Automated Swiss-Style Relief Shading and Rock Hachuring

Abstract

Rock depiction in Swiss topographic maps has evolved from humble line drawings into expressive renderings indicating slope, aspect and traversability. In this paper, an automatic method to derive monochrome Swiss-style rock hachures from a raster elevation model is presented. The proper placement and light modulation of the linear strokes depend on the availability of sound foundations for both terrain generalization and relief shading, for which two novel methods are introduced. The generalization applies line integral convolution along slope lines to the elevation values. The resulting smoothed raster has the footprint of its steep faces enlarged to increase the map space available for steep faces. The shaded relief is generated with the focus on terrain edges, unlike common raster cell-based methods. The rock hachures are modulated according to the grey values of the shaded relief. Finally, we present two topographic maps that demonstrate this new method of depicting relief.