Automatic procedural 3D modelling of buildings

Abstract

The problem of modelling, especially of large-scale virtual urban environments such as city areas is today very challenging for cartographers. Cities are difficult to model in detail because of their often complex geometries. This paper describes the applied and tested new procedures for the development of a test three-dimensional urban area model using the Esri CityEngine software, which is based on procedural modelling. This process involves three steps. The first step is to collect the available data, as well as the Digital Model Relief data. The second step is to create a Computer Generated Architecture (CGA) file that contains a set of rules used by the software for an automatic generation of the model. The third step is to create and visualize 3D models in the CityEngine software because it can be programmed, for example, according to the rules of cartographic visualization. The Level of Detail (LOD) 2 was reconstructed. Several potential uses of such 3D visualization are also described.

Keywords

• CGA
• CityEngine
• procedural modelling
• 3D modelling
• 3D visualization