements above, and you can see my error is pretty bad (18 cm)! In general, it is possible to have subcentimer errors, though this depends on the size of the model you are making. The larger the model, the larger error you should expect.

Exporting your Model

Now that your model is complete for now (scaled or not), you'll want to share it!

Metashape offers a variety of ways to share your model by going to File --> Export --> Export Model. Here are a few of the most common:

Wavefront OBJ (.obj): One of the most commonly used 3D mesh file types, it is used for sharing models using 3D software such as Meshlab and Cloudcompare. If you want to share your models on the online 3D model presentation platform , definitely export in this format for uploading.

Check out the beginning of for information on how to upload your model into Sketchfab

3D pdf (.pdf): A pdf, but in 3D! Anyone using Adobe Reader will be able to view your model straight from their computer. A good choice for mass distribution when others might not have the technical skills to open an obj.
3D printing (.stl): Want to prepare your model for 3D printing? .STL is the file type used by most 3D printers (check out the BC 3D printing page here).

That's it for this introduction to processing 3D models! A future tutorial will go through the process of creating full 360 degree models from photos using chunks but for now we leave you with this example model! Meanwhile, check out the for more information!

Want to see more models made at Boston College?

Tips and Tricks for Taking Photos for 3D Model Creation

When creating 3D models from photographs, taking the photos is more than half the battle! Here are some tips and tricks to make your processing a breeze.

Equipment

Having the right equipment will greatly speed up your processing time. Fortunately, in today's world nearly any camera is good enough to take your photos. A few things to keep in mind:

Use a camera with at least 5 MPix resolution
Avoid ultra-wide angle and fish-eye lenses if possible (it is possible to compensate for these effects, but better to not worry about it)
Fixed lenses are preferred, if possible, but using a zoom lens is fine as long as you stick with one focal length (that is, don't change the zoom levels during the photo-taking process)

Other Equipment

If you are making models of objects, some bonus equipment may prove helpful, even if it is not required:

A lightbox may be used to spread even, diffuse light across the object being modeled, helping to avoid the effects of shadows (see Environment below)
A turntable will rotate an object so you can get pictures of all sides, in case you don't have the room to move around the object. The lightbox available in the digital studio has marks at around 10-degree intervals, allowing you to rotate evenly around the object and know where you began and ended.
A tripod keeps your camera steady at various angles, and will make the process of using a turntable smoother.

Each of these items is available in the O'Neill Digital Studio for you .

Environment

The environment in which you take the photos is almost as important as the equipment you use. Here are a few things to think about, whether you are taking photos of a fixed feature outdoors or in a controlled, indoor environment:

Shadows are bad; even, diffuse light is good. If you are working outdoors, a cloudy day is best, though this is obviously not always possible. If you are working inside, using a lightbox (see above) can help to avoid unwanted shadows
A consistent background color can be helpful, particularly if you end up needing to mask your photos during processing. Again, a lightbox can help with this. Otherwise, it is good practice to position your object in front of a consistent and contrasting backgroun.
Consistency is key, whether indoors or out. You don't want any objects or people moving around in the background of your images. This can confuse the processing software and make it more difficult to align your photos.

Overlap

For successful 3D modeling of objects with photogrammetry, overlapping images are key, as the object itself is reconstructed through matching pixel groups across photos. Indeed, you ultimately want images of each face of an object from multiple angles in order to make your processing as simple as possible.

2 important notes!

(1) DO NOT ZOOM during the photo-taking process; stick with one focal length and, instead of zooming, move your body forward or backward as needed.

(2) In order to get the best model, try to fill up as much of the camera frame as possible with the object. You are making a model of the object after all, not the rest of the world.

The images below suggest a basic process for taking photos of a small object. It combines two factors for each photo, the angle at which the photo is taken and the rotation of the turntable on which the object is sitting. It is recommended to take photos at multiple angles of each side of the object, rotate the object ~10 degrees, and repeat the process until you have taken photos of the entire object.

If using a tripod, it may be easier to take all your photos at one angle and then rotate again at the second angle after adjusting the tripod.

Fewer photos may be required for simple objects, but we do recommend at least 30 photos for any photo-model to ensure that there is enough overlap for a full model to process

Check out the for the final results of the BC eagle model, created using ~100 photos (around 36 photos at 3 angles).

An Introduction to Apple's Reality Composer AR

Introduction

Please note that screenshots for this introduction were created using Reality Composer on a MacBook. The screen layout is slightly different when working directly on an iPad, but the steps are the same.

Installing Reality Composer

Reality Composer is free to download for iPad or iPhone, or downloaded as part of the free (Apple Account Required). Be aware that XCode is quite a larger program for developing applications, so may not be feasible for older MacBooks or those without much storage space. Running Reality Composer on a MacBook also requires you to send your project to an appropriate iPad/iPhone for testing (see below) or open it in an emulator using xCode.

Note that Reality Composer projects (i.e. what opens in Reality Composer) are saved as .rcprojects while sharable experiences that open directly onto an iPhone or iPad with the Quick Look tool are .reality files.

Getting Started: Anchors

There are 5 realtively-straightforward anchor types to chose from in Reality Composer:

Horizontal: will look for any horizontal surface (e.g. a table or the floor) to open your experience on
Vertical: will look for any vertical surface (e.g. a wall) to open your experience
Image: will look for a specific defined image that you determine (e.g. a painting or business card) to open your experience around

Getting Started: Main Window

Once you have chosen an anchor, the main window of Reality Composer will open, which changes slightly based on the anchor type you have chosen (pictured above is the horizontal anchor view ). You can also change your anchor in the right window Properties pane (as well as change the overall physics of the scene, e.g. to allow things to fall through the floor. This can also be set object-by-object later).

