Photogrammetry and Computer Graphics for Visual Impact Analysis in Architectur

The paper presents a method to produce realistic computer-generated color images which aids to the judgement of aesthetic properties of planned buildings. The planned buildings are embedded into the existing environment by photo montage. The planar universe of conventional photomontaging is extended to three dimensions. During an interactive preprocessing step, a three-dimensional description of the existing environment is created: Geometrical data, atmospheric parameters and illumination parameters are retrieved from digital site photographs. The final image, combining the planned building and the environment represented by the site photographs, is rendered by an extended ray-tracing algorithm. The algorithm operates in threedimensional object space and handles the interaction between the building and its environment with respect to hiding, shadowing and interreflection. For the simulation of illumination effects, material parameters are retrieved from the photographs at rendering time.