The Mediterranean Surveyor in the New Millennium

Three-dimensional photo-models are object-models with texture information taken from photographs. They can be used to present architectural objects to the public and decision-makers. Photo-realism can only be obtained if the geometry of the building is represented by accurate methods and if texture or real world imagery is additionally mapped to the faces of the objects. For the modeling of buildings located in urban areas, we consider a first step based on topology structure combined with geometry to construct the more coherent 3D model. Our method is supported by manual and semi-automated procedures for house and roof extraction, based on 3D description of buildings from aerial photographs. Specified Graphical User Interfaces (GUI) have been developed and integrated in the general shape of MicroStation-J toolboxes. These tools are mainly:- A “building-generator ” which automatically completes the shape of the building by projecting the roof onto the DTM;- An “Architectural-generator ” which automatically completes the different details of the building’s faces;- A “Topology-generator ” able to produce structured tables of the graphical elements. In the second step, the orthophotos processed from the original images are then applied to the faces of the object. Most architectural photogrammetry software packages, since they are mainly used for visualization and animation purposes, allow such a possibility. Our method has been applied to the zoological museum located in Strasbourg (close to the ENSAIS campus). 1