Note
Please go here for the Tirtha website: https://smlab.niser.ac.in/project/tirtha/.
Important
For Google Summer of Code aspirants:
We plan to apply to Google Summer of Code 2026 as an organization, but note that we are not yet accepted. For now, please go here for the expected project topics: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p5UxgoKBhy5pQh3fXX00BftcmJxzxdFLOkrB3Hibfm4.
Project Tirtha is an academic initiative dedicated to creating 3D models of cultural heritage sites using crowdsourced images. The word Tirtha is Sanskrit for "a place of pilgrimage" and is commonly used to refer to the sacred sites of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism.
Our goal is to preserve and showcase the beauty and cultural significance of heritage sites around the world. By enabling the general public to contribute images and by providing open access to the resulting 3D models, we aim to increase awareness and appreciation of these invaluable cultural landmarks. We believe this participatory approach can inspire future generations to protect and maintain them for years to come.
Project Tirtha leverages recent advancements in artificial intelligence and computer vision to reimagine digital heritage. It was born out of both a growing need for accessible digital preservation and as a research-driven effort to explore scalable, community-powered digital reconstruction of cultural sites.
This project is fully open-source under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0 and is under active development. All contributions are welcome — please see CONTRIBUTING.md for details on how to get involved.
For academic use, see Citation for information on how to cite this project. A CITATION.cff file is also available in the repository.
- Heritage Sites Documented: 59
- Unique Contributors: 63
- Contributions: 110
- Images: 14,871
- Reconstructions: 71
- Photogrammetry: 34
- Gaussian Splatting: 37
See the paper for more details.
Run these commands to clone the repository:
git clone https://github.com/project-tirtha/tirtha-public.git
cd tirtha-public
# Optional: initialise submodules required by ImageOps and related components
git submodule update --init --recursiveThen, follow the instructions in DEVELOP.md for development setup or DEPLOY.md for production/deployment setup.
Please cite the following paper if you use this software in your work (arXiv | ACM Digital Library):
@inproceedings{10.1145/3611314.3615904,
author = {Shivottam, Jyotirmaya and Mishra, Subhankar},
title = {Tirtha - An Automated Platform to Crowdsource Images and Create 3D Models of Heritage Sites},
year = {2023},
isbn = {9798400703249},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3611314.3615904},
doi = {10.1145/3611314.3615904},
abstract = {Digital preservation of Cultural Heritage (CH) sites is crucial to protect them against damage from natural disasters or human activities. Creating 3D models of CH sites has become a popular method of digital preservation thanks to advancements in computer vision and photogrammetry. However, the process is time-consuming, expensive, and typically requires specialized equipment and expertise, posing challenges in resource-limited developing countries. Additionally, the lack of an open repository for 3D models hinders research and public engagement with their heritage. To address these issues, we propose Tirtha, a web platform for crowdsourcing images of CH sites and creating their 3D models. Tirtha utilizes state-of-the-art Structure from Motion (SfM) and Multi-View Stereo (MVS) techniques. It is modular, extensible and cost-effective, allowing for the incorporation of new techniques as photogrammetry advances. Tirtha is accessible through a web interface at https://smlab.niser.ac.in/project/tirtha/ and can be deployed on-premise or in a cloud environment. In our case studies, we demonstrate the pipeline’s effectiveness by creating 3D models of temples in Odisha, India, using crowdsourced images. These models are available for viewing, interaction, and download on the Tirtha website. Our work aims to provide a dataset of crowdsourced images and 3D reconstructions for research in computer vision, heritage conservation, and related domains. Overall, Tirtha is a step towards democratizing digital preservation, primarily in resource-limited developing countries.},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 28th International ACM Conference on 3D Web Technology},
articleno = {11},
numpages = {15},
keywords = {photogrammetry, open source, digital heritage, crowdsourcing, 3D dataset},
location = {San Sebastian, Spain},
series = {Web3D '23}
}You can also use GitHub's citation feature to generate a citation for this repository. See here for more details.
This project received its initial funding from La Fondation Dassault Systèmes, to whom we are deeply grateful. We also thank the following individuals for their contributions to the project's development:
- Jyotirmaya Shivottam | JeS24
- Anubhav Vishwakarma | AvTheBlackBird
- Om Kumar | W-OK-E
- Annada Prasad Behera | annadapb
We are grateful to the developers of the following open-source libraries, which help make this project a reality:
- AliceVision Meshroom, available under the Mozilla Public License 2.0.
- COLMAP
- nerfstudio
- 3D Gaussian Splatting Reference (Inria)
- MANIQA, available under the Apache 2.0 License.
- nsfw_model, available under the MIT License.
- Cesium
obj2gltf gltfpack- Google
<model-viewer> - 3D Gaussian Splat Viewer
- 3D Gaussian Splatting Converter
- Google Fonts | Rubik
- Google Fonts | Material Icons
- Django
- jQuery
- gunicorn
- nginx
- Celery
- RabbitMQ
- OpenCV
- Docker
- ffmpeg
We also thank Odisha State Archaeology for their support.
© 2023-26 Project Tirtha, Subhankar Mishra's Lab, School of Computer Sciences, NISER. All rights reserved.