The window opens with two objects already present: a cube and a little placard showing some text. Before checking those out, take moment to familiarize ourselves with the other options on the main toolbar. The most important ones for us will be the Add, the Behaviors, and the Properties buttons, but we can quickly review them all.

The Scenes option opens up a sidebar that allows you to name the "scene," or AR view, you are currently working in, as well as create new scenes that can be linked by certain actions (see below).
The Frame button just lets you navigate more easily around your scene by allowing you to zoom in on certain objects or on the scene as a whole.
The Snap tool will snap objects to other objects or to certain horizontal/vertical lines within the scene (similar to the Photoshop snap tool).

Adding and Editing Object Properties

Exploring and playing around with objects is a good way to learn, starting with what comes in our default scene.

Clicking on the cube will automatically open the Properties pane, allowing you to directly edit its various properties like width, height, color, etc. You can also name the object, transform it in space (if you have exact specs you want), and decide if it will obey the laws of physics (e.g. fall to the surface if it appears up in the air). You can also edit directly in the viewing window once an object is selected: arrows pointing along axes allow you to move an object, while clicking the tip of an arrow will allow you to rotate an object around that axis. Give it a try!

Clicking on the placard will open a similar pane, though this one also allows you to edit the text appearing on the sign. Each object you add will have its own individual properties that you can edit.

If you want to add a new object, just click the + Add button. You have the option of many pre-installed 3D objects to work with, as well as signs that can hold text and "frames" which can hold attached images. You can also introduce your own objects by following our .

I can drop a plane into our scene by clicking and dragging it or by double clicking.

Adding a Behavior

You can make your scenes dynamic with actions and reactions by adding behaviors to your objects. I'm going to select the plane, and then click the Behaviors button on the toolbar, and a new pane will open up along the bottom of the page

Clicking the + button will open the new behavior pane, where there are several pre-set behaviors you can choose from; if you scroll down to the bottom, you can create a custom behavior. For now, I will choose Tap and Add Force so we can give our plane some movement.

The behavior pane has its first behavior! You can rename the behavior (currently called Behavior) in the left pane; the Trigger pane allows you to determine what action will make the behavior start (in this case, tapping), as well as which affected objects have the trigger attached (in this case, the plane, but you could add more).

Finally, the action sequence allows you to create a series of effects that happen, either simultaneously or one after another, when the behavior is triggered. In this case, we are going to have the plan start moving forward at a certain velocity

Our plane will move forward along one axis when triggered, but that's not really taking off. Adding a second force in an upward trajectory after a moment will make this takeoff look a bit more realistic. To add further actions to the sequence, simply tap the + button next to the words Action Sequence in the Behaviors window. This will then pop up different pre-coded behaviors you can choose from.

In the image above, I added two new behaviors, a Wait Behavior and a second Add Force behavior in a 45 degree upward angle. Importantly, I directly attached the Wait behavior to the first Add Force behavior (with a drag and drop) which means that these two actions will begin simultaneously, and the second Add Force will not start until the first set is complete. This means our plane will move forward a certain amount before briefly "taking off".

Testing your Experience

Now that we have an experience, we need to test it out to see if it functions correctly. There are a few ways to do this:

If you are working on an iPad or iPhone, it's easy. Just tap the AR button on the top toolbar to open the experience in AR, and then the Play button to start the experience from the beginning.

If you are working on a Mac, it's a bit more difficult. On the one hand, if you hit the Play button on the top toolbar, the experience will start, but will obviously not be in AR, making testing a little bit difficult (though you could still test the functionality in the building screen, as pictured below).

There are other options for testing from a Mac, however. If you have an iPhone or iPad handy that has Reality Composer installed, you could connect it via a USB/USB-C cable to your computer. If you then open Reality Composer on both devices and hit the Send To button on your Mac, the file will open in Reality Composer and be editable/testable on your iPad!

Note that if you are using specially imported models, they may not be available on your second device, unless they have been imported there as well.

Another option is to export the file and share it as a .reality file. To do this, go to File --> Export, and pick either to export the entire project or just the current scene. After saving it on your computer, you can navigate to that folder, select the .reality file, again go to File --> Share in the Finder menu, and choose how you want to share the file (text, AirDrop, etc) to your iPad or iPhone. Opening it on your iPhone or iPad in this way does not require Reality Composer, as it is using the built-in Apple Quick Look platform (you can also share your experience with other people in this way!).

One Last Step

We are going to add one last behavior that will make our action "replayable": returning the plane to its original location after a certain amount of time. Otherwise, once we tap the plane the first time, it's gone.

This can be done by adding one more action to our action sequence, a Move, Rotate, Scale To action that will move our object back home. Adding this action to the end of our action list, and then selecting the plane as our affected object, will allow you to choose where you want the plane to return to. In this case, I will adjust it so it ends up back where it started (by moving the plane in the image back to the left to the starting place). Also note that I added one more Wait action so that the plane will wait one second after it stops being impacted by the force to return home.

And that's it! Now the plane will return to its original location. Project testing videos and the files created with this tutorial can be found below. There is obviously a ton of other behaviors and models to play with, so give it a try!

As a bonus, you could use the Hide and Show behaviors to make the plane seem to magically "appear" back in its home location at a certain moment. See if you can make it work!

Creating Basic 3D Objects for AR in Blender

Blender is a free and open source 3D creation suite. It supports the entirety of the 3D pipeline—modeling, rigging, animation, simulation, rendering, video editing, and animation.

Before you start

In this tutorial, we will be using 3 programs, all of which are free to download:

¶ Data Visualization

Intro to Photo Processing with Agisoft Metashape for 3D Model Making

Introduction

To create a 3D model from photographs takes only a few easy steps, which are nicely summarized for you in Metashape's "Workflow" dropdown. It even grays out options that are not available to you yet!

