Digital characterization of the surface texture of chinese classical garden rockery based on point cloud visualization: small-rock mountain retreat

Abstract

The Rockery is often a key element of a Classical Chinese Garden. It’s exquisite detailed physical characteristics a major contributor to artistic value, aesthetic appeal, and the carrier of historical and cultural heritage values. Poets and scholars have often described the beauty of these places in classical gardens in qualitative terms but lacked the quantitative tools to provide replicable metric descriptions. The highly complex forms and surfaces, irregularity, and fragility of garden rockeries has challenged authors to accurately describe the characteristics of these qualities using traditional methods and tools. This article presents a new method of digital characterization approach based on laser scanning and point cloud visualization, which can quantitatively detect and represent the pattern of rockery surface textures. It offers a replicable accurate quantitative descriptor of the Classical Chinese rockery. The Small-Rock Mountain Retreat, a nationally protected rockery garden in China, has been used as a case study. It contains original historic elements and more recently restored areas. Two characteristics of rockery surfaces, including the well-proportioned density and space, and the proper contrast between solid and void, were analyzed by examining four attributes: (1) surface complexity; (2) contour curvature; (3) shape variation; and (4) the interweaving of lightness and darkness. The findings demonstrate that, despite some similarities between the restored portion of the rockery and the historical remnants, there are variances in the richness of the details and the balanced distribution of shape change. The digital characterization approach introduced in this article offers a new perspective for recording and in turn safeguarding Chinese garden rockeries and other irregular cultural heritage objects.