Automatic reconstruction of Roman housing architecture

The creation of 3D models of ancient sites has often been focused on their major monuments only. This is logical, given the high costs of traditional 3D modeling. Thus, to efficiently reconstruct entire sites like cities, a large number of domestic buildings and workshops need to be generated automatically. Their appearance should follow the aesthetic and statutory architectural rules of the corresponding epoch. From various GIS (Geographical Information Systems) data given as input, such as population density, land usage, street network and building footprints, our system assigns type and style of the buildings to its footprints and calls the corresponding shape grammar rules to efficiently create detailed large-scale models. The shape grammar rules which are responsible for the creation of the actual building geometries are manually derived from photos and plans of remaining buildings, archaeological excavation data, and (historical) paintings. To complete the model of the reconstructed urban zone, streets are automatically embedded according to the given GIS data and appropriate vegetation is added based on simple procedural rules.