These steps are:

Adding your photos
Aligning your photos/building a dense cloud (if necessary)
Building your mesh

Let's get started!

Adding your Photos

Once you are finished taking photos of an object with your camera or camera phone, you will want to copy the images off of your device and place them in a recognizable location on your computer.

Aligning your Photos

Now that the images are loaded, it's time to actually start processing! We return to our Workflow dropdown and now notice that the Align Photos option is available.

Bonus: Cleaning your point cloud

First, use the Select tool to roughly select the object itself. Once the area you want to keep is selected, use the Crop tool to crop everything else out. Easy!

The Delete tool seen above works in the opposite way of the crop tool. Clicking the X will delete whatever points you have selected, which offers a second way to clear out unwanted points!

Bonus: Build Dense Cloud

If working to build a full 360 degree model, building a dense cloud is often necessary to merge the top and bottom of the model. This process will be covered in a future tutorial.

Building Mesh

Now that your photos are aligned, a new option appears in our Workflow dropdown, building the mesh of our digital object. Fortunately, this process is much faster!

In short, this step takes your point cloud, which simply represents a group of points floating in space, and turns it into an actual 3D surface, a mesh, by connecting these points together.

Building Texture

The options are a bit more complex than other steps, though in general, the default options are fine. The breakdown is as follows, though in general, you are fine with the defaults:

Texture type: Diffuse map (Default) is the normal texture mapping, Occlusion map is used for calculating ambient lighting so is not necessary for basic models
Source data: will change based on the texture type. For our regular Diffuse texture, it will be the images
Mapping mode:

Unsure? Just use Generic and see how it looks

Blending mode:
- Mosaic (default) - implies a two-step approach: it does blending of low-frequency component for overlapping images to avoid a seamline problem (weighted average, the weight being dependent on a number of parameters including proximity of the pixel in question to the center of the image), while high-frequency component, that is in charge of picture details, is taken from a single image - the one that presents a good resolution for the area of interest while the camera view is almost along the normal to the reconstructed surface in that point.

Unsure? Go with the default Mosaic first; if you are getting weird blendings of color, try Average instead

Texture size/count: Specifies the size (width & height) of the texture atlas in pixels and determines the number of files for texture to be exported to. Exporting texture to several files allows to archive greater resolution of the final model texture. Again, the default is probably fine for beginning models

Bonus: Scaling your model

Note that the measurements are in meters, so be sure to convert appropriately!

Exporting your Model

Now that your model is complete for now (scaled or not), you'll want to share it!

Metashape offers a variety of ways to share your model by going to File --> Export --> Export Model. Here are a few of the most common:

Wavefront OBJ (.obj): One of the most commonly used 3D mesh file types, it is used for sharing models using 3D software such as Meshlab and Cloudcompare. If you want to share your models on the online 3D model presentation platform , definitely export in this format for uploading.

Check out the beginning of for information on how to upload your model into Sketchfab

3D pdf (.pdf): A pdf, but in 3D! Anyone using Adobe Reader will be able to view your model straight from their computer. A good choice for mass distribution when others might not have the technical skills to open an obj.
3D printing (.stl): Want to prepare your model for 3D printing? .STL is the file type used by most 3D printers (check out the BC 3D printing page here).

Want to see more models made at Boston College?

Making a Starter Map using Leaflet

The following covers setting up your map, adding data, and popups.

Leaflet is the leading open-source JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps. Weighing just about 39 KB of JS, it has all the mapping features most developers ever need.

Leaflet is designed with simplicity, performance, and usability in mind. It works efficiently across all major desktop and mobile platforms, can be extended with lots of plugins, has a beautiful, easy to use and well-documented API, and a simple, readable source code that is a joy to contribute to.

Leaflet offers much more flexibility for story-mapping than many other tools used for such projects; on the other hand, it does demand a basic knowledge of coding in JavaScript.

Here, we walk through the basic steps of setting up a Leaflet map, adding spatial data, and creating popup boxes that go along with that data. Though there are many ways to organize your map files, here we will first create a basic HTML file that will hold your map and then a second JavaScript file that will contain the code for the map and spatial data. To download all the tutorial files discussed in this lesson, click below or visit our !

Also, see Leaflet's own for an introductory tutorial

How to Set Up the Leaflet JS Library and your HTML page

Your map needs to be situated on an HTML page in order for it to function. Luckily, it only takes a few steps to get this up and running.

Create an empty folder to hold your map files, and then in the folder new text file in a text editor and save it as index.html. I recommend using (Windows only) or , as your text editor, as these are designed for coding, rather than regular Notepad or Word. At the top of your file, put the following introductory code to set up your HTML and name your map. Each line is commented to let you know how it is functioning.

Next, you need to tell your HTML to access the Leaflet JavaScript library and its associated CSS stylesheet. You have two options for this, as you can either host the files locally on your computer or call them from their already-hosted location on the web.

To call them from the web, simply copy these lines into the <head> section of your HTML

To host the files locally, and unzip Leaflet, placing the entire Leaflet folder into the folder with your HTML file. Now, you simply need to change the "href=" and the "src=" links from the above code to the current location of your file. It should end up looking something like this. You can also close your header at this point.

Any Leaflet plugins that you want to use can be accessed the same way! Many are hosted online, or you can download them and host them locally. In either case, you will call links to their .css and .js files in the HTML header!

Finally, you need to create the container that will hold your map and set its size on the html page, as well as call the JavaScript file that will be your map itself. This will take place in the <body> of your code. And that's it, your html file is done for now!

