Hydraulic Engineering III – Xie (Ed)

© 2015 Taylor & Francis Group, London, ISBN 978-1-138-02743-5

Construction of campus 3D scene based on 3dsMax and Unity3D

Lin Lin, Zhihui Tian & Shan Zhao

School of Water Conservancy and Environment, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, China

ABSTRACT: Faced with the low fidelity and low efficiency of scene operation by using the
traditional visualization technology to construct 3D scene, This paper proposes a method to
build a three-dimensional campus scene, we take Zhengzhou University as an example, based
on the Unity3d platform, combine JavaScript with c# language, and make use of the 3dsMax
software to construct the 3D scene. Then based on the LOD model, we come up with the 3D
scene optimization method.

1 INTRODUCTION

With the development of geographic information system, visualization techniques and vir-
tual reality techniques, three-dimensional model reconstruction techniques are widely used
in the constructions of smart city. Digital campus with three-dimensional scene can more
intuitively show the style of a campus, which is of important meaning to the planning and
development of the campus. Virtual scenes built via traditional visualization techniques have
disadvantages like low-fidelity, low interactivity and so on. In this article, Unity3D platform
is used to build the three-dimensional scene of Zhengzhou University, with the support of
3dsMax modelling software and interacting programming language JavaScript and C# used
in combination. In order to improve the fidelity and interactivity, detailed models and maps
of high quality are adopted to accomplish the construction of the model in the scene, and for
higher efficiency, LOD model is used to optimize the three-dimensional scene.

2 CONSTRUCTION OF 3D CAMPUS MODELS

Model building is an important part of the whole three-dimensional scene and its quality
directly affect the fidelity of three-dimensional scene. The three-dimensional scene includes
many models, Such as terrain, buildings, bridges, roads, rivers, vegetation and so on (Ruokun,
2010, Ying, 2013). This paper takes Zhengzhou University as the research object and mainly
involved two kinds of models that is terrain and feature model.

2.1 Construction of three-dimensional terrain models

First of all, terrain modeling need to from GIS data include planning and engineering draw-
ings, topographic maps, digital remote sensing image, geographic coordinate data and so on.
There are many methods of three-dimensional modeling, but the most commonly used is
DEM model and it’s construction method as follows:
1. Use of the existing terrain elevation data (contour and elevation point), and save it as.
SHP format map layer and layer respectively.
2. Import contour and elevation point data into ArcGIS, and generate DEM data as TIN
format, then by the TIN generate elevation data as Grid format, use Photoshop convert-
ing data format, set appropriate resolution and size of DEM, Transfer the data as RAW
format.

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 3. Import DEM data into Unity3D, and generate three-dimensional terrain model based on
DEM of Zhengzhou University.

2.2 Construction of three-dimensional building models

In the process of building the three-dimensional scene model, different kinds of modeling
methods are required according to the accuracy of the model. This paper is based on AutoCAD
and 3DSMAX modeling method. The modeling process of building is shown in Figure 2.

2.2.1 Building classification

Building is the main object in the three-dimensional scene, the campus buildings can be
divided into primary and secondary structures. The Fineness of model building, modeling
efficiency and modeling inputs are important issues plagued the people. We can classify the
building model in two types based on campus scene effect and the benefit of comprehensive
analysis. One is detailed model, focusing on the building, administration building, library and
lab building, etc; the other is simple model, mainly aimed at the canteen, dormitory, etc.

Figure 1. Three-dimensional terrain model of Zhengzhou University.

Figure 2. The modeling process of building.

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 Figure 3. Three-dimensional model of the institute of water conservancy and environment.

2.2.2 Building data acquisition

Architectural entity data is mainly composed of geometric data and high data. Building
height data can be roughly estimated in accordance with the building level number. The tex-
ture of building can be divided into flat texture and facade texture. The flat texture of build-
ings can be obtained by matching orthogonal projection image of aviation image processing
with the ground texture. The facade texture of buildings are formed by a digital camera on
the ground, and then we can use Photoshop to make the façade texture.

2.2.3 Building models building

Based on the institute of water conservancy and environment of the Zhengzhou University,
we studied the three-dimensional reconstruction of buildings. For most regular buildings,
their modeling process can be divided into three types: the construction of the roof, the con-
struction of the wall and the texture map of the buildings.
1. Construction of the roof: Pitched roof building and two-sided gable roof building are
obtained based on solid geometry models by Boolean operators (differential operation).
2. Construction of the wall: We get doors and walls with the use of a polygon or entity
Boolean (Difference), in addition, we should pay attention to the latch modeling and
handle modeling as well as the modeling of the window sash and the glass. Wall unit is
filled by a number of doors and windows, in the modeling process we use arrays, mirror-
ing, cloning and other algorithms to improve the efficiency and accuracy of modeling to
achieve accurate modeling. Metope is showed by surface extrusion, extrusion and rectan-
gular polygon,
3. Building Texture Editor: The texture image of the building is assigned to the correspond-
ing parts of the building by using 3DS Max material editor bitmap tools in the form of
maps. The building model is like Figure 3.

