image: 3D digitisation with photogrammetry.
courtesy of CRDI / EUreka3D project
The EUreka3D initiative: tools, services and capacity building to support cultural institutions in their 3D digitisation journey
Projects co-financed by the European Union under the Digital Europe Programme, to enrich the common European data space for cultural heritage and empower the process of digital transformation of the cultural heritage sector with 3D and XR.
On the 10th of November 2021, the European Commission (EC) published the Commission Recommendation (EU) 2021/1970 on a common European data space for cultural heritage, intended to accelerate the digitisation of cultural heritage assets, including monuments, sites and artefacts. Digitisation is intended as a means with a twofold objective: 1) help to preserve heritage at risk of degradation for the benefit of future generations. 2) foster the reuse of European cultural heritage – particularly in the domains of education, sustainable tourism and targeting cultural and creative enterprises. In this endeavour, Cultural Heritage Institutions (CHIs) were specifically called to explore and adopt 3D technologies as a priority in their transition path to digitalisation. Europeana, the European digital cultural heritage platform, is at the centre of this transformation process and forms the foundation of the common European data space for cultural heritage.
The 3D digitisation of cultural heritage resources presents multiple challenges to CHIs of all sizes, particularly in smaller institutions.
The first challenge is the quality of data, metadata and paradata. The quality of data deals with the properties of the digital representation. The quality of metadata plays a fundamental role in extending the geometrical features of heritage objects to the more sophisticated concept of memory twins, where data are complemented by holistic documentation. Finally, the quality of paradata should provide a comprehensive description of the process and the technical actions taken by CHIs in their digitisation endeavour. All three are needed if the authenticity and digital provenance for reuse is to be realised, allowing the capitalisation of cultural heritage content as an intellectual, economic and social resource, promoting Europe and European values.
The second challenge is the provision of a digital infrastructure where digital collections can be stored and processed safely. Such infrastructure must be robust and based on a European cloud, preventing the risk of losing control of precious, high-quality information generated during digitisation. It must be interoperable with other platforms and accessible to both professionals and general audiences alike, maximising the potential for the reuse of cultural content and projects.
As the European adventure into 3D digitisation progresses, our next milestone as a community is to demonstrate the benefit of digitisation, showing how 3D cultural heritage content can be used to create compelling and engaging experiences through concrete scenarios. 3D and extended reality technologies represent another step in humanity’s enduring ambition to capture reality more completely. At the same time, these new technologies introduce new challenges related to interpretation, authenticity, and user experience that are particularly relevant in the context of cultural heritage. Admittedly, we are still in the early phases of this pursuit, with many challenges yet to be uncovered and overcome.
The EUreka3D initiative contributes to Europeana and to the common data space for cultural heritage through two projects co-funded under the Digital Europe Programme of the EC. The first project, named EUreka3D, ran from January 2023 until December 2024, successfully establishing a platform of guidelines, recommendations and digital infrastructure services. The second project, named EUreka3D-XR, ran from February 2025 until July 2026, experimenting with the reuse of 3D cultural content through extended reality experiences.
Website: https://eureka3d.eu
Access all resources and outcomes:
3D Digitisation Guidelines and online course
This guide is designed to help anyone on their 3D digitisation journey. It is specifically aimed at Cultural Heritage professionals who are considering, or in the middle of, digitising their cultural heritage collections using three dimensional models. It outlines and simplifies the recommended standards highlighted in the milestone EU VIGIE 2020/654 Study on quality in 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage, published April 2022. The guidelines are available as downloadable PDF and as an open access course on the Europeana Training Platform.
3D Digitisation and XR case studies
Hear the different experiences in 3D digitisation from colleague CHIs in a variety of real-life cases: from museal objects to entire monuments and 3D reconstructions. Learn from the experience and challenges in creating XR scenarios that reuse 3D collections.
EUreka3D Data Hub infrastructure
One of the most significant achievements of the EUreka3D initiative is the provision of a fully functional, production-grade information system that serves as a virtual data space for CHIs. The EUreka3D Data Hub provides a comprehensive solution for CHIs involved in 3D digitisation, offering a suite of services and resources for management and sharing of cultural 3D assets over a European cloud for data, metadata and paradata storage, combined with security to protect the data from unauthorised access and a direct gateway to the common European data space for cultural heritage.
The EUreka3D Data Hub has been fully operational since 2023 and serves multiple purposes:
- It offers a solution for small CHIs that cannot afford to manage their own servers or storage.
- It contributes to the transformation of CH, enabling CHIs to use cloud storage and manage their assets.
- It offers a European, research-orientated alternative to commercial products.
- It serves as an enabler for the publication of CH objects in Europeana.
The EUreka3D Data Hub provides a framework for CHIs of all sizes to prepare their content for compatibility and ingestion into Europeana. The dataset publication process to Europeana is coordinated as an integrated service by the coordinator of the EUreka3D initiative, an accredited aggregator for Europeana and partner in the common European data space for cultural heritage, PHOTOCONSORTIUM.
Over the EUreka3D-XR project, the functionalities of the EUreka3D Data Hub and its underlying cloud infrastructure have been expanded to accommodate access to the EUreka3D-XR Toolbox, a suite of tools developed through the project to support the creation of extended reality experiences. This includes the requirements of advanced 3D collections: a new viewer for the visualisation of animated digital assets, the inclusion of audio, and the accommodation of extended metadata and paradata profiles in the common European data space for cultural heritage for the representation of 3D objects.
EUreka3D-XR Toolbox
Five tools comprise the EUreka3D-XR toolbox, namely:
- AR Tour Builder: A web application for specifying AR tours by associating cultural heritage objects stored in online repositories, including 3D objects, with locations on a map (developed by NTUA)
- AR Tour Experience: A mobile app that allows visitors to experience AR tours by visualising 3D digital objects within the physical environment and access several types of information associated with certain locations (developed by NTUA)
- AI 3D Builder: A 3D Modelling software pipeline that uses AI and digital photo archives (developed by Swing:It)
- 3D XR Studio: A web tool for creating AR experiences, using a range of predefined layouts for UX and UI (developed by Swing:It)
- Avatar Builder: A framework that guides users in creating, animating, and preparing interactive avatars for multiple visualisation platforms (developed by MIRALab)
While each tool is tested in a specific pilot scenario within the project lifetime, all tools are designed in a generic way allowing reuse across various application scenarios. The functionality of the tools offered within the EUreka3D-XR toolbox have been co-designed through the collaboration between technical partners and partners from the cultural heritage sector, taking the needs of the pilot scenarios as the starting point. The tools were developed iteratively based on the outcome of testing and feedback collection, which, among other, includes advice from the EUreka3D-XR Advisory Board of experts.
More resources, readings, capacity building and training events
The learning and training resources developed and collected by the EUreka3D initiative are accessible and available in various formats: online documentation, webinars, on-site and hybrid collaborative sessions. These include hands-on guidelines, demonstrations, manuals, editorials, scientific publications and technical documentation.
