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The ancient city of Ayutthaya - explorations in virtual reality and multi media Populating the City Many virtual reality visualisations of heritage precincts present the site as a depopulated theatre set; indeed the addition of human figures, especially moving ones, presents many difficulties. Computer generated figures very often look computer generated, the level of realism needed to remain in context with the rendered scenes is difficult to obtain. However video production techniques used in television and computer games offer the opportunity to add 'live' actors into sequences of computer graphics. The opportunity arose to adopt this approach in this project. The use of 'chroma-keying' is now commonplace in the video special effects industry, being used in such mundane applications as evening news broadcasts and high level applications like movie and computer games special effects. The process works on replacing one particular chroma or colour in one image or image sequence with another image. The colours used are commonly the blue or green channels as these two colours are very different to human skin tones. The foreground object or actors are filmed against the single colour background, and them 'matted' into another video sequence comprising either live footage or computer graphics. The most well known use is in television weather broadcasts where the presenter appears in front of the weather chart, in reality the presenter is in front of a blue wall and the weather details are mixed into the scene before broadcast. This process has been used to add traditional dancers and musicians into the audience chamber of the Grand Palace at Ayutthaya. Two dancers, six musicians, a conductor, 3 make-up artists, 4 riggers, a catering crew, a producer and translator, and a person with the cans of blue paint were engaged for a filming session in a large photographic studio in Bangkok. Digital video was acquired of the dancers performing a dance from the Ayutthaya period against the blue screen, and CD quality audio of the accompanying music was recorded. This video was later transferred into a computer, and composited with rendered computer graphic sequences from the Ayutthaya model.  Figure 2: The chroma key studio  Figure 3: The dancers and orchestra at Ayutthaya Outcomes As the project has been on-going for several years the outcomes have been many and varied. As part of the celebrations of His Majesty The King's 50th Anniversary of Coronation the Australian Embassy in Bangkok participated in an exhibition at Ayutthaya which showcased this project. A dual language CD-ROM was prepared for the exhibition, which is in the process of being revised for potential distribution to schools in Bangkok. The CD-ROM incorporates rendered images of the reconstruction, QTVR panorama of the actual site, movies of the dancers in the audience chamber of King Narai, and supporting information. Conclusion This project has seen the very successful combination of Geomatics technologies to acquire primary data, and the application of historical research along with computer graphics, to produce the visualisation of a World Heritage Site. The virtual reality model of Ayutthaya was greatly facilitated by the use of photogrammetry to measure the existing monumentation, however the final product needed considerably more non-dimensional information to be a believable and historically truthful representation of this magnificant city. Acknowlegements This project would not have been possible without the assistance of the Royal Thai Government Fine Arts Department in Bangkok and Ayutthaya, The Thai Culture Commission, the Population and Community Development Association, The Australian Government Targeted Institutional Links Program and the Survey Engineering Department, Chulalongkorn University. Glossary
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