Landscape Visualization

By Travis Bergmann and KC Smith

Core problem: how to generate a digitally rendered scene

Table of Contents Objectives: .................................................................................................................................................... 3

Why is landscape visualization important .................................................................................................... 3

Uses in industry ............................................................................................................................................. 4

Some software providers .............................................................................................................................. 5

Data types ..................................................................................................................................................... 5

Pricing............................................................................................................................................................ 5

How its made ................................................................................................................................................ 6

Data ............................................................................................................................................................... 8

Problems, issues and solutions ..................................................................................................................... 9

Act vs look ................................................................................................................................................... 10

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................... 11

References .................................................................................................................................................. 11

Questions .................................................................................................................................................... 12

Objectives: • Why Landscape visualization is important

• Factors in accuracy

• What it’s used for and software

• Steps to how it is done

• Problems, issues & solutions

• In the past the focus of map making has been on creating a representation that looks like the

world around us. Map making has developed into GIS, a GIS allows users to create maps that are

based on spatial data, and this has allowed for more intelligent representations to be produced.

The next step in the development of maps is Landscape Visualization.

• Landscape visualization uses that spatial data and this will allow a GIS to creating a

representation that not only looks like the world but also Acts like the real world.

• This presentation will answer the What, Why, and How questions surrounding Landscape

Visualization.

Ideas about Landscape

Visualization Large-scale projection-based visualization systems provide users with a unique feeling of

immersion and the possibility of providing them with an impression of the real-world size of objects.

This can be used to help the general public to participate in landscape planning issues.

Scientists and planners may seek to model landscapes and landscape processes so as to be able to

simulate or understand them, exploring scientific hypotheses, or measuring aspects of quantitative

simulations, such as soil erosion, hydrologic process, or vegetative succession.

The purpose of visualization is to provide users with an improved insight into complex systems. The

strength of quality visualization lies in its ability to reveal the underlying mechanisms and phenomena

with useful outputs. Depending on the model it is used with, it may predict the future state of the

ecosystem or restore the history of the forest or landscape.

Why is landscape visualization important • Real life representation of data in a format that is easily understood

• So what are we talking about exactly?

• Well let’s take a look; The traditions of Geographic analysis have heavily used 2D maps showing

us features and conditions as abstract images on paper. Technology has allowed us to go from

2D to interactive 3D images on a screen. Essentially the data in the background is the same; we

just do more with it.

Uses in industry Visualization of data. You can do anything from recreate an architectural site to creating a future

scene such as a new development. It gives you an impression of the scene being real by relating size

to known objects. Aspects that need to be carefully planned are the movement through the

landscape, movement with the landscape and movement of landscape. So what does that mean?

Moving through the landscape is making the movement through the scene look realistic and

smooth. Movement with the landscape includes things like floating down a river.

Used for demonstrations allowing you visualize complex ideas in a manner familiar to you and your

clients.

• Marketing,

• Public Relations,

• Community Involvement,

• Design Review

• Replication of natural events

Landscapes

– Transportation

– Architecture

– Archaeology

– Mapping

– Time lapse imagery

– Military training

– Urban planning

– Scientific imaging

– Etc…..

Some software providers Pov ray

Biosphere 3d

Presagis

Maya

3ds Max

Bryce 6

Data types Data sources vary. Many different types of data can be used to create one of these visualizations.

The more data you have the more accurate you can make it.

• 3D models

• CAD data

• Digital photography

• GIS data

• Plans, profiles and elevations

• Project address or location

Pricing To have a professional create a scene for you:

• $5000-$15000 for a 30sec 3D animation.

• $1000-$4000 for a single still image

• Because A project will be rendered many times to ensure that movement, shadow, textures

etc… are perfect, a project will take a very long time to produce and hence a lot of money to

make. The speed and processing capability of your hardware is the main determining factor in

the speed. Say you are creating a scene that is 1.5 hour long, so 90 minutes or 5400 seconds. At

30 frames per sec, that would give you roughly 162000 frames. If your system can/could render

a full, single frame every 10 seconds, with Povray, Bryce, or other animation tool.....it would

take about 450 hours of render time, ~20 days....

