Hexagonal Grid Shadow Generation using Bézier Curves

Abstract

The hexagonal grid structure has been studied for processing and representing spatial information data in Geographic Information Systems. Visualization using a hexagonal grid has high visibility compared to other grid representation methods. However, it is difficult to effectively convey quantitative data and differences between grids depending on the geospatial data represented. In this paper, we propose a method to visually emphasize the hexagonal grid by generating shadow on the outside of the hexagonal grid. To do so, we offset the outer line segments of the hexagonal grid to be emphasized and generate a Bézier curve based on that information to determine the final shadow shape. We also apply variable transparency toward the edges of the shadow because the shadow gradually fades away from the hexagonal grid. We have shown that the proposed method can effectively generate shadow areas given not only a single hexagonal grid but also multiple hexagonal grids and can generate various shadow shapes based on user interface inputs. We apply the proposed method to Yongsan-gu, one of the districts of Seoul, and show the results of visually emphasizing it after generating shadow using the proposed method.