Export your 3dm in skp format from Moi
and free Google Sketchup gives you this with the Sand Box "from contours"
Is this like your original ?

Where are the releif lines coming from? The last time they were smooth curves. This time all "Corner Points".

Harder to get smooth surface from corner points.

Looks like it made the lines the "Peaks" with "Valleys" between them.

I just taken the original 3dm ! Nothing was made inside Moi except the export format SKP!

Hi Pilou, I don't believe that your method generated proper results...

For example this curve is the highest one, and I think the way these topo lines work, that is supposed to be a plateau there:



However, your version appears to have made it a ridge that drops off quickly to the bottom level, rather than a plateau.

I don't know if you need to adjust the curves by closing each of them, or if the tool you are using is not the right tool for this kind of situation... Or maybe I don't understand what the proper result is supposed to be..

- Michael

I made nothing! Moi was just used as "go between" with the 3Dm file given at the first post!
it's only automatic process by Google Sketchup!
Is for that I write :)
< Is this like your original ?

Hi Pilou - yes I understand it was an automatic process, I'm just talking about the result - that does not seem to be the proper result as far as I can tell anyway!

Maybe closing the lines would help the automatic process that you are using to do a better job (and then probably do not give it the full bottom rectangle), or possibly the automatic tool that you are using is meant for some other task than this kind of a job, I'm not really sure.

- Michael

Maybe the original must be hown because some variations can be existe !
Here I close some lines by hand inside Moi but without original some confusion exist :)
There is a point on the middle rectangle so...
The right corner can be like this or other...
etc

Thanks for the input everyone. It's a challenging problem.

Pilou, I like your solution! Actually I had forgtotten the sandbox tools. The reason why it produced strange results the first time (as Michael said) was because of the boundary rectangle at "z=0". Remove the rectangle and SU produces a pretty good result.

The idea of producing a DEM is also a good way to go. There's a neat app called Blackart which does this quite well. Grendel, thanks, I'll check out Zsurf. A 3d surface can also be made by applying the heightmap as a displacement map (blender, etc)

Generally the contours come from pixel images. Can be cleaned up a little (Gimp, etc), vectorised (Blackart or wintopo, etc) and saved as pdf, which MoI imports sweetly. Then join all contours, fix holes, get the scale right, elevate contours to correct heights.

Michael, the extrusion method is quick and could be useful sometimes. I wouldn't be surprised if the resulting mesh could be smoothed in some other app (Blender, maybe)

Anyhoo, it looks like whichever way it's done, it's gonna take time!

Steve

A DEM Satelite Radar file brought into Carrara (.obj file)and detailed as an Vertex obj.

Brian

ps AND think of what can be done to it with the Carrara Displacement Painting, OR even more so, with the combined 3Dpaint/3D Displacement paint of 3D Coat!

Looks very good Brian. Are these satellite radar images generally available?

One of the problems would be with resolution. Generally I need to model a very small patch of earth's surface (50m x 50m max), with contours at 1/2m or 1m intervals...it's unlikely that such data will be easily available to ordinary folks any time soon!

What we really need is a hand-held combined GPS/altimeter. Wallk (or drive) over the land pushing a button every now and then. Come home, plug the data-logger into the computer and there is the terrain map!

http://edc2.usgs.gov/geodata/index.php

No secrets in the world--these sources also allow you to place the water level for seas and rivers (For the imaging texture files) appropriatly.

And, to a limted extent in Carrara at least, you can approximate the "real" heigh of various levels.

Quite staggering to an old bloke like me!

I think you CAN do your last paragraph stuff--NOW!
Todays farmers use it regularly!

Brian

Carrara handles SDTS files perfectly. Only not all area has coverage for free.

I think it does dems still also. Definatly Bryce still does dems. You have to get good at searching though as the usgs makes it next to impossible to find the free ones so you buy their pro sets. The EDU site all have links but finding them are hard. What you need is to find a student that already knows what the link is and PRESTO. Free Dems.

I think all this is true for the US...for remote countries the data may not be so easily available.

I'm thinking that for a small piece of land without too many contours, a more "low-tech" approach may also work: trace the contours in MoI from a background image and use loft or network. It should be possible to get a decent result like that.

Michael, is there any possibility to convert a polyline to a nurbs curve?

Hi Steve,

> Michael, is there any possibility to convert a polyline to a nurbs curve?

There isn't currently anything for fitting a smooth curve through an existing polyline, but it is certainly something that I can add in the future.

- Michael

Thanks, Michael,

I don't know if it would be a generally useful function.

Steve

Hi Steve, it will come in handy in various situations, but yeah I'd consider it a kind of "advanced" type tool.

At the moment I don't have a good spot to put something like that, but hopefully in not too long I'm going to have a kind of "advanced tools menu" that may pop down from somewhere like the object properties panel. I'm not totally sure about that yet though.

We'll have to see what happens after the next stage of the properties stuff is finished.

- Michael

I've been dreaming of this tool also. Seems like part of a "Healing tools" section. Not being totally familiar with rhino, is there such a toolset?

Sounds great, Michael, I look forward to seeing what else is in that toolset!

BurrMan wrote : "Seems like part of a "Healing tools" section. Not being totally familiar with rhino, is there such a toolset?"

Yes, called "CurveThroughPolyline"

jonah