The Javascript file name associated with your map can be anything you'd like, but we recommend tying it to the name of your map for easy association. Remember, capitalization is VERY important to take note of in coding, and no spaces, please!

Starting your Map Javascript File and Loading a World Map Tilelayer

So you've got an HTML file with a map container, but that container is currently totally empty. In this step, we will walk through how to load up an externally hosted world map and show you how to open the HTML file on your own computer. It only takes a few lines of code!

First, create a new empty text file and save it as a javascript file, making sure to use the same file name that you referred to in the HTML file. The first step is to define your map options and create the map object itself. There are a variety of default you can set; here we simply choose the center of the map, its initial zoom, and its max zoom level.

Trying to find the coordinates for a specific location? makes it easy; just right click and select "What's here?", and the coordinates of that location will appear.

Now you need to load a background map. While it is possible to load a locally hosted tiled map as a background map (which will be discussed in a different tutorial), here we will simply use one of the maps hosted online already by ArcGIS online. Notice that the basemap variable is made up of a few parts: a variable name, a URL for where the layer is located, and attribution information. are also possible here, similar to the map options above.

The last line of this code is key; for each variable, you must add it to your named map variable (in this case the "map" defined above) in order for it to appear on your map.

Note that there are several providers of free and open source tiled background maps online, some of which do require you to register. See this excellent for more information and for URLs for various maps.

Now it's time to open your map! This is simple enough: just drag your index.html file into a browser window, and your map should appear, centered on your favorite university library!

Adding Spatial Data to Your Map

Now, we have some background imagery, but what about adding other spatial data? There are lots of ways to add spatial data to your map, depending on what form you want it to take. Here we will talk about two methods: adding points individually and importing points from an excel file or a CSV (comma-separated list) exported from excel.

Adding point data directly to your map via code

Adding point data individually is as easy as one line of code! Just give your point variable a name (here bcLibrary), add the coordinates, and add it to your map!

Adding a polygon is just as easy! You just need the coordinates for its corners, like this one which is roughly situated around the library.

Now open your map again, and it should look similar to that below!

Want to stylize your in a unique way? Check out the linked tutorial for more info!

Adding point data from an external source

Sometimes you already have your spatial data in an external location (either in an excel file or on another platform) and you want to import it fully formed into your map. In order to do this, you need to convert your data into a geoJSON format, a standard spatial format for data that is able to be easily imported into Leaflet.

For spatial software like or , such a transformation is easy. You can export files like shapefiles or geodatabase files directly into GeoJSON files to import into Leaflet. Check out the linked pages for more information.
From software like GoogleEarth, you first want to export your data as a .kml file. From here, there are many free online platforms like that can convert the files to GeoJSONs for you!
Finally, you can convert your data even if it is in a simple excel file. The key here is to export your file as a .csv. Then, similar to .kml files, there are

Remember! To convert your excel files make sure you have individual columns with the Latitude and Longitude data for each point of interest! This is vital for converting your point data to the needed form with its spatial data.

Great! Now you've got your .geojson file; it's time to get it into your map.

First, make sure a copy of your .geojson file is in the folder with your HTML and map javascript files.

Now, there are 2 different ways forward here:

You can simply copy and paste the entire .geojson into your code, if desired (see an ). Simply set it equal to a variable and you are good to go. On the downside, this approach both clutters up your code, potentially making it very long, and makes it more difficult to find and change any desired attributes

A second approach is to enter the GeoJSON file itself, set the data equal to a variable (same as was done above), and then resave the file as a .js Javascript file. If this approach is taken, you must also call the javascript file in the header of your .html page, just as you called the Leaflet javascript file. In doing this, you make your variable accessible within your map. The below spatial data was created in google earth, exported as a .kml file, converted to a .geojson using the method described above for KML files, and then saved as a .js Javascript file after adding the variable name. Each file in this process can be seen in the files associated with this tutorial

Now, your external data is linked within your map's code, but it still needs to be added to the map! Whichever of the above two methods you used, the following line of code will add the data to your map

A third bonus method for importing your .geojson! You can simply leave the geoJSON file as it is and use a plugin to bring your data in. See the for more information. Using this method means that some standard methods for manipulating the data within your map will not be available, however.

Some browsers will not let you view GeoJSON files locally in a browser window, due to CORS security issues. See for instructions on how to enable CORS in Firefox and IE.

Adding Popups

So now you have some points, lines, or polygons on your map, but what do they mean? For example, in Google Earth, we added names and descriptions to our points, but that information is not yet visible in our Leaflet map. Popup boxes attached to your data can offer more information to those using your maps. And making them is quite simple!

Let's look back at the first marker we used to indicate the O'Neill Library (named bcLibrary). To create a popup box for this, we simply use one line of code. Then clicking on the point creates our popup!

Note how you can use HTML styling methods like <b> to style your text (in this case, to make it bold).

If you are importing large amounts of spatial data, sometimes it already has attribute data attached to it. For example, in our GeoJSON data imported from Google Earth above, each point already had a "Name" and "description" attribute. Instead of retyping that into our code, we can call the attribute directly in our popups!

When importing your spatial data, you can automatically create a popup for every piece of spatial data in your dataset. We do this by adding the "onEachFeature" option when adding the GeoJSON to the map; here, this calls a function called "popUp" which will use to define our popup.

Now you can write and customize a function called popUp to create whatever type of popup information you want!

Now every piece of spatial information in your Google Earth geojson will have a popup box saying the name of the space it is associated with (assuming it has an attribute titled "name" that it was imported with, such as a header from an excel spreadsheet) and its description, and it will wish you a nice day!

There are many other things you can do with popups, including addeding images, videos, and hyperlinks. Check out the for much more info about popup boxes.

