A mixed-method approach for rapid modeling of the virtual scene building

Virtual scene building is regarded as a significant part in cultural heritage digital presentation processes. Geometric modeling method, which has been widely used in virtual scene reconstructing, requires lots of manual operations and a long modeling period. This article proposed an approach combining three modeling methods to reconstruct 3D models. Various methods should be adopted regarding to different complexity levels of objects to make the design process more efficient and realistic. In this article, the proposed strategy will be illustrated by presenting a virtual scene of Qiao's Grand Courtyard, one of the most famous ancient residential building groups in Shanxi province. As a result, a simple, efficient, cost-effective and high standard modeling approach has been obtained for the historic heritage digital presentation. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2014.