The Yangshao period village site at Xi’an, Banpo, was discovered in 1953, and excavated between 1953 and 1957. Much of the excavated area was left exposed, but covered by an active museum. In 2016, I took several hundred photographs of the main excavation display at this museum, and used Photoscan to create a 3D model. That model was then touched up in Maya and Mudbox, then imported into Unity to make a WEBGL-based walkthrough, than allows you to wander the excavation area yourself. Click below for the walkthrough. You will need a recent computer and Firefox, Safari, or Chrome with WEBGL 2.0 enabled. The spinning color billboard are part on my class assignment, where the students need to identify certain features, such as “square house foundation” “circular house foundation” “deep moat” “original ground level” and “storage pit.” In the future, I will add other features to this simulation, including reconstructed buildings, trees, animals, etc.
Click Here to Try the Walkthrough
(WEBGL 2.0 required) USE video game controls (W-A-S-D for movement, space bar to jump, mouse to look around)
This is one of the photos of the deep moat that was used to make the 3D model.