International Archives of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing. Vol. XXXII, Part 5. Hakodate 1998 
PARAMETRIC ANIMATION OF DIGITAL TERRAIN MODEL 
USING MT.VIEWER 
Shunji MURAI* (Japan), Kunihiko ONO** (Japan), 
Hideharu YANAGI** (Japan) and Shigetaka YASUE** (Japan) 
* STAR Program, Asian Institute of Technology 
P.O. Box 4, Klong Luang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand 
E-mail : murai@ait.ac.th 
** Geo-Info Creative Co., Ltd. 
2-4 Kanda Jimbo-cho, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan 
Commission V, Working Group SIG 
KEYWORDS : Parametric Animation, DTM 
ABSTRACT 
Most of animation for mountain landscape used to be a flight simulation with the movement of eye positions or viewing angles. 
However, the authors try to animate a different way from the conventional animation. By changing parameter of terrain features, 
more scientific information about topography, geomorphology, hydrology, land cover etc. can be visualized in a form of 
animation. 
The followings are the results of the proposed parametric animation. 
- terraced level slicing 
- sea level rise 
- contour generation 
- color composites of topographic information 
- drainage flow 
- bird’s eye view in parallel projection 
- panoramic bird’s eye view 
The results of parametric animation show that the natures of topographic features as well as the algorithm of DTM named 
Mt. Viewer by the authors are better understood than the static visualization. 
1. INTRODUCTION The parametric animation would be more easier to generate 
a tremendous scenes for animation than the conventional 
The authors have proposed a concept of virtual reality map flight simulation. 
in consideration of human sensitivity (Tanaka, N., Ono, K., 
and Murai, S. 1997), in which additional conditions in virtual 
reality will create a new type of map visualization in multi- 2. CONCEPT OF PARAMETRIC ANIMATION 
dimensional space. Psychology, physiology and physics 
should be taken into account in creating the visual effect. Let a terrain feature be T with the function of the terrain 
However, static visualization has a limitation to demonstrate points (X, Y, Z) and a parameter t. 
such effect. Animation with the continuous change of a 
parameter, that is called parametric animation in this paper T &F (X, Y.2...0) 
will produce more sensitive visualization of digital terrain 
model (DTM) both in art and science. Parametric animation is to change the parameter f or any 
variable of X, Y, Z continuously to demonstrate how the 
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