Project Specific Requirements

Project Tab 115

 Contents

• Understanding the project

• Building Interpretation
• Drawing Rules:
• Dense Buildings block
• Multi layer with adjoining dense building blocks
• Common errors:
• Incorrect merging/separation
• Missing some buildings
• Leave space between buildings adjoining with each other
• Forget to drag side-wall
• Missing multi-layers
• Backyard/ground not excluded
 Understanding the project
• Dense buildings
• Multi-layer buildings adjoining
single layer dense building blocks
• Roof material is different than
usual
• Narrow lane between house that
are not visible in the imagery

Task imagery
 Understanding the project
• Roof material is different than usual
• Narrow lane between house that are not visible in the imagery
• Roof color might be different within the same structure.

Different roof
material
Roof color may
vary within the
same structure

Narrow Lanes
 Building Interpretation

Dense Building Blocks:

• context：（1）Has similar height and built adjoining with each other

（2） the block is large（3）collectively appear
• shape：similar fashion & size
• color：color might vary
• texture：（1）dense and might have different rooftops（2）inward
areas might be backyard and ground

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 Building Interpretation

Multi-layer buildings
adjoining dense building
blocks:

• context：（1）Has varying heights

but built adjoining with each other
（2）side-wall showing the
difference in height
• shape：Mostly vary in fashion &
size
• color：color might vary
• texture：rooftops usually vary

Dense building block

Multi Layer building
adjoining dense
building block

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 Drawing Rules

Dense Building Block

Drawing rules – draw as one, then separate where appropriate. Remember to exclude any
ground or yard.

Common errors

1. Incorrect merging/separation
2. Missing some buildings

3. Leave space between buildings adjoining with each other

4. Forget to drag side-wall

5. Missing multi-layers
6. Backyard/ground not excluded

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 Drawing Rules

Dense Building Blocks:

• Draw as one – Cut the block as a whole
• Start separating the features by first cutting along
the obvious lines
• Look for clear breaks and continue cutting
• Analyze the roof material, roof color and building
structure before you draw.
• Differentiate between grounds and buildings
• Do not overcut
• If confused, always use your judgement and
interpretation based on your prior knowledge of
what features look like.
WATCH THE VIDEO TUTORIAL
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 Drawing Rules

We will be drawing deadlocks only for this project

Deadlock – buildings does

not have any access to
roads

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 Drawing Rules

Multi-layer buildings adjoining dense building blocks:

Draw multi-layers, Including rooftop building layers with area larger than 10 * 10 pixels OR when you can see
obvious side-wall（no less than 3 pixels）

• Analyze the building block and identify the multi-layer buildings

• Start outlining the rooftop of the top layer and drag it to the lower layer.
• Draw the block of buildings as one including the multi layer buildings (Make sure to follow the yellow
lines)
• Important: always separate the multi layer buildings by cutting it from the rest of the block.
• Make sure to group

Repeat the process of drawing dense building block. (Review the slide
on how to draw dense building blocks)

WATCH THE VIDEO TUTORIAL

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 Drawing Rules

Multi-layer buildings adjoining dense building blocks:

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 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 1. Incorrect merging/separation
Cutting rules:
• Cut reasonably based on visible building boundaries
• Cut reasonably based on different roof colors (with
sharp color transition)
• Cut reasonably based on different roof textures
• Don’t cut too much

Case 1: Cut too roughly. Need more separation based

on the cutting rules.

Blank
Cut too roughly image

incorrect correct 12
 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 1. Incorrect merging/separation

• Cut reasonably based on visible building

boundaries
• DO NOT cut randomly
• DO NOT cut as a chess board

Case 2 DO NOT cut buildings without

visible building boundaries

Incorrect

Bland image Correct 13

 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 2. Missing some buildings

• Draw the adjoining building block as one, and then cut appropriately to avoid missing
buildings.
• DO NOT draw buildings one by one.
Case 1: Some buildings are missing in the dense building block.
Drawing dense building one by one will easily omit
some buildings, and draw gaps between buildings.

Blank image incorrect correct 14

 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 3. Leave space between buildings adjoining with each other

• Don’t leave space for buildings adjoining with

each other
• Using “draw a block as a whole, then cut”
technique can avoid this error.
Using “draw a block as a whole, then
Case 1 cut” technique can avoid this error.

Blank image

Incorrect
Correct
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 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 4. Forget to drag side-wall

• Shift building to the reasonable bottom, otherwise, building footprints location

will be wrong. Even worse, building footprints might overlap with road.
• We can analyze road shape to help speculate the real building footprint.
Case 1
Drag 3D buildings when see the sidewall, and
make sure the footprints DO NOT overlap the road

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 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 4. Forget to drag side-wall

• Shift building to the reasonable bottom, otherwise, building footprints location will be
wrong. Even worse, building footprints might overlap with road.

Case 2: before dragging the side-wall, building footprints are overlapped with road
incorrectly. After shifting footprints to the bottom, the footprints have much more accurate
location.

Yellow dash lines show the correct

See side-wall here location of building footprints.

No overlap
Yellow lines show the location
of road, which is overlapped
Correct
with building footprints.
Incorrect
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 Dense密集房屋群
Building Block
ii. 常见错误
ii. Common – 6.
errors 未画出多层结构
– 5. Missing multi-layers

• If the dense buildings have significant

different heights, draw those significant
multi-layers.
• Including rooftop building layers with
area larger than 10 * 10 pixels，OR can
see obvious side-wall（no less than 3
pixels）
• Refer to video tutorial for more details. Incorrect

Draw multi-layers for

buildings with significant
different height & rooftop
structures

Blank image Correct

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 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 6. Backyard/ground not excluded

• Usually dense building block have all buildings are adjoining with each other. However, for some
area, there are some ground and inner yards which need to be excluded.
• From Google image, we can find out there are ground in dense building block. See arrows below.

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 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 6. Backyard/ground not excluded

• Rules for identifying backyard/ground:

1. Ground is lower than buildings. You can see dark
shadow on ground area.
2. Sometimes there are some fence around the
backyard. You can see inward shadow which
indicates that the backyard is lower than
surrounding buildings.
3. Sometimes you can even see trees inside or
cars parking on it.
Google image

The inward shadow indicates the inner yard

satellite image 20
Street view
 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 6. Backyard/ground not excluded

• Rules for identifying backyard/ground:

1. Ground is lower than buildings. You can see dark
shadow on ground area.
2. Sometimes there are some fence around the backyard.
You can see inward shadow which indicates that the
backyard is lower than surrounding buildings.
3. Sometimes you can even see trees inside or cars
parking on it.
Case 1: exclude ground/backyard. Don’t draw as “chess board”
Ground is very dark and you can see inward
shadow caused by the fence around the backyard Incorrect

Correct
Blank image 21
 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 6. Backyard/ground not excluded

• The inward shadow caused by surrounding buildings

indicates that the area is inner yard.
• There are some cars or grass on ground (no building
roof texture).

Case 2: This dense building block has all low-rise

buildings. And these buildings have similar roof texture.
So the areas even lower than the buildings should be
ground.

Inward shadow means No roof texture

this area is lower than & has car on it Blank image
buildings  ground  ground

incorrect correct 22
 Dense Building Block
ii. Common errors – 6. Backyard/ground not excluded

• The narrow white objects in the purple circles are vehicles, which indicates that these
areas are ground or backyard.
• Tips: some vehicles have dark color. Those narrow grey or black stuff are also vehicles.

Case 3: The areas with vehicles parking on it are ground or backyard, should be
excluded.

Correct 23
END

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