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Organic landscape modeling ideas

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ktulu:
Hey guys,

I'd like to ask you for a hint how to approach modeling of big-scale organic landscapes. Working for a landscape architecture practice I quite often get 2D CAD files that need to be recreated in 3D. More often than not, they don't contain any contour lines, just a general layout of how the design could look like.

Working in Max, my current approach is to create a coarsely subdivided plane and project imported CAD lines onto it via ShapeMerge. This way I get a 1-to-1 reflection of the CAD file, but a fairly messy mesh. In order to tessellate it locally to increase resolution (i.e. for push-pull operations) quite a lot of manual stitching is required, though.

Do you know of a better way of tackling this problem?
Thanks,

PROH:
Hi. I think this could help you: http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

CiroC:
Populate Terrain can help you a lot, but it doesn't like complex geometry. For example, if two vertices aren't merged you may have some issues.

My workflow so far is using the Section tool found under the Splines tab to create as many contour lines as needed. Select them all and create a terrain using the Terrain tool (Compound Objects) and finally use the Populate Terrain. It sounds a lot of work, but the result is by far better.

Paul Jones:
Also have a look at mcg conform mesh

ktulu:
Thanks a lot for your suggestions.

Populate terrain seems to indeed do a good job with simple geometry but struggles with messy CAD lines I am dealing with here. (see attachments)

CiroC, I'm not sure I got your workflow right, but I guess I'd need to have a 3D surface in the first place in order to slice it and create contour lines from it. Unfortunately I only have some 2D lines without elevation information.

Paul Jones: conform mesh for Max Creation Graph? Where do I find it? A quick google search didn't help much...

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