3 THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL SCENE OF ZHENGZHOU UNIVERSITY

The work of the construction of three-dimensional scene is mainly to make each individual
object integrated in the model of Unity3D (integration of terrain) while adding relevant envi-
ronmental, physical and other elements to form a complete three-dimensional virtual reality
simulation scenario. With the management function of Unity3D model, we integrate and
build three-dimensional simulation scene with the object model and environmental factors
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 Figure 4. Three-dimensional scene of Zhengzhou University.

around Zhengzhou University, and then the scene is rendering by using three-dimensional
render, and finally, we carry out visualization of three-dimensional scene.
Zhengzhou University of three-dimensional landscape is constructed as follows:
1. The DEM generated data into Unity3D terrain model, and it is shown in Figure 1.
2. Using three-dimensional modeling tool—3dsMax, to construct the feature model, using
Photoshop software to process texture data and create a simulation model of the object
feature. The building model is shown in Figure 3.
3. Terrain and Feature models are managed by Unity3D, the three-dimensional campus is
also constructed, and the rendering and display of campus is achieved as well. The three-
dimensional scene of Zhengzhou University is shown in Figure 4.

4 SCENE OPTIMIZATION

In the process of building three-dimensional scene of Zhengzhou university campus, ter-

rain and feature object is mainly by model building, while the model is exquisite, rendering
efficiency is low; on the contrary, the high fidelity is lower when rendering efficiency is high.
View of this situation, this paper proposes two optimization scheme, after the research of
optimization model by Unity3D and the methods of scene optimization: for building model,
reducing the complexity of the model, for the efficiency of model rendering, cutting down the
amount of model real-time rendering in the scene by using LOD (Yan & Qing, 2006).

4.1 Model optimization

Model optimization is aimed at buildings of campus, construction model building on the basis
of building detailed expression degree of build model, buildings can be divided into detailed
model and simple model levels according to the Zhengzhou University field situation. The
modeling requirements of models in two level and its data control quantity are as follows:
1. Detailed model
Detailed model is applied to the teaching buildings, laboratory buildings, office buildings,
integrated management building and so on. The texture is the same with the actual con-
struction in detailed modeling, the detail structure model is expressed by model; the rows
and columns of texture for clipping is best n times of 2, the size of texture is not less than
16 × 16 and not exceeding 1024 × 1024, the number of faces is around 200.
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 2. Simple model
A Simple model is suitable for roads, residential buildings, and other ancillary features.
Building structures which use the model to express the detailed part and the texture
express other parts, the texture is the same with the actual construction in modeling; the
number of model faces is not more than 50.

4.2 Rendering optimization

From the beginning of the scene rendering, the real-time rendering optimization reduces the
number of 3D scene for rendering model, improves the efficiency of rendering and enhances
real-time scene. At present, the mainly methods of real-time rendering optimization have the
covered excluding technology, LOD technology, multi-scale expression technology and so on,
combined with the Zhengzhou University field Situation, LOD model was used to optimize
the rendering of terrain and buildings.
LOD model namely the level of detail model (levels of details model) uses a variety of
precision to show (Frank, 2004), the three-dimensional objects, and select different precision
of the model based on the location of the observation point change to better realize real-time
dynamic display of three-dimensional scenes.

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORK

This paper generates three-dimensional terrain model by Unity3D and constructs campus
three-dimensional scene models by 3dsMax. In practice, Unity3D is simple, construction
rapid, high fidelity, strong interactive advantages in three dimensional visualization. Uni-
ty3D will be used in more areas and industry fields, giving full play to its advantages is the
content of future research.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We would like to thank all the reviewers for their recommendations that improved the
comprehensiveness and clarity of our paper. This research was supported by the Key
Technology and Application Demonstration of Spatial and Temporal Information Cloud
Platform (No. 201412003).

REFERENCES

Frank Losasso, Hugues Hoppe, “Geometry Clipmaps: Terrain Rendering Using Nested Regular Grids”,
ACMSIGGRAPH 2004, pp. 769–776, 2004.
Ruokun Chen, Qiushuo Wang, Jinyuan Jia. Interactive virtual campus roanming system based on
Unity3D [A]. The 7th Yangtze forum on science and technology [C]. The international Digital Tech-
nology Museum, 2010:188–196.
Yan Zhou, Qing Zhu, Duo Huang. Research on LOD model of the building in 3D city [J]. Science of
Surveying and mapping, 2006, 31(5):74–77.
Ying Yu, Qingquan Zhang. Research on the method making city ground scene by using 3DMAX [J].
Surveying and spatial information. 2013, 36(8):166–168.

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