Digital Reconstruction and Interpretation of Great Sites: Case of Severely Damaged Yingtianmen in Luoyang.

Luoyang was a famous capital in the Sui and Tang dynasties. As one of the highest standard city gate buildings in ancient China, Yingtianmen has cultural connotations and academic value. The Yingtianmen site is now seriously damaged due to its long history, making its exploration challenging. This paper adopts an interdisciplinary research method to perform the digital reconstruction of this site and uses field data obtained from archaeological discoveries and spatial 3D measurement. Multisource data come from various historical documents on other architectural sites and murals in the same period as well as relevant clues such as architectural construction skills and artistic styles in the Sui and Tang dynasties. A set of workflow and methods for the digital reconstruction of large sites is developed that includes the integration of multisource data, reconstruction of a parametric model, and interpretation of digital art. The research results have important academic value in promoting the evolution of research and education and the teaching of the history, culture, art, and form of Yingtianmen and Dongfangchengmen buildings. The formed workflow and methods provide a reference and demonstration for the digital reconstruction of similar large sites with serious damage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]