Feature-based decomposition of facades

Due to advances in computer hardware, virtual environments become significantly larger and more complex. Therefore the modeling of virtual worlds, e.g. for computer animation and games becomes increasingly time and resource consuming.

In architectural settings façade features are influenced by the underlying geometrical structure or even by other façade structures, e.g. façade edges made of large stones influence the adjacent walls. To achieve an aesthetic look of the façade adjacent structures must be seamlessly aligned.

The modeling of such structures is a tedious work. With our approach only a few basic parameters are needed to create highly detailed façades. This relieves the designer of the burden of difficult modeling tasks and gives him more high level control.

In this paper we present a strategy for a floor plan representation that permits arbitrary floor plan outlines. This simplifies the roof generation for different roof types in an easy way to achieve an aesthetic goal. Based on the floor plan representation we describe a hierarchical decomposition of architectural façade features. With an order relation on it we represent the interdependencies between the façade features and introduce a geometry generator for them.

With our approach every building in a large VR city will look different but can have a high level on architectural details.