Procedural 3D reconstruction of Puuc buildings in Xkipché

  • Authors:

  • Pascal Müller;Tijl Vereenooghe;Peter Wonka;Iken Paap;Luc Van Gool

  • Affiliations:

  • Computer Vision Lab, ETH Zürich, Switzerland;Center for Archaeological Sciences, ESAT, K.U. Leuven, Belgium;Partnership for Research in Spatial Modeling, Arizona State University;Institut für Griechische und Lateinische Philologie, Romanistik und Altamerikanistik, University of Bonn, Germany;Computer Vision Lab, ETH Zürich, Switzerland and Center for Archaeological Sciences, ESAT, K.U. Leuven, Belgium and PSI, ESAT, K.U. Leuven, Belgium

  • Venue:
  • VAST'06 Proceedings of the 7th International conference on Virtual Reality, Archaeology and Intelligent Cultural Heritage
  • Year:
  • 2006

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Abstract

This paper examines how architectural shape grammars can be used to procedurally generate 3D reconstructions of an archaeological site. The Puuc-style buildings found in Xkipché, Mexico, were used as a test-case. We first introduce the ancient Mayan site of Xkipché and give an overview of the building types as distinguished by the archaeologists, based on excavations and surveys of the building remains at the surface. Secondly, we outline the elements of the building design that are characteristic of the Puuc architecture. For the creation of the actual building geometries, we further determine the shape grammar rules for the different architectural parts. The modeling system can then be used to reconstruct the whole site based on various GIS (Geographical Information Systems) data given as input, such as building footprints, architectural information, and elevation. The results demonstrate that our modeling system is, in contrast to traditional 3D modeling, able to efficiently construct a large number of high quality geometric models at low cost.