Large Terrain Mesh

solo · 12 May 2011, 18:16

Sure, or even DEM.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 18:29

Sure, or even DEM.

The DXF mesh extract was huge and is still uploading to my dropbox but the DEM extract was surprisingly small. See attached:

Full Area DEM.zip

solo · 12 May 2011, 18:40

You may want to check the dem file, it's kinda wierd, hard to explain, lacks all detail.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 18:50

@solo said:

You may want to check the dem file, it's kinda wierd, hard to explain, lacks all detail.

I looked at it and see what you mean. I must have inadvertently selected the wrong scale when I exported it. The DXF file just finished uploading, here is the link:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/29024765/Full%20Area.zip

solo · 12 May 2011, 18:59

750MB file.

gonna try open in SU first, see if flames spew out from CPU.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 19:00

@solo said:

:shock: 750MB file.

gonna try open in SU first, see if flames spew out from CPU.

See why I wanna reduce it? LOL

solo · 12 May 2011, 19:04

I doubt very highly that you can reduce that to a point it opens in SU and resembles anything close to what you need, but lets try, I have all sorts of tools to try with.

I'm trying Vue-SU first, but that will take a while to import.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 19:10

@solo said:

I doubt very highly that you can reduce that to a point it opens in SU and resembles anything close to what you need, but lets try, I have all sorts of tools to try with.

I'm trying Vue-SU first, but that will take a while to import.

I do too but was going to divide it into several sections as to lighten the load of each.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 19:15

@solo said:

I doubt very highly that you can reduce that to a point it opens in SU and resembles anything close to what you need, but lets try, I have all sorts of tools to try with.

I'm trying Vue-SU first, but that will take a while to import.

If I can figure out why my 90% reduction in Deep Explorer isn't coming out like yours, I believe my problem may be solved. I have tried numerous variations of settings but I start to lose detail at around 50% and it gets worse from there. I even managed to make what resembled a spiked cactus once.

bjornkn · 12 May 2011, 20:29

@dbwv69 said:

What is GP?

Guide point.
I suppose you not knowing that implies that you never tried the method at all, but just were thinking that it would be way too much work - even just to try it?

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 20:36

@bjornkn said:

@dbwv69 said:

What is GP?

Guide point.
I suppose you not knowing that implies that you never tried the method at all, but just were thinking that it would be way too much work - even just to try it?

I'm willing to try anything that will help me to achieve my goal. Remember, I'm not a Sketchup expert, or an expert with 3D software in general, far from it in fact. By and large, I am learning as I go and will undoubtedly make a lot of mistakes along the way.

Honestly, and I am showing my ignorance here, but I am not completely sure what the guide point method entails. If you would care to enlighten me, I'd be happy to give it a try.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 20:59

Solo, what settings did you use when you reduced the mesh sample I provided earlier? From what I can tell, the settings are very touchy and believe that's where the problem lies.

bjornkn · 12 May 2011, 21:15

Just for fun I ran a quick test with Mootools Polygon Cruncher.
I removed 95%, and was left with 9770 faces from 198000. BTW, that dxf file is full of duplicated vertices.
As you can see on the leftmost version there's a lot of lines at the edges - that's because I told it to not touch the edges. Which means that all the edge vertices are exactly as in the original, and should very easily connect to the next patch as all the vertices should align.
The middle version is smoothed/softened and the right version is just softened with no normal smoothing.
I'm sure it could work fine even at more compression?

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 21:21

@bjornkn said:

Just for fun I ran a quick test with Mootools Polygon Cruncher.
I removed 95%, and was left with 9770 faces from 198000. BTW, that dxf file is full of duplicated vertices.
As you can see on the leftmost version there's a lot of lines at the edges - that's because I told it to not touch the edges. Which means that all the edge vertices are exactly as in the original, and should very easily connect to the next patch as all the vertices should align.
The middle version is smoothed/softened and the right version is just softened with no normal smoothing.
I'm sure it could work fine even at more compression?

I'm impressed. The results you obtained look very much like the example Solo posted earlier. Now if only I could manage to do the same, my headache might go away and I could begin to do some real modeling. Though I must admit that I am not looking forward to the challenge of roadbuilding. LOL

bjornkn · 12 May 2011, 21:43

@dbwv69 said:

I'm willing to try anything that will help me to achieve my goal. Remember, I'm not a Sketchup expert, or an expert with 3D software in general, far from it in fact. By and large, I am learning as I go and will undoubtedly make a lot of mistakes along the way.

Honestly, and I am showing my ignorance here, but I am not completely sure what the guide point method entails. If you would care to enlighten me, I'd be happy to give it a try.
Try anything? Except open your wallet ie
It's written on that image with 3 brown meshes posted a while ago.
Here is another "tutorial".

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 21:54

@bjornkn said:

Try anything? Except open your wallet ie
It's written on that image with 3 brown meshes posted a while ago.
Here is another "tutorial.

And I forgot to mention that due to it's sheer size, I can't open the full DXF file, or even significant parts of it without causing Sketchup problems or outright crashes. It has to be reduced first regardless.

bjornkn · 12 May 2011, 21:56

@dbwv69 said:

I'm impressed. The results you obtained look very much like the example Solo posted earlier. Now if only I could manage to do the same, my headache might go away and I could begin to do some real modeling.
Then you would have to open your wallet first, as Polygon Cruncher costs some money, as do DE and Vue
OTOH, my first run ended up very badly in the Cruncher because there was all these non-merged points in the mesh. Try to merge points with DE before you polyreduce it?

@unknownuser said:

Though I must admit that I am not looking forward to the challenge of roadbuilding. LOL

You would look forward to it if you were using Amorph

bjornkn · 12 May 2011, 21:59

@dbwv69 said:

@bjornkn said:

Try anything? Except open your wallet ie
It's written on that image with 3 brown meshes posted a while ago.
Here is another "tutorial.

And I forgot to mention that due to it's sheer size, I can't open the full DXF file, or even significant parts of it without causing Sketchup problems or outright crashes. It has to be reduced first regardless.
No it doesn't. You could build each part separately and then assemble them afterwards when they are low-poly.
You should be able to Sandbox/from contours to stitch them together - or do it manually.
Be prepared to do some Edge flipping too..

solo · 12 May 2011, 22:12

This is what your mesh looks like.

It's too big to crunch right now as it requires more than 12Gb of ram, which is all I have on this machine, if there was a way to trim the sides or even split in two parts, I'd be able to do this easier.

dbwv69 · 12 May 2011, 22:13

@bjornkn said:

Then you would have to open your wallet first, as Polygon Cruncher costs some money, as do DE and Vue
OTOH, my first run ended up very badly in the Cruncher because there was all these non-merged points in the mesh. Try to merge points with DE before you polyreduce it?

I was not aware that the mesh had "non-merged points". They had to have been caused by Global Mapper because that is the program I used to create the file. How do I detect and merge them with Deep Exploration?