A Field Report on the Modeling of 3D Landmarks in Scholar Projects
IEEE VR Workhop on Virtual Cityscapes: Key Research Issues in Modeling Large-Scale Immersive, IEEE, IEEE Press, (March 2008)Abstract
General interest in visualizations of digital 3D cityscapes is growing rapidly, and several applications are already available that display such models very realistically. In order to generate a virtual 3D city model different approaches exist which use miscellaneous input data sources, for example, 2D maps, aerial images, or laser-scanned data. However, 3D landmarks which denote highly-complex and architecturally prominent buildings, e.g., churches, castles, spires etc., cannot be reproduced in an adequate manner by automatic reconstruction. Therefore, these entities are usually modeled manually by architectural offices or 3D design companies. In recent years user interfaces of 3D modeling applications have evolved such that these applications are widely accepted and easy-to-use - even for non-experts.
In this paper we present a field report on the manual modeling of 3D landmarks in which two classes have participated. In cooperation with two different schools we have performed two projects which eight and ninth grades students. In each project every student has chosen a particular 3D building of sufficient complexity to model. All models have been integrated into our city visualization environment. We present the results as well as the experience that we have made during this project.