How its made Geometric modeling is the term used for creating a scene. To start you need to translate the data

into an object that looks and acts realistic. It has to feel like the object to make it seem realistic.

You do this by combining objects with textures (clouds, soil, grass, sky etc…)

Geometric Modelling

• Uses an interface similar to that in 3D CAD to make individual scene elements

• Set the size, shape, orientation, colour etc…..

The basics: creating an object

This is CRITICAL for 3D rendering of a virtual landscape. A. Designate your layer levels. Design Trunk

• Size till satisfied that it represents your tree Linear positioning how often and

where branches occur Angular Positioning and how often

branches occur around trunk. Are they bunched or spaced.

• Add Primary branching and patterns • Add secondary branching and

patterns • Add tertiary branching • Add levels of branching till finished • Add leaves/needles

Orientation. Do branches

droop and where on tree do they droop.

Sizing. Length and

taper of branches

Figure 1 Steps for creating a 3D object for a scene visualization

Figure 2 Adding extra details such as snow, lighting and shadows

Representation of object

• How branch appears when displayed (stick, leaf, textured, crown),

• Degree of randomness,

• 24 bit RGB Raster,

• Colour of leaves/needles, bark, snow, disease

• Light and shadowing effects

• 360 degree rendering of object

Once our object(s) is/are designed you need to plot objects in perspective. Algorithms can be used that

take into account the size of the object with respect to distance from the view point. Then the object is

scaled to give a realistic representation and placed.

Figure 3 perspective example

Creating a scene is done in a few steps:

Figure 4 scene creation steps

Step 1: create your terrain. You can do this by draping a surface over a 3d object like a TIN.

Step 2: place your polygon units for your ground textures

Step 3 add surface textures

Step 4: place trees using exact locations, density measurements or randomly depending on the accuracy

you need

Step 5: your scene is complete but not completely realistic

Step 6: add atmospheric effects to give it a really realistic feel

Data • Data Availability.

– The main issues in visualization are in obtaining Data.

– A major obstacle in developing quality visualizations is related to the availability of

appropriate information.

• Data is collected at abstract levels

– Many of the available data do not meet the requirement for developing quality

visualizations. For example, most current forest inventory and vegetation data are

maintained at abstract levels with focus on mean volumes, diameters, and ages.

– Specific data needs to be collected such as the exact height of all trees not just the mean

height of the tree stand.

• Baseline data needs to be frequently updated.

– The natural world is continuously changing and in order to have an accurate

representation of the world (which is the point of visualization) then baseline data

needs to be frequently updated.

Problems, issues and solutions • Ground cover

– Constantly different, eg) snow

• is different day to day, year to year. You may get snow earlier one year than

normal and later than normal the next. How accurate can the visual

representation be if you can not accurately predict how high the snow is. It also

tends to have specific accumulation patterns that vary depending on

circumstance, avalanche, wind, distribution from the sky, even glacier location.

You, as the designer combined with input from your clients (whether it is your

employer or customer) need to determine if it is worth putting snow in the

visualization.

– Accept a level of inaccuracy for such visualizations?

• Annual/Seasonal Vegetation Changes

– Do we make another aerial survey? Eg) Vegetation changes

• Vegetation varies for many reasons. In the fall deciduous trees loose their

leaves, in the summer there may be forest fires that burn needles, leaves and

underbrush, the spring may be especially cold and foliage comes out late,

summer may be especially dry and leaves drop early etc... There are ways to

correct for these things with aerial photography and creating a raster to overlay

your model and compare but that requires money, so again, how much error

are you willing to accept in the model.

• Output Visualization Quality

– Simply put,’what level of quality and how much $$$’

• How much money can you afford to put out on the project. Video games and

military simulations have a lot of money to put out for the hardware and

software needed to create super smooth and detailed models but how many

resource companies require that level of interaction and detail

Most Issues and Problems are solved by determining how much error or inaccuracy you are willing to

accept in your Model!

Act vs look • Legitimacy.

– Visualizations used should be driven by data, not by artistic license and should be

defensible.

