Procedural Modeling Based Shape Grammar as a Key to Generating Digital Architectural Heritage

Abstract

Digital architectural heritage content creation for virtual worlds nowadays is one of the most important challenges with the ever-increasing expenses of manual content development. Procedural modeling approaches have become a key tool for automating the design and reconstruction of structures and urban environments to disseminate them through appropriate multimedia approaches. This study presents a general architectural modeling system that combines the full generative power of shape grammars with the ease of use and flexibility of procedural modeling parameters which allows for the creation of heritage buildings that adhere to shape grammars. To evaluate the system, we conducted an initial user study with 20 participants from the Al-Zaytoonah University of Jordan to assess the user experience, user impression, and effectiveness of the system. Participants’ feedbacks were encouraging, indicating that the proposed approach could be effective and beneficial in assisting the creation of digital architectural heritage urban virtual content.