Abstract
RomeLab is a multidisciplinary working group at UCLA that uses the city of Rome as a laboratory for the exploration of research
approaches and dissemination practices centered on the intersection of space and time in antiquity. In this paper we present a multiplatform
workflow for the rapid-prototyping of historical cityscapes through the use of geographic information systems, procedural
modeling, and interactive game development. Our workflow begins by aggregating archaeological data in a GIS database. Next, 3D
building models are generated from the ArcMap shapefiles in Esri CityEngine using procedural modeling techniques. A GIS-based
terrain model is also adjusted in CityEngine to fit the building elevations. Finally, the terrain and city models are combined in Unity,
a game engine which we used to produce web-based interactive environments which are linked to the GIS data using keyhole
markup language (KML). The goal of our workflow is to demonstrate that knowledge generated within a first-person virtual world
experience can inform the evaluation of data derived from textual and archaeological sources, and vice versa.
Citation
ID:
36932
Ref Key:
saldana2013proceduralthe