Visualizing Design and Spatial Structure of Ancient Architecture Using Blueprint Rendering
Marc Nienhaus, Jürgen Döllner · 2005
We present the blueprint rendering technique as an effective tool for interactively visualizing, exploring, and communicating the design and spatial structure of ancient architecture by outlining and enhancing their visible and occluded features. The term blueprint in its original meaning denotes “a photographic print in white on a bright blue ground or blue on a white ground used especially for copying maps, mechanical drawings, and archi tects’ plans” (Merriam Webster). Blueprints consist of transparently rendered features, represented by their out lines. This way, blueprints allow for realizing complex, hierarchical object assemblies such as architectural drafts. Our technique renders 3D models of architecture to automatically generate blueprints that provide spatial insights, and generates plan views that provide a systematic overview, and enhances these drafts using glyphs. Additionally, blueprint rendering can highlight features of particular importance and their relation to the entire structure, and can reduce visual complexity if the structural complexity of the 3D model is excessive.