The easiest way to immediately share your map online is to upload it to .

1) Create a GitHub account

2) Click Start a Project, which will then ask you to name your project and provide a brief description.

3) Upload your entire mapping folder into the project depository by clicking Upload an existing file on the main repository page

Now that your map files are in, anyone with access to your repository can download your mapping files. You can also set up a unique url to display your map in just a few easy steps

1) Go to Settings on the central toolbar

2) Scroll down to the Github Pages portion of the settings

3) Under "Source" select Branch: main to set your main branch as the viewable page. Then hit Save.

4) The page will refresh. If you scroll back down, you should now see a statement in the Github Pages portion saying: Your site is ready to be published at YYY. Now you have a URL for your map! You can share this URL with others or put it on the main page of your repository in the About or Readme sections.

That's all for now! In the future, there will be tutorials on how to add new raster layers to your map, turn on and off layers, and other functions!

Step 5: Exercise Two

For this exercise, you will be given an imaginary research topic and questions.

The Premise

Imagine you are studying Frederick Douglass' rhetorical arguments against slavery and you notice a lot of mentions of family. This sparks your curiosity and makes you wonder: How Douglass evokes the idea of family in his arguments? How much and when does he mention it? What rhetorical purpose might these mentions serve? Does Douglass more often talk about family in the context of slaveholders or slaves?

You decide to focus on words like wife, mother, husband, father, child, baby, infant, family, and parent with the understanding that you can expand your list later.

Creating a Corpus

To get started, you need to create your corpus. You will be acquiring the text from, which has thousands of texts covering a range of genres and topics. (There are numerous other text sources, some of which can be found.)

If you want to skip this part of the process and go straight to the , you can download the prepared text files below. (You will need to unzip the file to upload the individual text files to Voyant.)

1.) Finding the Texts

Go to and search "Frederick Douglass" (or). The results should look like the following:

From this list, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave; My Bondage My Freedom; Abolition Fanaticism in New York; and Collected Articles of Frederick Douglass will be used.

2.) Scraping the Text

a.) Now you will "scrape" (or extract) the text from the site. This begins with getting the text URLs (web addresses). To do this in Project Gutenberg, you go to each text's landing page, select "Plain Text UTF-8, and copy the URL.

For Example, here is the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass landing page:

And here is the URL that you get after clicking on Plain Text UTF-8:

For a shortcut, you can get all of the URLs here:

b.) Go to . Copy and paste the URLs into the "Scrape" box on the Lexos landing page (also the "Upload" page). Click the "Scrape" button. (It should only take a few seconds since the texts aren't that big.) When it is done, you will see the texts in the "Upload List" box.

3.) Preparing the Text

Now you will prepare the text, this means things like getting rid of punctuation, making all the text lower case, using lemmas, getting rid of tags, cutting up the text if one wants it to be divided into smaller units, and any other choices one might make.

a.) To prepare the text, click on "Prepare" in the top navigation menu (see image below) and then click on "Scrub." (A little bit below, you will find an explanation of the preparation choices being made.)

b.) On the Scrub page, you can make multiple decisions that will affect the text. It can be necessary to experiment with how you scrub your text. For now, select "Make Lowercase," "Remove Digits," "Scrub Tags," "Remove Punctuation," and "Keep Hyphens."

It should look like this:

Click "Apply."

c.) Now you are going to apply lemmas. It is important that you scrub the text before applying them. Doing so with the settings being used will get rid of the punctuation, which is necessary for some of the lemmas to work.

Cut and paste these lemmas into the "Lemmas" box:

It should look like this:

Click "Apply."

"Make lowercase" made all characters lowercase. This choice is best when using case-sensitive tools, which treat capitalized and lowercase words differently. For example, in certain tools, words capitalized at the beginning of sentences are seen as being different from the same word appearing in lowercase within the sentence.

"Remove Digits" and "Scrub Tags" got rid of unnecessary digits or distracting HTML tags that might be in the text.

"Remove Punctuation" and "Keep Hyphens" got rid of punctuation that might impact the effectiveness of the lemmas being used but kept hyphenated words intact.

group together words so they can be analyzed as a single item. After Lemmatisation, it is easier to count, search, and categorize the grouped words. It is also easier to create stopwords and white lists, as only one version of a word will need to be added.

b.) When it is done, click the "Download" button, and a zip file should download to your computer. Find the file and open it. You should see a folder with individual text files. (They are likely in your download folder or on your desktop.)

c.) Open each file to look for text not related to Douglass's work, e.g., Project Gutenberg boilerplate information at the beginning (pictured below) and end of the text.

This is when you can also decide whether to delete paratextual information, e.g., introductions, prefaces, table of contents, indexes, etc. Choosing whether or not to keep this kind of information is part of the intellectual decision-making that goes into text analysis.

d.) When you are done. Save your files.

e.) Rename the files (by clicking on each file name) to clarify which file is which text. Below are the recommended names, "abolition," "articles," "bondage," and "narrative." They use the first keyword from each title. Once this is done, you are ready to upload your files to Voyant.

Working in Voyant

For this second half of the tutorial, you will be introduced to some of Voyant's functions that will help you explore the proposed research questions. Here again, is the premise and research question:

Imagine you are studying Frederick Douglass' rhetorical arguments against slavery and you notice mentions in various works that evoke the idea of family. This sparks your curiosity and makes you wonder: How Douglass evokes the idea of family in his arguments? How much and when does he mention family? What rhetorical purpose might these mentions serve? Does Douglass more often talk about the family in the context of slaveholders or slaves?

Going forward, you are encouraged to follow the various steps presented and to explore on your own.

