A METHOD OF ROAD REPRESENTATION IN 3D MAPPING TECHNOLOGY 
Tsukasa Hosomura 
Kanazawa Institute of Technology 
7-1 Ohgigaoka, Nonoichi-machi, Ishikawa-gun, Ishikawa 921-8501 
Japan 
E-mail: hosomura@neptune.kanazawa-it.ac.jp 
KEY WORDS : Map, 3D-CG, Road 
ABSTRACT 
We are trying to make the map that everyone can understand easy, and we use approximate shape 
of objects. There appeared some problems in previous study. One of the problems is a representation 
method of road on map. We suppose the road is an important object to represent the map. But it is 
difficult to represent all these objects correctly by using 3DCG. We describe the efficient 
representation method of real road for 3D model. We used the data of road as raster for making the 
map. It took a lot of time to do the work. So, we managed a road as a vector data in this study. This 
realized the reduction of data and made the work efficient. 
1. INTRODUCTION 
Recently, various maps are made by digital 
techniques. Digital map is generally used in 
some systems such as car navigation system, as 
multimedia spreads out many fields. So, we are 
studying about the digital mapping that is 
useful and can represent real view to the next 
future. Trough the study of last year, we 
recognized that we could make the map 
beautiful and easy to understand for urban area 
by using a representation method of 3DCG. But 
some problems are coming up. 
1.1 Requirement and Counter Plan 
One of the proposals is how to represent the 
road. In making a road by 3DCG, we take at 
least four points of coordinates in previous 
study. As the advantage of this method, 
representing the outline of road correctly is 
raised. But in case of representing the elements 
of the road as centerline, sidewalk and so on, 
this method is not efficient because it requires a 
lot of coordinates data. We try to represent 
centerline and sidewalk by managing the road 
as a vector data to improve this. And we 
consider the road through the mountain for 
adding the elevation value to coordinates 
consists of road from numerical map of 
elevation published by 
Geographical Survey Institute. 
Representation of mountain, river and other 
object will be needed when the scale of map 
expands and we approach the real 
representation. This time, we try to represent 
only mountain from numerical map of elevation. 
Scale of map for road is about 1.5km east to 
west, 3km south to north area around the