Quick tutorial for road design on a terrain

charly2008 · 3 Jun 2009, 12:06

Hello to All,

First I would like to thank everyone who gave me help to finalize these Steps. May be somebody is able to improve this concept or is able to develop a different method or creates ruby scripts for simplifying the steps for this special application.

Particularly the first step may be could be done with the "Tools on surface" to draw the road line directly on the terrain.

Interesting would be also to create more winding roads also on high triangulated terrains. But there is the problem that high detailed terrains slows down the speed of my PC. I will further work on it.

May be somebody will optimize the views of this tutorial.

Constructive comments are welcome

Karlheinz

Road tutorial.zip

harnstein · 3 Jun 2009, 13:47

karlheinz,

ich bin begeistert.

kommt die tage dran.

means: totally hooked, gonna have a look soon

charly2008 · 3 Jun 2009, 15:51

Hi to All,

After I had made my first tests with a simple terrain i took now a more complex Vue-terrain and a winding road. but Now I have a new problem with the unfold tool. I made the selection face by face holding down the shift tab. The result is terrible.

Does anybody have a solution?

Karlheinz

Chris Fullmer · 4 Jun 2009, 02:41

Could you upload the file so we can play with it too?

Chris

majid · 4 Jun 2009, 16:38

thanx Chris

charly2008 · 4 Jun 2009, 18:20

Hi Chris,

the second unfolding was done by holding down the Alt-Tab and clicking on one plane after the other. Then each plane is mmmediately unfolded. But It is not a comfortable process but the result was OK.

I took out also the terrain because it slows down the speed very much. May be PC has not enough power (Intel Celeron 2,8 GHz, 2 Gb memory, Grafic card NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GS 512MB).

Uploading is not possible because the sizes (24 MB / 42 MB) compressed 6,6 MB and 13,5 MB.

May be you have a preferred File Hoster.

Karlheinz

charly2008 · 5 Jun 2009, 12:02

Hi to All,

i have a problem with this high triangulated terrain above. I tried to explode the terrain, it is a component. When i started the process the titel bar shows no re-registration. It seems that Sketchup has crashed down. The same happens if i use the stamp tool. What could be the reason?

Karlheinz

Gaieus · 5 Jun 2009, 13:16

Hi Karlheinz,

SU often "seems" to be hanging with any plugins (the sandbox tools are actually ruby scripts) as well as exploding large entities. Mostly however it's working in the background just looks unresponsive.

Start the process and go make a coffee, have a look outside if it's still raining and get back later to see if something happened.

charly2008 · 5 Jun 2009, 15:33

Hi Csaba,

thanks for your advise. That means I should let it run and then hope it will be finished somtime! More greatly shits. Sorry.

At present i'm trying to stamp a more curved road into this high triangulated Terrain to see how it looks like. It makes a little desire if this lasts so eternally.

Karlheinz

Gaieus · 5 Jun 2009, 15:38

Don't try to be very accurate with the stamp tool (vertically). It will have fancy results anyway. After it has done its job, you can always select the road surface and with the Move tool, adjust its height properly.

charly2008 · 5 Jun 2009, 16:45

Csaba i will follow your advices. Sketchup has now finished the explode process, it took one hour for this 42MB file.

Karlheinz

Gaieus · 5 Jun 2009, 19:15

That's indeed a very high poly model. In fact,you generally don't need such a detailed model in SU if you take it seriously that SU is a presentational and conceptual design tool rather than a detailed mapping or engineering one as in this case.

If you simplify that mesh (even to a fraction of it), you can still demonstrate almost everything in the same way on it (and maybe only keep smaller parts that you really need detailed). No one would look at the other side of a mountain to see how accurate the terrain is if you have your model on this side.

charly2008 · 5 Jun 2009, 19:17

Hi,

after waiting another hour the stamp process has finished. But i think if there are so many polygons it makes no sense to work with in Sketchup because Sketchup needs to much time for the calculation. May be the better way is to design a road in a CAD System. At present i can't see any other solution.

Karlheinz

charly2008 · 5 Jun 2009, 19:43

Csaba,

i'm not shure about how to simplify the mesh. Is the simplify or simplify contour tool used for?

Karlheinz

Chris Fullmer · 5 Jun 2009, 23:28

SU does not really have a simplify mesh feature built in, unfortunately. Simplify contours will only simplify contour lines before they are made into a terrain mesh. It won't help on a mesh like this.

Didier did make a plugin though that will help with this. It is called terrain re-shaper. It has many uses, one of which is to downsample a terrain. But it will also be a time costly process.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=11320&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Check it out, and see if it helps. The simpler the mesh, the faster it runs. I think you could measure the width of your terrain you have there, and then use that to help determine how to use his plugin. Anyhow, check it out. It will probably help,

Chris

solo · 6 Jun 2009, 00:55

That's the thing, like I mentioned in another thread relating to this, you need to divide the terrain to a point where it's smooth before even attempting anything road-wise.
For anything really accurate and useable for construction or even client visualisation I would seriously urge you to look beyond SU, SU just does not have the 'balls' for this kind of work. I would recommend Geocontrol 2 and Vue for this. Here is a link to how it can be achieved with Geocontrol 2 (it's a road tutorial), after which you can either continue working with the terrain in Geo or move it into Vue for finishing.

(www.cajomi.de)

charly2008 · 6 Jun 2009, 10:57

Hi Chris, hi Pete,

thanks for your detailed advices. I will try it with the terrain reshaper and consuming some cups of
coffee.

Another question is how to get a less triangulated mesh out from Vue. Maybe that would be the way for future to start with less triangulated Terrains. I have spent some time for work with VUE. Geocontrol seems to be a nice tool.

Karlheinz

solo · 6 Jun 2009, 11:33

Karl

Select the terrain in Vue then go to your file drop down menu and select 'export object', a new dialogue will appear which will give you a mesh quality slider, the lower the slider the less detailed/triangulation, the highest will probably kill SU.

charly2008 · 7 Jun 2009, 13:56

Hi Pete,

i had a look at the Geocontrol tutorial and it seems not bad and relativly simple to use. I have downloaded the trial version to carry out some tests according to that video. From Geocontrol i exported a wave object file with a project size of 128, then imported the file into Vue and exported a 3ds file. The file size in Sketchup is now reasonable. It seems to be a promising solution. To have a similar tool inside Sketchup would be very nice. It should be possible somehow to develop something like that also for Sketchup in anyway.

Karlheinz

Test Road.zip

charly2008 · 7 Jun 2009, 21:22

Hi to All,

in the second test, the road looks fine in Geocontrol. But the exported road doesn't look exactly the same in Sketchup. May be anyone has an Idea how to improve the road in Sketchup.

Karlheinz

Test Road.zip