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Multiresolution 3D terrain generation using contours

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Contour maps are still the most widely available data source for terrain elevation information. In many scientific and technical systems, three dimensional object views are required to better understand the structure or to facilitate its automatic manipulation and analysis. Lately, studies on the automatic reconstruction of the curves from sample points and the medial axis transforms have greatly helped to realize spatial relationships between contours. These techniques help us to remove flat triangles that exists on the ridges, valleys and summits of the terrain. The aim of this thesis is to build a contour-based approach for multi resolution 3D terrain generation based on these recent advances in contour techniques. In this thesis, we try two alternatives. First, we simplify individual contours and then build 3D meshes from these simplified contours. In the second approach, we try to use fewer contour lines to build meshes. We show that the prior alternative performs better and compare this approach with conventional 3D simplification methods such as progressive meshes.