Triangulated terrain near Horseshoe Bend, Arizona.

rqtreemesh is a basic implementation of restricted quadtree triangulation (RQT), for converting raster heightmaps to 3D meshes. For an overview of RQT-based mesh generation, see

Pajarola, Renato. "Overview of Quadtree-based Terrain Triangulation and Visualization." (2002).

Implemented in C++ with a pybind11 wrapper for Python.

git clone --recursive this repo and run pip install . on it.

Alternatively:

pip install rqtreemesh.

This package requires Numpy and Pillow.

Functionality is provided by the Heightmap class.

from rqtreemesh import Heightmap

Two constructors are available:

heightmap = Heightmap(array: np.ndarray, pixel_dim: float, top_left_x: float, top_left_y: float)

Parameters

array: np.ndarray

Input raster heightmap as a 2-dimensional numpy array where each dimension is a power of two. E.g. 1024 x 2048. Maximum size is 32768 x 32768.

 pixel_dim: float

The spatial dimension of one pixel in the input heightmap.

top_left_x:  float, top_left_y:  float

The x and y locations of the top left corner of the input heightmap. Note that this location is not the center of the top left pixel, but rather its top left corner.

Alternatively:

heightmap = Heightmap.from_geotiff(path: str)

Parameters

path: str

Path to input raster heightmap in geoTIFF format with dimesnsions a power of two. E.g. 1024 x 2048. Maximum size is 32768 x 32768. The geolocation and spatial resolution of the heightmap will be obtained from the appropriate tags in the geoTIFF.

Note that rqtreemesh was developed for converting Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) . For other heightmaps, such as where all values are between $0$ and $1$, scaling the Heightmap.array or Heightmap.pixel_dim may be necessary to obtain the desired result. Also take care when converting a DEM with planar units not equal to its elevation units (e.g. Geographic/WGS84 projection).

To generate a mesh, use the generate_mesh method.

heightmap = Heightmap...
(vertices, triangles) = heightmap.generate_mesh(max_error: float, show_progress: bool = False) -> Tuple[np.ndarray, np.ndarray]

Parameters

max_error: float

The maximum absolute vertical distance between the input heightmap and the resulting mesh.

show_progress: bool = False

Show a progress bar while generating the mesh. Default value: False.

Returns

(vertices, triangles): Tuple[np.ndarray, np.ndarray]

A tuple containing the output mesh. vertices is an array where each row contains the x, y and z coordinates of a vertex. triangles is a connectivity matrix, i.e. an array where each row contains a triangle as three (zero-indexed) indices into the first element.

To provide easy compatibility with most 3D software, basic exporters to the Wavefront Object (.obj) and Stereolithography (.stl) formats are provided:

from rqtreemesh import write_obj, write_stl
write_obj(path: str, verts: np.ndarray, triangles: np.ndarray, flip_zy: bool = False)
write_stl(path: str, verts: np.ndarray, triangles: np.ndarray)

Parameters

path: str

The output file path.

verts: np.ndarray, triangles: np.ndarray

A coordinate array and connectivity matrix, such as the output of generate_mesh.

flip_zy: bool = True

Interchange the z and y axes of the exported mesh (only for .obj export). Default value: False.