1.) Upload the text Files

Launch , click on the "Upload" button, navigate to and select the edited Douglass files. When selecting the files, it should look something like this:

The results should look something like this:

2.) Explore The Interface

The particular tools and layout you initially see is called the "default ." It displays the tools:

a.) Notice that there are other view options within each box. For example, "Cirrus" also has "Terms" and "Links." Take a moment to explore the tools and their various options.

b.) Notice that when you hover to the left of any of the question marks (even the one in the blue field at the very top right of the page) a toolbar of icons appears:

These provide access to a range of options and functionalities: The arrow icon [a] allows you to export a URL or embed code for a specific tool or the entire project. It also allows you to export images. The window icon [b] is where you go to change the tool to a different one. The switch icon [c] is where you go to define options for that specific tool. For example, it is where you go to add stopwords, create categories, and change fonts. The question mark provides information about that specific tool.

c.) Take a little time to explore this toolbar as it is key to using Voyant effectively, and we will be using it quite a bit below.

3.) Add Stopwords

are words that you don't want to incorperate in the results you see in certain tools, i.e., Cirrus and Summary's "most frequent words in the corpus." When applying stopwords, you are not deleting them; they are just not visible.

Choosing stopwords is part of the intellectual decision-making that goes into text analysis. For example, in the context of the research question posed here, one could decide to stop the words "slavery," "masters," and "slaves" since those terms are pervasive and are understood to be there. Getting rid of words that are considered inconsequential, at least within the context of the research question (e.g., "like" and "mr"), can also be helpful. By stopping these words, other words will become more visible and might inspire new ideas and inform the analysis.

a.) To add stopwords, click on the switch or "define options" icon in the Cirrus tool (or in any other tool).

b.) Click "Edit List" next to the stopwords dropdown menu.

c.) Add the words, "slaves," "slavery," "masters," "mr," and "like," putting each one on a new line.

Save them and click "Confirm." You should see a change in the word cloud. If one of the words does not disappear, add it again. There could be a typo issue.

If you only wanted to apply stopwords in that particular tool, you would uncheck "apply globally."

Please note: When your text is first loaded in Voyant, the app automatically applies stopwords. You can turn this off by selecting "None" in the stopword dropdown menu. You can also remove stopwords from the list simply by deleting them, saving, and confirming the changes.

2.) Using White Lists

A white list is essentially the opposite of stopwords. It involves creating a list of words that you only want to see in the Cirrus results.

a.) To create a white list, click on the switch or "define options" icon in the Cirrus tool (or any other tool).

b.) Click "Edit List" next to the white list dropdown menu.

c.) Add the words: mothers, fathers, children, babies, infants, husbands, wives, families, parents, putting each one on a new line and save them and click "Confirm."

The results should look something like the below. (If one of the words does not disappear, add it again. There could be a typo issue.)

You can turn off the white list by selecting "None" in the white list dropdown menu. You can also remove words by deleting them from the list and resaving and confirming the changes.

3.) Creating Catagories

You can also create categories that group words. They can be applied in many but not all tools.

a.) To create a category, click the switch or "define options" icon in the Cirrus tool (or any other tool).

b.) Click the "Edit" next to the Categories dropdown menu.

When you open up Categories, you will see that Voyant has two default ones, "positive" and "negative." To add a new category, click "Add Category" [b] and give it a title such as "family." To add terms to that list, search for them in the search box [c], and when they appear in the Terms box [d], drag them to the new categories list. To remove a term from a list, select the word and then click "Remove Selected Term" [a].

c.) Create a new category using "family" as the name and add the terms "mothers," "fathers," "children," "babies," "infants," "husbands," "wives," "families," and "parents." (It should look like the image above.)

After creating your category, you can apply the category to a specific tool. In the tool's search box, search the list name with an @ at the beginning, for example, @family. (Do not leave a space between the @ and the name). The result will be only ones containing terms in that category.

d.) In the Contexts tool, search @family in the search box and explore the results:

4.) Changing Tools

The following will show you how to change out tools. (To learn about the many Voyant tools to choose from see the .)

a.) In the Trends (or any other tool), click on the window or "choose tool" icon.

b.) Click on "Visualization" and then "" and the tool should appear.

As Voyant describes MicroSearch, "each document in the corpus is represented as a vertical block where the height of the block indicates the relative size of the document compared to others in the corpus. The location of occurrences of search terms is located as red blocks...Multiple search terms are collapsed together." In the tool, you search the term(s) you want to see appear in the visualization.

c.) Search "children" in the search box.

5.) Select & Modify Documents

You can choose individual texts that you want to visualize by selecting and deselecting them. For example, you can choose only to use Douglass' Narrative of a Slave and Articles.

a.) To select the texts, go to Summary (on the lower left) and click "Documents." Then select or deselect texts. Here is where you also can modify texts, meaning you can delete them and uploading new ones. To make these changes, click "Modify."

You can save or share an entire Voyant instance or individual tools by exporting the URL. (Exporting a tool launches that tool in its own window.)

To export the URL of an entire Voyant instance or a specific tool (see this ), click on the arrow or "Export URL" icon in the very top right corner of the Voyant instance. Then click "Export," and a new window will launch. Copy and keep the URL for that window. To get the embed code, select the option "an HTML snippet for embedding this view..." and then click "Export." If you make changes to your project, you need to re-export to get a URL or embed code that reflects those changes.

Exporting the entire Voyant instance options:

Exporting specific tools options (notice that you can also export images. Select "export a PNG image..."):

You have completed Exercise Two and the tutorial. If you haven't already, now is a good time to explore the . You are also encouraged to experiment with texts that are part of your own research interests.

