3D Modeling and Visualization of River Systems

With the development of 3D modeling technology, hydrology of rivers can be simulated and visualized in computer. This paper focuses on visualization and 3D modeling for river systems. Data set of physical properties such as longitude, latitude and depth are used to create a 3D model for a river. We use grid interpolation to generate missing data, curvature comparison and bounding box to extract feature points to create 3D models. The similarity of models is compared by converting 3D models to 2D views. The experimental result shows that an appropriate bounding box can extract feature points from the raw data and obtain accurate 3D models. Finally, we import the 3D model into Blender to further visualize the river system with bank, plants and water waves.