I’m Carla, a visiting postgraduate research student from Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) in Munich. I study Digital Cultural Heritage and have had the opportunity to do a one month-long research internship at the DH Lab. Despite my limited time here, I gained many new skills and got familiar with what it is like to work in a lab. I got to work around several members of the DH team, got to meet professors working in the field and got a tour of the Special Collections in the Old Library which gave me further insight into the broad range of research that is being conducted in the field. During my time here I received training in 2D-Digitisation, audio editing, RTI, Photogrammetry and 3D-printing. What made this exciting for me was being able to apply the knowledge that I gained from my home-university but also the opportunity to figure things out myself.
I digitised some of the old Exeter Theatre Royal playbills at the beginning of my time and learned to edit audio files but soon found myself invested in RTI and 3D-Modelling and Photogrammetry. I really enjoyed working with cameras and figuring out the effects of different camera settings, which plays an important role for RTI and Photogrammetry. Especially RTI was a lot of trial and error, making satisfying results even more rewarding.
I walked around campus to capture objects for photogrammetry, some of them I uploaded on my Sketchfab (https://sketchfab.com/Carla_Ruf). My favourite sculpture that I made a model of is the “Stargazer” at Queens café. Though it had its challenges it made me more familiar with the photogrammetry and the 3D-Modelling software to get my model ready for 3D printing. I ended up printing two of my models which helped me understand how to process and clean them properly.
My time at the DH Lab was an incredibly interesting experience. The team has been so helpful and accommodating. I’m truly grateful for my time here.