Chaos Corona Forum

General Category => General CG Discussion => Topic started by: pscgi on 2022-05-07, 15:41:19

Title: How to get the most accurate topo data for 3D visualizations in Max and Corona.
Post by: pscgi on 2022-05-07, 15:41:19

Hi everyone. It's probably a little bit of an off-topic but I posted it in this section as there's nothing going on in the Off-Topic section of the forum.

So I have such a questions: does anyone know how to get such accurate topographic data like in Google Earth VR? So I'd like to create very accurate terrains for real world locations (for instance somewhere by the sea with mountains all around) but let's say I don't have an access to every location so I can't go there to eg. create many drone shots and then use eg. Reality Capture to create 3D mesh out of it (I have never done that before but from what I've seen it possible to get quite realistic terrain this way?). I have used BlenderGIS that uses 30-Meter SRTM Elevation Data and I thought it was the best that I could get but today I launched Google Earth VR on my Oculus Quest 2 and the quality and accuracy of the terrain is really mind blowing - it's like 10x more accurate than what I can get in BlenderGIS and SRTM 30. But does anyone know if it's possible to somehow transfer this data into the software that we 3D artists use? I'd be very thankful for help in this topic :)

Title: Re: How to get the most accurate topo data for 3D visualizations in Max and Corona.
Post by: DPS on 2022-05-24, 13:55:28

In Australia there is a free resource called ELVIS (spacial data) which covers most developed areas that I’ve had projects in.  Not sure if that may be another way to achieve what you’re after?

Search for 1m DEM in your region and see if you can download geotiff tiles.

Convert these from 32bit tiff (1 channel greyscale) to RGB and save it out as a 32bit exr.

Use that as a displacement map with a pixel value of 1= 1m

In Australia I’ve found the data to be very accurate. And if you find yourself using this a lot you can also use QGIS for free.  This has more GIS tools to handle merging the terrain data and saving out specific areas with corresponding satellite imagery. 

Title: Re: How to get the most accurate topo data for 3D visualizations in Max and Corona.
Post by: NazarVitkovskyi on 2022-05-24, 15:17:57

Hi there, you can try to use CAD mapper https://cadmapper.com/. It may help you to get a CAD file for any location. Up to 1sq km it is free to use. But please note the mesh is not very precise.
There is also a plugin for AutoCAD - https://plexearth.com/

Title: Re: How to get the most accurate topo data for 3D visualizations in Max and Corona.
Post by: pscgi on 2022-10-19, 17:23:24

Just saw your posts after half a year... But thank you anyway for your answers!