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From historical advice to 3D modeling and programming, the process of reconstructing cultural heritage sites populated with virtual inhabitants is lengthy and expensive, and it requires a large set of skills and tools. These constraints make it increasingly difficult, however not unattainable, for small archaeological sites to build their own simulations. In this article, we describe our attempt to minimize this scenario. We describe a framework that makes use of free tools or campus licenses and integrates the curricular work of students in academia. We present the details of methods and tools used in the pipeline of the construction of the virtual simulation of the medieval village of Mértola in the south of Portugal. We report on: a) the development of a lightweight model of the village, including houses and terrain, and b) its integration in a game engine in order to c) include a virtual population of autonomous inhabitants in a simulation running in real-time.

Cultural heritage is a relevant issue in contemporary society. While its preservation is a challenge, its dissemination, can contribute for an economic balance between costs and benefits. Scientific heritage can be considered as a special domain of cultural heritage, not yet sought by the mass tourism, but worth being preserved as the roots of today’s knowledge. Considering that university students of engineering and computer science traditionally do not address cultural or scientific heritage issues in their syllabus, and that they constitute a layer of young citizens that will come to be influential in the future of society, an effort was undertaken to focus on this theme in disciplines of different courses, allying the learning of technical skills with the natural interest of younger people for 3D and animation for the profit of heritage. The goal was to raise the awareness of this particular group to the importance of maintaining heritage issues, in particular, in a virtual way, both for documentation and for divulgating their existence. Raising funds for buildings’ restoration, attracting the public to visit buildings and collections that are outside the usual tourism routes, contributing to revenue generation, or allowing virtual visits of not accessible issues, complementing physical visits on site, were the general aims of the proposed projects. A survey was undertaken under the participating students to evaluate how the projects influenced their attitude towards heritage. The obtained feedback was very positive: 76% agreed that the project alerted them for the importance of preserving historical and cultural heritage, while 72% considered it was interesting that the topic of digital cultural heritage was used for the assessments of the disciplines.