Part 2: An Introduction to Apple's Reality Composer AR

Introduction

Reality Composer (RC) for iOS, iPadOS, and macOS makes it easy to build, test, tune, and simulate AR experiences for iPhone or iPad. With live linking, you can rapidly move between Mac and iPhone or Mac and iPad to create stunning AR experiences, then export them to AR Quick Look or integrate them into apps with Xcode. This tutorial will introduce the basic functionality of the tool and review the interface. Please note that screenshots for this introduction were created using Reality Composer on a MacBook. The screen layout is slightly different when working directly on an iPad, but the steps are the same.

Installing Reality Composer

Reality Composer is free to download from the app store for iPad or iphone, or downloaded as part of the free (Apple Account Required). A warning that XCode is quite a larger program for developing applications, so may not be feasible for older MacBooks or those without much storage space. Running Reality Composer on a MacBook also requires you to send your project to an appropriate iPad/iPhone for testing (see below) or open it in an emulator using xCode.One important fact to note is that Reality Composer projects (i.e. what opens in Reality Composer) are saved as .rcprojects while sharable experiences that open directly onto an iPhone or iPad with the Quick Look tool are .reality files.

Getting Started: Anchors

When you first open up a new Reality Composer project, your first decision to make is what kind of anchor you want for the project. The Anchor type will determine what requirements are needed to open your scene in AR. When you start up RC, you are asked to select an Anchor typer for your project. There are 5 relatively-straightforward anchor types to chose from in Reality Composer:

Horizontal - will look for any horizontal surface (e.g. a table or the floor) to open your experience on
Vertical - will look for any vertical surface (e.g. a wall) to open your experience
Image - will look for a specific defined image that you determine (e.g. a painting or business card) to open your experience around

Getting Started: Main Window

Once you have chosen an anchor, the main window of Reality Composer will open up, which changes slightly based on the anchor you have chosen (above, the horizontal anchor). You can also change your anchor if needed in the right window Properties pane (as well as change the overall physics of the scene if desired, a la allow things to fall through the floor. This can also be set object-by-object later).

The window also opens with two objects already present, a cube and a little placard showing some text. Before checking those out, let's look at the other options on the main toolbar. The most important ones for us will be the Add button, the Behaviors button, and the Properties button, but we can quickly review them all.

The Scenes option opens up a sidebar that allows you to name the "scene," or AR view, you are currently working in, as well as create new scenes that can be linked by certain actions (see below).
The Frame button just lets you navigate more easily around your scene by allowing you to zoom in on certain objects or on the scene as a whole.
The Snap button allows you to snap objects to other objects or to certain horizontal or vertical lines within the scene (similar to the Photoshop snap tool)

Adding and Editing Object Properties

Let's play with some objects, starting with what comes in our default scene.

Clicking on the cube will automatically open the properties pane, which allows you to directly edit its various properties like width, height, color, etc. You can also name the object, transform it in space (if you want to set something exactly) as well as decide if it will obey the laws of physics (e.g. fall to the surface if it appears up in the air). You can also edit directly in the viewing window once an object is selected; Arrows pointing along axes allow you to move an object, which clicking the tip of an arrow will allow you to rotate an object around that axis. Give it a try!

Clicking on the placard will yield a similar pane, though this one also allows you to edit the text appearing on the sign. Each object you add will have its own individual properties that you can edit here. For now, edit these two items however you wish!

If you want to add a new object, just click the + Add button. There are many pre-installed 3D objects to work from, as well as signs that can hold text and "Frames" that can hold attached Images. You can also introduce your own objects.

For now, I will drop a plane in our scene, by clicking and dragging it in or by double-clicking. I then rotated it around to be pointing away from us.

Adding a Behavior

Let's do one last thing before trying out our model in AR....adding a behavior! I'm going to select the plane, and then click the behaviors button on the toolbar, and a new pane will open up along the bottom of the page

Clicking the + button will open the new behavior pane, where there are several pre-set behaviors you can choose from, or if you scroll down to the bottom you can create a custom behavior. For now, I will choose Tap and Add Force so we can give our plane some energy

Now, our behavior pane has its first behavior! You can rename the behavior (currently called Behavior) in the left pane; the Trigger pane allows you to determine what action will make the behavior start (in this case, tapping) as well as which affected objects have the trigger attached (in this case, the plane, but you could add more!)

Finally, the action sequence allows you to create a series of effects that happen, either simultaneously or one after another, when the trigger is...triggered. In this case, we are going to have the plan start moving forward at a certain velocity.

So we can make our plan move forward, but that's not really taking off. Adding a second force in an upward trajectory after a moment will make this takeoff look a bit more realistic. To add further actions to the sequence, simply tap the + sign next to the words Action Sequence in the Behaviours pane. This will then pop up a bunch of different pre-coded behaviors you can choose from.

In the image above, I added two new behaviors, a Wait Behavior and a second Add Force behavior in a 45 degree upward angle. Importantly, I direclty attached the Wait behavior to the first Add Force behavior (just a drag and drop) which means that these two actions will begin simultaneously, and the 2nd Add Force will not start until the first set is complete. This means our plane will move forward a certain amount before briefly "taking off".

Testing your Experience

Now that we have an experience, we need to test it out to see how it is functioning. There are a few ways to do this.

If you are working on an iPad or iPhone, its easy! Just hit the AR button on the top toolbar to open the experience in AR, and then the Play button to start the experience from the beginning.

If you are working on a Mac, it's a bit more difficult. On the one hand, if you hit the Play button on the top toolbar, the experience will start, but will obviously not be in AR, making testing a little bit difficult (though you could certainly test the functionality, as in the images below where our plane has flown far off into the distance.

