A 3D multiresolution lunar surface model using bicubic subdivision-surface wavelets, with interactive visualization tools

The laser altimetry (LAM) dataset obtained by Chang'E-1 (CE-1) contains about 8.6 million points, and how to use it to model and visualize the lunar surface is a problem. This paper presents a 3D, multiresolution, approximate lunar surface model based on a subdivision-surface wavelet, as well as efficient tools for rendering the three-dimensional surface at speeds approaching real-time interaction in a general Personal Computer (PC) environment. The surface model is C2-continuous at nearly all points. The modeling and visualization method could be applied to most other global data sets.