Interactive 3D city modeling based on Google earth

• Main Author: Yu, Jianmin.
• Other Authors: Zheng Jianmin
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: DRNTU::Engineering::Computer science and engineering::Computing methodologies::Computer graphics
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10356/44112
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The demand for realistic visualization of Three-Dimensional (3D) city models is fast growing. However, it used to take numerous work to generate 3D city models using laser scanner data and in combination with 3D digital terrain models textured with high resolution orthophotos. With the help of Google Earth, users can navigate any city freely in a virtual landscape, which consists of city terrain, aerial image data, and some 3D building models. This report proposes a methodology to extract out geographic terrain data using Google Earth for any place in the world, and develops an interactive method for 3D city modeling, which is an integration of many algorithms including triangulation, mesh simplification, elevation linear interpolation and texture mapping. To demonstrate the proposed techniques, a software prototype has been successfully developed in Java, which can be used to produce realistic 3D city models easily and quickly. The result can be saved as OBJ format files for further usage.