UltraMap Studio Part #8: 3D Production

13 December 2022

3D city models, or – more precisely – textured 3D meshes, can be used for a multitude of possibilities in a growing number of different fields ranging from GIS, emergency management or property management and up to augmented reality and gaming. They are one of the core constituents for urban planners and decision makers and are already used in change management and planning of preventive measures, wind and dispersion simulations, energy studies or architectural design planning, to name just a few.

This blogpost will cover the creation, visualization and export of textured 3D meshes and colorized point clouds within UltraMap Studio.

Depict the world in 3D.

Select an area & view 3D data

The first step in the 3D workflow is the automated processing of an Ortho Base Layer. This is based on the results of AT and radiometric adjustment of the earlier steps in the UltraMap workflow and gives a low resolution ortho mosaic as an overview of the project area. On the one hand, this allows to do a final quick check of the input data before starting substantial processing and on the other hand, supports selecting a region of interest by means of a tile grid. Once the Base Layer is available, the desired tiles can be selected and submitted for 3D processing.

Tiles can be flexibly selected in the tile grid for processing.

Export 3D data using Map Sheets

While the tile grid of the base layer is optimized for automated data handling and processing, the data can be exported in a customizable grid of map sheets. These map sheets can be flexibly designed to meet project requirements. Map sheets can be defined based on various parameters:

By GSD and output sheet size: The final ground sampling distance of exported image and not the exact location of the map sheets in the world coordinate system is important.

By origin and real-world size: The map sheet is placed at a given point in the world coordinate system while no ground sampling distance is defined.

By customized map sheet definitions imported from a text file: The definitions are based on a simple format used for storing map sheets that can also be re-used as a template.

The data can be exported in various file formats, ranging from colorized point clouds to textured meshes, optionally including level of detail (LOD) or a relative origin of coordinates.

This post marks the end of the UltraMap Studio blog series. We hope you found it worthwhile to read our blog posts and that you learned something new in each of them. If you missed a post, take the opportunity to read up on individual topics by clicking on the link below.

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