Three-Dimensional TIN Algorithm for Digital Terrain Modeling

The problem of taking an unorganized point cloud in 3D space and fitting a polyhedral surface to those points is both important and difficult. Aiming at increasing applications of full three dimensional digital terrain surface modeling, a new algorithm for the automatic generation of three dimensional triangulated irregular network from a point cloud is proposed. Based on the local topological consistency test, a combined algorithm of constrained 3D Delaunay triangulation and region-growing is extended to ensure topologically correct reconstruction. This paper also introduced an efficient neighboring triangle location method by making full use of the surface normal information. Experimental results prove that this algorithm can efficiently obtain the most reasonable reconstructed mesh surface with arbitrary topology, wherein the automatically reconstructed surface has only small topological difference from the true surface. This algorithm has potential applications to virtual environments, computer vision, and so on.