Question - Working on a large model.
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Hey guys, I've been working on a large terrain model that was provided to me by a consultant. The client wants a few aerial shots of the site landscaped, vehicles, etc..
This is how I went about it and found it to be bloody tedious!!! Any suggestions would be much appreciated.
Firstly I imported the terrain and CAD work associated with it. I tend to select by layer at that stage and group things so once i have all the important stuff together I can get rid of the rubbish. At this point I will global select and put everything on Layer0. this way, everything is on 0 but still grouped so I can then start adding color to say roads, retaining walls, kerbs, etc as a group color rather than coloring faces.....
Once this is done then I fill the site with entourage; trees, vehicles, street posts, etc.
All this was done at quite a large scale [units set to millimeters] Just wondering if I had have scaled it down it would have made a difference? I guess I would have still had the same amount of linework....
Haven't quite finished yet but here's a quick snapshot.
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Hi Andrew,
If I understand your question/problem correctly...
NOT working in real (1:1) scale can only be justified in two cases; when a model is very large (meaning it spans across hundreds of metres or even kilometres) OR when it's very small. All this is only to avoid the very inconvenient "Clipping issue" (see John Bacus explanation about this below) but not to ease or help with the high poly problem you may encounter with a large terrain model with lots or entourage eventually.
@unknownuser said:
It is in the nature of all 3D modeling software that an upper and a lower limit exists to the range of floating point values that can be stored. SketchUp's upper and lower limits were set back when most of our users were making architectural models, and so they make the most sense for the range of object scales from furniture to college campuses. Folks doing machine parts &etc. often run up against our lower limit. Folks modeling entire cities for Google Earth often run up against the upper limit.
If you want to be able to model these very high poly things, especially because high poly comes from things you do not even work on just "add" (like vehicles, plants etc.), the only thing you can do is to use the good, old strategies when you put them on hidden layers and such.
You may also consider using something like Fredo's Ghost components plugin so that you can still "mass model" everything and see everything in your model in a simplified version and only turn the real things on when you export for your presentations/clients.
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What would be great is to have three template options in SU, 1-small, 2-meduim and 3-large that way if at all possibleSU can load up with three different floating point values based on the model you are intending to make, so say you are creating a watch mechanism, you opt for template 1, or say you are modelling your city you then select 3, but for everyday stuff the default is 2, (what SU is currently)
Andrew, great looking model so far...it's begging for a Vue render.
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Thanks guys, yes I did experience a little 'clipping' when I zoomed in close.... I also notice that when working an a larger scale model. When scrolling, if the cursor is over the model the resulting zoom is normal. If you move the cursor off the model and scroll all hell breaks loose!!!! I will load ghost comp and have a look; have tried it again.
different templates sound like a good idea, Pete although I thought the program should automatically recognize your working limit with respect to program limits and adjust accordingly.
thanks for the comments re the model; I wish I could get Vue; looks very cool!!!!
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I've always been under the impression that SU does recognize different model sizes and adjusts accordingly. Which is why large models clip differently then small ones. On a single screw model, you can get in and examine the threads. But put a screw in that large model and I think you will have a hard time zooming in close enough to find the screw before the clipping takes over. At least that seems to be my experience.
Chris
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In response to the original question, there are different ways to approach a large site model. I do hospital renderings so my sites are always pretty large and since they're being rendered they have to be quite accurate (curbs, lines, scale, etc.).
The best way I've found I wrote about awhile back ( http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=21878 ), but it involves bringing your SU model to another program and back. I use 3ds Max but Blender might have similar functions.
Here are some tips that I've learned through trying all sorts of methods.
- Do as much work in CAD as you can. It's much easier to see which lines need to be deleted when they're colored by layer as in CAD. I like to actually bring in a few different CAD files based on the same site. After deleting unneeded lines, I'll draw a rectangle around the site representing what will be the limits of my model. Export one file that's just that boundry rectangle and the roads/curbs and sidewalks. Export another file for fences and such. Another with that boundry rectangle and any contour lines you've got. And another for vegitation placement. This helps sort everything out for when you begin turning the lines into faces in SU.
