The way of representing Earth has changed; two dimensional (2D) maps have turned into three Dimensional (3D) representations. There are many studies in order to create 3D city maps as well as areas where these are applied such as 3D cadastral, 3D visualization and flood simulation, etc. These can be created with the aid of different data sources using photogrammetric Digital Surface Model (DSM) derived from image matching and from Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) point clouds or both of them combining orthophotos and building footprints. Several software has been developed to ease and speed up this process.

In this study, a current state-of-the art in the 3D city modeling with particular interest to commercial software was analyzed. DSMs from image matching (Satellite and Airborne) were used in order to create a 3D city model of Trento, Italy. The objectivewas to examine the degree of automation and the computation time of two available software: Feature Manipulation Engine (FME) and Building Reconstruction (BREC). Other problem such as the quality of the DSM needed would be discussed for each software and the results would be compared to those achieved using LiDAR data. Recommendations and possible problems would also be addressed.

In order to create a 3D city model, the ALDPAT software (Airborne LiDAR Data Processing and Analysis Tool) has been used to separate the ground regions (Digital Terrain Model, DTM) from the man-made objects and trees (Normal Digital Surface Model, nDSM). FME and BREC software have been used to reconstruct the 3D city model.

The output results from FME and BREC have been analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The comparison between the models generated from photogrammetric and LiDAR DSMs have been performed. The results show that buildings generated by satellite images have poorest quality compared with buildings from LiDAR and airborne data.

In particular, the performed tests will be shown that among the Level of Details (LoD), a LoD1 and LoD2 3D city models can be generated using a DSM by image matching. A deeper study should be done in order to analyze the level of detail qualitatively.