Chopin’s piano

The 200th anniversary of Frederic Chopin’s birth was celebrated  in the year 2010. Adam Mickiewicz Institute in cooperation with Virtual Reality Techniques Division created a multimedia presentation of a historic Ignatius Pleyel’s piano which Frederic Chopin played in Paris in the last years of his life. The three-dimensional object digitization was done using the 3DMADMAC scanning system developed and continually improved at the VRTD. A unique feature of the presentation was to develop a fully interactive model of the piano with a detailed representation of the geometry, texture, movement of the individual elements and extracted actual sounds. With 3DVIA Virtools technology it is possible to explore the virtual object in an individual, user-selected way and interact with the three dimensional objects. The main features of the model:

• 3D model was created based on an accurate 3D scan;
• average accuracy of geometry mapping: less than 0.2 mm;
• the complexity of the surface of the three-dimensional object: 340 000 triangles;
• photorealistic high-resolution textures.

The main features of the presentation:

• the actual animation paths of piano moving parts were recreated (e.g. keyboards, keyboard cover flap, desktop);
• real sounds recorded from a Pleyel piano at Frederic  Chopin Institute;
• the possibility to play the instrument by clicking the mouse on the keys or using the computer keyboard;
• the possibility of composing, recording and reproduction of user’s own works;
• synchronization of sound played with the movement of piano keys;
• texts covering, among others, Chopin life in the years 1848-1849, the way the composer played and piano history and structure written by renowned musicologists, including Prof. Irena Poniatowska and Prof. Benjamin Vogel.

Presentation address  – http://ogx.mchtr.pw.edu.pl/projects/chopin/intro_en.html