Interactive visualization of 3D lunar model with texture and labels, using Chang’E-1 data

Abstract

A lunar model with real texture can be obtained by mapping texture onto the lunar mesh, but the convergence in the polar regions of lunar model is a problem. In this paper, we build a 3D lunar model and solve this problem by texture partitioning and transforming. The whole lunar map is divided into four images and the polar images are transformed to circular textures before mapped to the semi-regular (SR) lunar mesh which is obtained through denoising, triangulating, subdividing and resampling the laser altimetry (LAM) data. Hundreds of lunar labels are classed into three levels and added gradually to the lunar model considering the distance between the viewpoint and the moon center. Through some techniques such as mip-map and view-dependent, the lunar model with textures and labels can be interactively browsed on a personal computer (PC) in real time.