Realistic rendering of outdoor terrain requires both that the geometry
of environment be modeled accurately and that appropriate texturing by
laid down on top of that geometry. While elevation data is widely
available for much of the world and many methods exist for converting
this data to forms suitable for graphics systems, we have much less
experience with patterning the resulting surface. This paper describes
an approach for using panchromatic aerial imagery to produce color
views of alpine scenes. The method is able to remove shading and
shadowing effects in the original image so that shading and shadowing
appropriate to variable times of day can be added. Seasonal snow cover
can be added in a physically plausible manner. Finally, 3-D
instancing of trees and brush can be added in locations consistent with
the imagery, significantly improving the visual quality.
A gzipped postscript version of the paper is available
here.
A pdf version of the paper is available
here.
