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

Ah Nice! Or maybe even a whole toolset devoted to this. (2 surfaces that dont join because of slight imperfection) and whatever else. I could be thinking to arbitrarily, but I may find out that "build it and they will come!"

Just been reading this thread as i was trying without much success to create a terrain model last night. It's a shame there isn't a tool on the horizon which might help us out here. You would think that loft would work but as has already been discussed it breaks down especially when combining curved and straight curves.

@Pilou, Your sandbox solution seems the best and I have given it a go but my problem is that even with weld veticies along edges selected my moi lines are split up into unconected segments when opened in sketchup. How do you create your contours?

@Michael - still no plans for some sort of magic tool which would be good at this type of work? On the outside, to me anyway, it looks like NURBS should be ideal for creating smooth landscaping with roads, pavements and curbs easily added, certainly when compared to making a poly mesh which can be faceted and fidly to adjust with its many points... Strange!

Cheers

Hi Rob, I do have some plans for this, but it is a pretty large area of work so I don't think it is going to be possible to squeeze it into the v2 timeframe. Hopefully for v3 though.

- Michael

Great news, im sure your solution will be worth the wait. V2 sounds great but already can't wait for v3!!

Hi rhodesy,

I made this with 10 Curves then Loft
and history enabled:

A couple of issues with that - first as you can see your node point that you have pulled up is above the surface and hence can not be relied upon for an accurate height. Second contours and spot heights arent always as even as that and usually curve about on plan which causes problems with moi. It is possible to create some sort of network grid but it is a bit of a pain and not very user friendly. Another problem is when you need to add in straight lined contours which don't play nice with curved ones as the loft can distort the surface.

Thanks for trying though.

Hi rhodesy,

I don't know i you have Rhino but
i found this for you:

http://www.rhinoterrain.com/

http://www.novedge.com/products/3237 $635

Rhino Terrain is awesome and Easy Site ... www.cadeasy.com/content/easy_site/esr.htm ... does a pretty good job, too ... but the catch is, you have to run these inside Rhino

cheers,
eric

Hi Rhodesy,

How are you inputing your contours?