3D Visualisation of the Historic Pre-Dam Vltava River Valley—Procedural and CAD Modelling, Online Publishing and Virtual Reality

Abstract

As a part of “The Vltava River” project, it was necessary to create a visualisation of the historic Vltava River valley before the construction of the so-called Vltava Cascade (nine dams built in the Vltava River basin between 1930 and 1992). Vectorisations of the Imperial Obligatory Imprints of the Stable Cadastre, and a terrain model created from contour lines from the State Map 1:5000-Derived (SMO-5), prepared in an earlier phase of the project, were used as a basis for this visualisation. Due to the extent of the modelled area, which is approximately 1670 km2, and the available underlying data realistically usable for the visualisation, mainly procedural modelling with the use of the CGA shape grammar was chosen for the creation of 3D objects. These procedurally created 3D models were completed with more detailed models of landmark buildings created in CAD. The outcomes were used to establish a virtual reality (VR) application in the Unreal Engine software. The results are a 3D scene created in a form corresponding approximately to the state of the Vltava River valley in the 19th century, which is available for viewing via a web application, and a VR scene used for demonstration at exhibitions.