• Accuracy.

– Visualizations should represent the actual appearance of the landscape,

– The dominant vegetation or tree species in a stand or in ecosystems across the

landscape is a good place to start to see if it represents our forest stands. Then, we can

ask, are there any features or processes that are not included that would help us better

represent the phenomena we wish to study?

• Representativeness.

– Visualizations should be adequate enough to represent the dependant variable in

question

• Realism and Visual Clarity.

– The details of the visualization should be clearly distinguishable; trees are different

shades of green and should be represented that way.

– When visualizing a forest landscape, the following parameters should be used as

indicators of its clarity. Those measurements that can be used to describe a real forest,

such as tree heights, stem density, and crown density also should describe a virtual

forest. Measures unique to computer representation such as being able to distinguish

colors and shapes of the plants and physiographic features of the land also are

important for visual clarity

Conclusion • Scene visualization is important to give people a visual representation of your data .

• The accuracy of your rendering is primarily dependent on how much detail you want to put into

it.

• This type of visualization is used for data representation in many industries from scientific to

government data. There are a number of software options available for the creation of a scene

but most commonly we saw 3DS max.

• Rendering of a whole scene basically follow the following steps:

– add ground/sky texture,

– insertion of created objects,

– lighting and shadowing for scene,

– ensuring perspective is ideal,

– adding atmospheric affects.

• Problems and solutions are varied and many but many of them generally are solved by how

much detail you want in your rendering.

References • Presagis (http://www.presagis.com/)

• 3D Studio Max

(http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/index?siteID=123112&id=13567410)

• Bioshpere3D (www.biosphere3d.org)

• 3DStudioMax (www.autodesk.com)

• Bryce3D (http://www.daz3d.com/ )

• Innovative GIS (http://www.innovativegis.com/basis/mapanalysis/topic12/topic12.htm)

• O’Reilly Digital Media(http://blogs.oreilly.com/)

• GIS in XML(http://www.cadmaps.com/gisblog/?p=111)

• Science Direct (www.sciencedirect.com)

• High tech security

solutions(http://securitysa.com/article.aspx?pklArticleId=5560&pklCategoryId=3)

• 3D GIS PDF(http://geowebconference.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sharrard_john-

future-directions-in-3d-gis.pdf)

• Newland’s and company (http://www.nc3d.com )

• http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080725172309AAXln70

Questions 1) What is the number one determining factor governing how true to life your scene will be.

a. The GIS data

b. The software you use to create it

c. The amount of accuracy you need/want

d. The amount of time and money you have

Answer: c) The amount of accuracy you need/want. You can have the best GIS, the best

software and hardware and all the money and time you need to make it but if you don’t want it

to have top of the line accuracy there is no point putting the effort into it.

2) A GIS Scene is easily created in minimal time.

a. True

b. False

B) False: Even though it takes much less time to create a scene then it did 10 years ago, it is still a timely

process. For example the making of Monster’s inc (Not even a gis produced movie) took 3 years to

produce. This is because you will render each scene multiple times to get all movement, shadows,

textures etc.. Many times before finishing it.

3) What are the basic steps for creating an object for your scene?

a. Create ground level texture(s) then insert objects based on density measurements.

b. Start with the most basic physical structure and work your way out and up, then

determine lighting and views.

c. Insert photos of objects based on density measurements then determine lighting and

views.

b) To create a single object to put on your map you first create your most basic structure for the objects

frame; Tree trunk, skeleton etc…. Then you want to build on that base structure adding features like

branches or muscles until it is finished. Then you determine lighting and shadowing needed (seasonal

lighting, time of the day lighting). Then figure out where you will be viewing the object from.

4) What is the name of one software used to create a GIS scene visualization video?

a. 3D studio max

b. VirtuaScene 3D

c. VGISpro

d. OpenSrc Landscape3D

a) 3D studio max is one of two products offered by Auto cad for generating 3d imagery.

5) What types of data can be used in the creation of a virtual scene.

a. Digital photography

b. 3D models

c. GIS

d. CAD

e. All of the above

e) All of these types of data can be used in the creation of a GIS scene visualization.