[REQ] clean up multiple topos from earth

psychomuffin · 5 Jun 2009, 17:49

I've been struggling with this for a while. Sometimes I want to model all the landform in the distance for view and view planes investigations and etc.

However, since some of these landmarks are so far away, it takes multiple captures from earth to cover the entire area (I wish I could simple zoom out more in Earth, but no). When I do that the overlapping meshes don't line up at all, smoetimes with huge gaps.

Is there anyway to break up and stitch these meshes into one clean mesh? I don't care too terrible about the geometry of the image, but if that can be retained, all the better. Is there perhaps a script for this? Is there anyway I can modify the resolution of the mesh?

p.s. anyone find a workaround for the color vs B&W topos? Sometimes I've even thought of taking screen shots or earth and replacing the B&W with that. Anyway, not as important as this geometry.

Thanks guys,

Scott

Chris Fullmer · 5 Jun 2009, 18:20

Didier made a script that is useful for cleaning up terraints from Google Earth and for any other terrain. It re-triangulates all the faces of the terrain into a much smoother, more evenly spaced terrain. Check it out here:

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

Chris

Gaieus · 6 Jun 2009, 03:32

Why can't you import a fairly large chunk of the terrain? (I can imagine reasons but not sure about your purposes).

@psychomuffin said:

p.s. anyone find a workaround for the color vs B&W topos? Sometimes I've even thought of taking screen shots or earth and replacing the B&W with that. Anyway, not as important as this geometry.

Well, this one is easier. Have a look at this recent topic which is more or less about this.

JClements · 6 Jun 2009, 18:30

I am with you with Scott.

I believe SU7 improved the alignment of multiple imports from GE, but I think the overlaps are also a function of the terrain data itself.

Having a script that would automatically trim at their intersections and delete the "left-over overlaps" (or saved to a layer for the user to manually delete) would be a great timesaver and would help in reducing the file size.

The script would have to deal with minute insections that fall outside the tolerances that SU recognizes. The typical manual solution is upscale the entire model, do the intersections, then down-scale to the original size.

Gaieus:
A Scenario. You want the terrain along a portion of a shoreline of large lake. The lake is flat, therefore, no need to import it, so you zoom into the shoreline, import into SU, toggle back to GE, use the arrow keeps to pan further along the shoreline and not change the camera elevation or pitch, export to SU ... repete as necessary.

Chris Fullmer · 6 Jun 2009, 19:04

Did you see my post John? There is a script that does it already.

If you really needed to keep the textures in it, then once you've got the terrain re-created, do a drape with the original GE terrains to make a perfect square bounding box on the new clean terrain. THen apply their image onto the new terrain. It might take some work and tweaking, but it should work (thought I have not tried it preciesly )

Chris

JClements · 7 Jun 2009, 18:33

Chris, I guess I don't get how Didier's script would aid in eliminating/deleting the excess overlaps. I tried to see how it might work with the attached but the script ran forever and I gave up.

GE example, 3 terrains.skp

Chris Fullmer · 8 Jun 2009, 01:04

ok, I got it worked out. I thought I would be able to use the drop tool to create the outline onto the terrain, but it did not work like I wanted. So in the video, I use intersect with model. But you'll see from start to finish, with explanations in the middle, takes me 5 minutes to do this.

(this video is 45mb so it might take a few minutes to load....I thought it would stream load, but it might not confirmed, it took ober 5 minutes to load on my system...so be patient.)

[flash=626,594:12oleysz]http://www.chrisfullmer.com/forums/terrainreshaper.swf[/flash:12oleysz]

Also, this is the thread where Plot Paris originally posted his method for cleaning up any terrain, and Didier was able to turn it into the terrain re-shaper plugin. So if you are wanting more info on what terrain re-shaper does and how it does it, check this thread out too!
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=11164

Hope that all helps,

Chris

JClements · 8 Jun 2009, 19:08

Chris, thanks for the video:

I tried watching and I got up to the point where you were trimming with the extruded cubes, then bamm the PC totally powered off. Not sure why, but it been happening to me lately with large (long) videos. (anyone a clue why?)

I'll try watching again at work.

The method you used which I did watch is similar to what I have tried. I just wish there was an alternative way to automatically isolate and delete the overlaps with out re-triangulation.