ica-template-v2
Expressive map design: OGC SLD/SE++ extension for
expressive map styles
Sidonie Christophea, Bertrand Duménieua, Antoine Massea, Charlotte Hoaraua, Jérémie Orya,
Mathieu Brédifa, François Lecordixa, Nicolas Melladob, Jérémie Turbetb, Hugo Loic, Thomas
Hurtutd, David Vanderhaegheb, Romain Vergnec and Joëlle Thollotc
a Univ. Paris-Est, LASTIG, IGN, ENSG, F-94160 Saint-Mande, France; firstname.surname@ign.fr
b IRIT, Université de Toulouse, CNRS, INPT, UPS, UT1C, UT2J, France; firstname.surname@irit.fr
c Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Inria; firstname.surname@inria.fr
d Polytechnique Montréal, Canada; thomas.hurtut@polymtl.ca
Abstract: In the context of custom map design, handling more artistic and expressive tools has been identified as a
carto-graphic need, in order to design stylized and expressive maps. Based on previous works on style formalization, an
approach for specifying the map style has been proposed and experimented for particular use cases. A first step deals
with the analysis of inspiration sources, in order to extract ‘what does make the style of the source’, i.e. the salient
visual characteristics to be automatically reproduced (textures, spatial arrangements, linear stylization, etc.). In a second
step, in order to mimic and generate those visual characteristics, existing and innovative rendering techniques have been
implemented in our GIS engine, thus extending the capabilities to generate expressive renderings. Therefore, an
extension of the existing cartographic pipeline has been proposed based on the following aspects: 1- extension of the
symbolization specifications OGC SLD/SE in order to provide a formalism to specify and reference expressive
rendering methods; 2- separate the specification of each rendering method and its parameterization, as metadata. The
main contribution has been described in (Christophe et al. 2016). In this paper, we focus firstly on the extension of the
cartographic pipeline (SLD++ and metadata) and secondly on map design capabilities which have been experimented
on various topographic styles: old cartographic styles (Cassini), artistic styles (watercolor, impressionism, Japanese
print), hybrid topographic styles (ortho-imagery & vector data) and finally abstract and photo-realist styles for the
geovisualization of costal area. The genericity and interoperability of our approach are promising and have already been
tested for 3D visualization.
Keywords: map design, geovisualization, map style, expressive rendering, SLD
1. Introduction
In the context of custom cartographic representation with
geovisualization tools, some issues are still at stake, as
abstraction levels and visual variables are still difficult to
select to fit users’ needs and preferences. Furthermore,
some geographic spatio-temporal phenomena are still
hard to represent in an understandable way.
A way of personalizing a map is to draw inspiration from
existing artistic styles. In practice, this is complex to
achieve in a GIS because there is currently no formal way
to describe an artistic (complex) style. Rendering
techniques are more and more used in map design, to
manage photo- or non-photo-realistic rendering and
pseudo-natural effects or to mimic artistic and old
practices in cartography (Patterson et al. 2004; Trapp et
al. 2011; Jenny & Jenny 2012; Semmo et al. 2013;
amongst others). However, there techniques cannot be
easily used and con-trolled within a GIS to reproduce a
given style.
We address the issue of the specification of ‘what the
style of a map is’, based on previous works on style
formalization, both in expressive rendering (Grabli et al.
2004, Willats & Durand 2005, amongst others) and in
map design (Kent & Vujakovic 2009, Beconyte 2011,
Christophe 2012, amongst others). Our main contribution
has been published in (Christophe et al. 2016), we focus
here on how the extending style formalization in map
design allows, in a generic and interoperable way, to
design various topographic styles.
In a first step, cartographic needs and design rules have
been explored, based on both interviews with
cartographers (mainly producers for current map design,
and “artist-cartographers” for hand-drawing map design
at the time), and the analysis of map design specifications
(generalization and legend specification), in order to
extract expected salient visual characteristics of ‘what the
style of a map’ could be. These requirements are
described in the context of several expected styles:
current topographic French and Swiss maps (Ory et al.
2015), mountain (by hand) maps, Cassini maps,
impressionism and watercolor styles (Christophe et al.
2016). Then, expressive rendering techniques are picked-
up from expressive rendering area, and implemented in
GIS tools, in order to be able to re-produce or mimic
these visual characteristics of map styles. Among these
techniques, existing methods for surface filling and line
stylization using raster textures have been investigated
(Christophe et al. 2016) and an innovative method for
Proceedings of the International Cartographic Association, 1, 2017. This contribution underwent single-blind peer review based on
submitted abstracts | https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-proc-1-21-2017 | © Authors 2017. CC BY 4.0 License.
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vectorial texture generation has been proposed (Loi et al.
2013, Loi 2015).
Another important issue is the existing standard
formalisms available to manage the map style: in GIS, we
mainly rely on the OGC Symbology Encoding (SE)
which provides stylization blocks, related to each type of
geometry (Müller 2006). And cartographic data are
structured accordingly to the OGC Styled Layer
Descriptor specification (SLD) (Lupp 2007). These
specifications are efficient to specify a typical GIS
rendering but not sufficient to man-age expressive
rendering techniques and related style specifications with
a GIS engine. In order to split the style specification, the
rendering techniques specification and implementation
levels, we thus propose:
− to add metadata composed of expressive method
descriptors that can be called through the
extended SE specifications;
− to extend the SE specifications by adding new
controllable expressive elements
(ExpressiveStroke and Expressive Fill) which
can refer to the name of an expressive method
descriptor and describe its set of parameters,
defined in the previous metadata.
The GIS engine capabilities have been extended based on
the use of OpenGL as a rendering engine. The rendering
methods have been implemented using GLSL shaders
programs as text parameters and GLSL uniforms for
parameter values.
Fig. 1. Various map styles: watercolor, Cassini (Christophe et
al. 2016), and ortho-imagery/vector hybrid (Hoarau &
Christophe 2016).
This extension and adaptation of the traditional
cartographic pipeline, based on the split of the style
specification, the rendering techniques specification and
their implementation, has been experimented to generate
various map styles such as: old cartographic styles
(Cassini), artistic styles, i.e. watercolor, impressionism,
or Japanese print in Figure 1 (Christophe et al. 2016),
hybrid topographic styles (ortho-imagery & vector data)
(Hoarau & Christophe 2016) and finally abstract and
photo-realist styles for the geovisualization of costal area
(Masse & Christophe 2016). The system flexibility is
ensured by the access to the parametrization of styles and
rendering techniques, at different levels of difficulty and
thus expertise. Style specification and stylization
techniques have then been experimented for 3D
Visualization, validating our proposition (Brasebin et al.
2016). Further works will provide users interfaces in
order to facilitate the map style control by various users
with various potential uses.
2. Acknowledgements
This work was supported by a grant overseen by the
French National Research Agency (ANR) as part of the
MapStyle project [ANR-12-CORD-0025].
3. References
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Proceedings of the International Cartographic Association, 1, 2017. This contribution underwent single-blind peer review based on
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Proceedings of the International Cartographic Association, 1, 2017. This contribution underwent single-blind peer review based on
submitted abstracts | https://doi.org/10.5194/ica-proc-1-21-2017 | © Authors 2017. CC BY 4.0 License.
Expressive map design: OGC SLD/SE++ extension for expressive map styles
1. Introduction
2. Acknowledgements
3. References