Also before you export any of those files you should select all the lines and make sure they're all on elevation 0'-0". Then turn all the linework into polylines (type PEDIT -> M (to select multiple) -> select all your lines -> hit enter once or twice and then use the join command to weld/join all those lines together. Joining is crucial for your roads/curbs in particular. If any lines don't join up, you know there's a little gap there that needs to be connected, making it 100x easier to fix in CAD than SU.
- If you've got contours on your site (and who doesn't?), I find it best to begin with that part. Use your contour lines from cad to create your contoured site, ignoring the roads and such for now. Then, seperately do your whole site WITH the roads/curbs but this time do it perfectly flat. If you connected all your lines in CAD beforehand this should be easy (go get the MakeFaces ruby for sure - i've assigned it to the shortcut cntrl+m on my computer). Next place your flat site w/ the road lines directly above your contoured site (make sure to set your Smoothness on it to a decent angle so all the lines are smooth/hidden) and use SU's Drop function to drop the lines of your roads/curbs down to your contoured site.
If you aren't worried about rendering, this may be enough to just color the grass and roads and sidewalks now. Otherwise, use the JointPushPull ruby to push the roads down, say 5" and pull the curbs up 1".
Those are really the main things I can advice. As much as you may want to jump into SU as soon as possible, I can't stress enough how much easier your life will be if you do a lot of setup work in CAD. I've been burned many times by going to SU to fast.
Also, if you don't HAVE to show a contoured site, your life will be 100x easier by just showing it as flat. The contours are where ALL the problems come in and it's really hard to make changes after the fact.
The problems you'll still run into sometimes with the suggestions above is that the Drop feature in SU sucks and can cause crashes (more so if you created a really high poly contour model - DON'T do that). In that case you may have to push/pull a road down so it cuts through your contour model and use Interesect geometry to get those lines to show up on your contour model, then repeat with sidewalks, etc.
Also, if you have a high poly contour site, JointPushPull will take a very long time.
-Brodie
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Here's a sample output from one of my sites. This is pretty old but shows you a possible outcome...
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Cool Brodie, thanks for the image and lengthy post!
Reading through your comments it makes total sense to do just that; prepare in CAD for as long as you can to make SU workflow less lengthy. The CAD files I received were actually a 3D terrain of the design levels of the site so I had actual finished surface to play with. the trouble was with the 2D file really; just as you said lines not joining, and small line segments and some slightly off Z made making faces a challenge and dropping linework over the terrain a time consuming task.....Anyhow, I've learnt a lot to date so the next time I'm sure I'll get it done a whole lot quicker!!!
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when you have to work on these large models, the only tip i could give is to put everything in layers, make animation scenes to help you navigate around, and hide objects(especially high-polys) that you don't want to be seen as you work around, you see, this stuffs slow SU's performance.
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@utiler said:
Cool Brodie, thanks for the image and lengthy post!
Reading through your comments it makes total sense to do just that; prepare in CAD for as long as you can to make SU workflow less lengthy. The CAD files I received were actually a 3D terrain of the design levels of the site so I had actual finished surface to play with. the trouble was with the 2D file really; just as you said lines not joining, and small line segments and some slightly off Z made making faces a challenge and dropping linework over the terrain a time consuming task.....Anyhow, I've learnt a lot to date so the next time I'm sure I'll get it done a whole lot quicker!!!
Ya, fixing things in CAD is crucial to not driving yourself mad. To deal with the Z axis thing you should definitely select all your linework in CAD and go to properties. If your linework is polylines you can just go to Elevation and set it to 0. If the linework is in regular lines then same deal except you have to set it to 0 in both the Start Z and End Z boxes.
Smustard.com has a lot of rubies that should help out a ton with this little areas where segments aren't quite attached or there are stray lines, etc. They cost a bit of money though and I'm cheap so I don't have them
That stray lines issue is huge by the way. For some reason if you have a stray little line inside of closed linework that would normally create a face, that stray line prevents SU from creating a face so you have to find the little bugger and delete it (or use a ruby to do that).
-Brodie
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