3DGIS-Based Reconstruction and Visualization of Timber-Frame Building Cluster

There are only a few timber-frame buildings of China and also a few literatures that record the arts and crafts about them. It becomes a critical task to research and protect ancient architecture by computer and information technology. A dy- namic visualization system based on 3D GIS for timber-frame buildings, its framework, and workflow were proposed par- ticularly. The combination of the levels of detail (LOD) strategy and CAD data was discussed in detail. For the purpose of real-time photorealistic visualization, a new Database Management Engine was put forward. Moreover, occlusion culling and programmable realtime rendering were applied to data preprocess for enhancing rendering frequency. Finally, a practical ap- plication shows that a 3DGIS-based interactive dynamic visualization system is an efficient tool for the protection and re- search of the ancient architecture.