METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR FORMING THREE-DIMENSIONAL MODEL

PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To expedite work of grouping a large number of data as three- dimensional information by grouping distance data for each structure, on the basis of color data and the distance data. SOLUTION: An apparatus 1 which forms a three-dimensional model from distance data obtained by measuring a plant structure, etc., is provided with a matching processing part 4, a color data discriminating part 5, etc. A distance data obtained by measurement by a laser scanning range finder, and a color picture image by a digital camera, for example, are sent to the processing part 4, and stored in a data memory 7 as distance data which correspond to the addresses of the pixels of the picture image. While, color picture images of a frame memory 3 are grouped by color differences and brightnesses by the discriminating part 5. Pixel addresses and distance data are arranged in order in each group by collating this data with the distance data being stored in the data memory 7, and modeling into three-dimensional solids is performed on the basis of the arranged distance data.