The researchers developed an automated system to generate 3D computer models of buildings, cities
A research team led by Waterloo Engineering has developed a faster, cheaper way to create large-scale, three-dimensional (3D) computer models of urban areas, technology that could impact fields including urban planning, architectural design and filmmaking.
The system can generate 3D models of entire cities using only 2D aerial photographs, automating a time-consuming manual process that previously required specially trained 3D artists and computer graphics programs.
“Think about all the time and labour involved in manually creating a digital 3D model of New York City for a new Spiderman movie,” said Kyle Gao, a PhD student in systems design engineering.
“With our system, it can be done using a few hundred aerial images – satellite images from Google Earth, for example – to train the model for a couple of hours in an automated process.”
Read the full story “From action movies to urban planning”.
SYDE PhD student Kyle Gao (l) is supervised by Dr. Jonathan Li.