There are other options for testing from a Mac, however. If you have an iPhone or iPad handy that has Reality Composer installed, you could connect it via a USB/USB-C cord to your computer. If you then open Reality Composer on both devices and hit the Send To button on your Mac, the file will open in Reality Composer and be editable/testable on your iPad!

Note that if you are using special imported models, they may not be available on your second device, unless they have been imported there as well.

Another option is to simply export the file and share it as a fully .reality file. To do this, go to File --> Export, and pick either to export the entire project or just the current scene. After saving it on your computer, you can navigate to that folder, select the .reality file, again go to File --> Share in the Finder menu, and choose how you want to share the file (text, AirDrop, etc) to your iPad or iPhone. Opening it on your iPhone or iPad in this way does not require Reality Composer, as it is using the built in Apple Quick Look platform (you can also share your experience with other people in this way!

One Last Step

We are going to add one last action that will make our action "replayable": returning the plan to its original location after a certain amount of time. Otherwise, we tap the plane once and it is gone!

This can be done by adding one more action to our action sequence, a Move, Rotate, Scale To action that will move our object back home. Adding this action to the end of our action list, and then selecting the Plane as our affected object will allow you to choose where you want the plane to return to. In this case, I will adjust it so it ends up back where it started (by moving the plane in the image back to the left to the starting place). Also noticed I added one more Wait action so that the plane will wait one second after it stops being impacted by the Force to return home.

And that's it! Now the plane will return to its original location (and might even let you see the ingrained physics on the way as the plane hits the block as it returns). Project testing videos and the files created with this tutorial can be found below. There is obviously a ton of other behaviors and models to play with, so give it a try!

As a bonus, you could use the Hide and Show behaviors to make the plane seem to magically "appear" back in its home location at a certain moment. See if you can make it work!

DS Learn

About DS Learn

Tutorials

hashtagContents

¶ Digital Exhibits

Getting Started with Digital Exhibits

hashtag

Considerations

Basic Steps

Site Organization

hashtagMajor Concepts

Usability & Accessibility

hashtagKey Basics

hashtagResources

Platforms

¶ Digital Storytelling

Introduction to ArcGIS StoryMaps

hashtagPlanning Your StoryMap

hashtagCreating Your Content Blocks

hashtagAdd Alternative Text (Alt Text)

hashtagDesign Decisions

hashtagPublishing and Sharing

hashtag

Getting Started

hashtagCreating an Account

hashtagStarting a New StoryMap

hashtagTitle Your Story

hashtagSaving

Using Content Blocks

hashtagAdding a New Content Block

TimelineJS

hashtagHow it Works

hashtagGetting Started

hashtagUsing the Spreadsheet

hashtagVisualizing the Timeline

hashtagErrors

hashtagAdding Media

hashtagCreating Links in Fields

¶ 3D Modeling & Immersive Technology

Adding 3D Models in Omeka

hashtagInstall Necessary Plugins

Intro to Photo Processing with Agisoft Metashape for 3D Model Making

hashtagIntroduction

hashtagAdding your Photos

hashtagAligning your Photos

hashtagBonus: Cleaning your point cloud

hashtagBonus: Build Dense Cloud

hashtagBuilding Mesh

hashtagBuilding Texture

hashtagBonus: Scaling your model

hashtagExporting your Model

Tips and Tricks for Taking Photos for 3D Model Creation

hashtagEquipment

hashtagOther Equipment

hashtagEnvironment

hashtagOverlap

An Introduction to Apple's Reality Composer AR

hashtagIntroduction

hashtagInstalling Reality Composer

hashtagGetting Started: Anchors

hashtagGetting Started: Main Window

hashtagAdding and Editing Object Properties

hashtagAdding a Behavior

hashtagTesting your Experience

hashtagOne Last Step

Creating Basic 3D Objects for AR in Blender

hashtagBefore you start

¶ Data Visualization

¶ Digital Exhibits

Tutorials

hashtagContents

Considerations

About DS Learn

Platforms

Introduction to ArcGIS StoryMaps

hashtagPlanning Your StoryMap

hashtagCreating Your Content Blocks

hashtagAdd Alternative Text (Alt Text)

hashtagDesign Decisions

hashtagPublishing and Sharing

Contents

Major Concepts

Key Basics

Resources

Planning Your StoryMap

Creating Your Content Blocks

Add Alternative Text (Alt Text)

Design Decisions

Publishing and Sharing

Creating an Account

Starting a New StoryMap

Title Your Story

Saving

Adding a New Content Block

How it Works

Getting Started

Using the Spreadsheet

Visualizing the Timeline

Errors

Adding Media

Creating Links in Fields

Install Necessary Plugins

Introduction

Adding your Photos

Aligning your Photos

Bonus: Cleaning your point cloud

Bonus: Build Dense Cloud

Building Mesh

Building Texture

Bonus: Scaling your model

Exporting your Model

Equipment

Other Equipment

Environment

Overlap

Introduction

Installing Reality Composer

Getting Started: Anchors

Getting Started: Main Window

Adding and Editing Object Properties

Adding a Behavior

Testing your Experience

One Last Step

Before you start

Contents

Planning Your StoryMap

Creating Your Content Blocks

Add Alternative Text (Alt Text)

Design Decisions

Publishing and Sharing

Key Basics

Resources

Creating an Account

Starting a New StoryMap

Title Your Story

Saving

How it Works

Getting Started

Using the Spreadsheet

Visualizing the Timeline

Errors

Adding Media

Creating Links in Fields

Adding a New Content Block

Content Block Types

Basic

Media

Immersive

Install Necessary Plugins

Major Concepts

Preparing Models for Omeka

Uploading your Model to Omeka

Planning Your Organization

Information Architecture

Page Organization and Layout

Equipment

Other Equipment

Environment

Overlap

Before you start