Fast reconstruction of 3D terrain model from contour lines on 2D maps

Abstract

In order to create three-dimensional terrain models, a method that reconstructs geometric models from contour lines on two-dimensional map can be used. Previous methods divide a set of contour lines into simple matching regions and clefts [1],[2]. Since long processing time is taken for reconstructing clefts, its performance might be degraded in the case of handling complicated models containing a lot of clefts. In this paper, we propose a fast reconstruction method, which generates triangle strips with single tiling operation for simple region that does not contain branches. If there are some branches in contours, it partitions the contour lines into several sub-contours by considering the number of vertices and their spatial distribution. We implemented an automatic surface reconstruction system by using our method. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2005.