[S3DB-dev] roof lines by skeleton for non-rectangle buildings

As some of us experimented with a straight-skeleton approach to create complex roof lines I think we need a common way to decide when it should be used. Currently what I do is compare the area of the outline with the oriented bounding box: Skeleton is used when ‘area of obb > area of outline * 1.2’ or when the outline contains holes - so this is pretty arbitrary :slight_smile:

I think it would be good to have a tag like roof:orientation:multi=yes when a skeleton interpretation for the roof is applicable.

I’m using straight_skeleton when polygon is not flag with “roof:orientation=across” as i didn’t find any smart solution for that.

This is still a work in progress so it can’t be seen in F4-map for now but i’m quite happy with the results and hope to release it soon.

Edit: I removed the test for polygon with more than 5 points and polygon with at least 1 hole as it often leads to strange result

We released the straight skeleton code this morning (it is not fully stable but we need feedback)

Paris les Invalides:
http://map.f4-group.com/#lat=48.8562788&lon=2.3129103&zoom=19&camera.theta=40.416&camera.phi=-47.842

Berlin (some spot with many gambrel roofs):
http://map.f4-group.com/#lat=52.5295876&lon=13.4283313&zoom=18&camera.theta=45.859&camera.phi=5.443

Good job guys!

I’m still working on straight skeletons and i ended up with roof:orientation as the best candidate to decide to use skeleton or not:

tag orientation is not present → compute and use the straight skeleton algorithm.

roof:orientation=across → straight skeleton can’t be computed as it doesn’t make sense, compute minimal oriented OBox and use the smallest edge as ridge.

roof:orientation=along → the mapper knows that the roof has a single straight ridge along the building, compute minimal oriented OBox and use the longest edge as ridge.

@j3d & @Kendzi what do you think about tweaking our engines to match this idea to get similar behavior ?

I’m using very similar algorithm. In short:

  • Is tag direction → Square like
  • Is tag orientation → Square like
  • Has holes → Skeleton like
  • Oriented bbox area greater 120% of polygon area → Skeleton like
  • Else Square like

Great, i’ll match your behavior in F4Map.

But i won’t base the detection on hole because when we remove parts from the outline it generates holes (for example when there are parts representing chimney or dormers).