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Large Terrain Mesh

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  • S Offline
    solo
    last edited by 13 May 2011, 13:22

    I sent you a PM with settings, I have also managed to reduce the full scene from 650MB to 65MB keeping the detail similar to the sample above.


    Full area3.jpg

    http://www.solos-art.com

    If you see a toilet in your dreams do not use it.

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    • E Offline
      EarthMover
      last edited by 13 May 2011, 14:41

      Your best FREE solution is to use TIG's drape Cpoints and Triangulate points scripts. This will allow you set the mesh density based on the quadrant spacing of the Cpoints initially. Doing the original terrain sample at 20' spacing took about two minutes of processing time and reduced the face count to under 4500. The downside is that you get an evenly distributed reduction, thus no interpolation of the reduction within higher detail areas, but it's quick and free. Conversely I like to port my messy/complex terrains into 3ds Max and use a plugin called Wrapit to quadrify the mesh. It seems to do a better job at preserving detail areas, but cost money.


      Terrain Mesh Drape.jpg


      Terrain_Drape_Cpoints.skp

      3D Artist at Clearstory 3D Imaging
      Guide Tool at Winning With Sketchup
      Content Creator at Skapeup

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      • D Offline
        dbwv69
        last edited by 14 May 2011, 01:50

        @solo said:

        I sent you a PM with settings, I have also managed to reduce the full scene from 650MB to 65MB keeping the detail similar to the sample above.

        How on earth did you manage to get that beast of a mesh reduced?

        I got it, thanks. It's odd but the settings I was using were very much like yours, but with very different results. Obviously something is different but I wonder what it could be?

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        • S Offline
          solo
          last edited by 14 May 2011, 01:56

          Here is the model if you need it:

          http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1129899/Full%20area3.skp

          http://www.solos-art.com

          If you see a toilet in your dreams do not use it.

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          • D Offline
            dbwv69
            last edited by 14 May 2011, 01:58

            @earthmover said:

            Your best FREE solution is to use TIG's drape Cpoints and Triangulate points scripts. This will allow you set the mesh density based on the quadrant spacing of the Cpoints initially. Doing the original terrain sample at 20' spacing took about two minutes of processing time and reduced the face count to under 4500. The downside is that you get an evenly distributed reduction, thus no interpolation of the reduction within higher detail areas, but it's quick and free. Conversely I like to port my messy/complex terrains into 3ds Max and use a plugin called Wrapit to quadrify the mesh. It seems to do a better job at preserving detail areas, but cost money.

            I tried something similar only I was using Global Mapper to vary the point density which was then imported into Sketchup and triangulated there. The only drawback in my case was that triangulation took a bit of time to complete.

            That plugin for 3DS sounds great but unfortunately, it's definitely out of my reach at the moment.

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            • D Offline
              dbwv69
              last edited by 14 May 2011, 02:07

              @solo said:

              Here is the model if you need it:

              http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1129899/Full%20area3.skp

              You are good, there's no doubt about that. It's exactly what I have been trying to achieve and is even light enough that I can open it on my laptop without having to fire up the server. How did you manage to do it? As I recall, you mentioned memory requirements/limitations.

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              • S Offline
                solo
                last edited by 14 May 2011, 02:18

                I used an old faithful.... Truespace, made the first save to .cob and then DE for the rest.

                http://www.solos-art.com

                If you see a toilet in your dreams do not use it.

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                • D Offline
                  dbwv69
                  last edited by 14 May 2011, 03:39

                  @solo said:

                  I used an old faithful.... Truespace, made the first save to .cob and then DE for the rest.

                  I had never heard of Truespace until now but after looking at their website I am definitely intrigued. And the best part is that according to their website Truespace is free.

                  Someday if you have the time, I'd definitely like to pick your brain and hopefully learn how to replicate your results myself.

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                  • B Offline
                    bjornkn
                    last edited by 14 May 2011, 07:47

                    I'm surprised that trueSpace was the solution. I was using (and beta testing) trueSpace for 10 years (93-03) before I switched to SU and LW, and I really liked the program. But I can't see how it helped handling the giant dxf mesh?
                    Could you really load that giant dxf into tS and save as a .cob?
                    I still have tS 6.6 installed BTW.

                    BTW, those DE problems may come from different versions? There were many problems with some of the DE versions.
                    My DE is v 3.5, and it handles/reduces the sample mesh OK, but makes the borders very ugly (very few vertices around the edges).

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                    • T Offline
                      TIG Moderator
                      last edited by 16 May 2011, 12:11

                      Try 'NOT preserving the origin' of the imported data - it's probably zillions of meters away from [0,0,0]...
                      Then when it's loaded zoom extents ?

                      TIG

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                      • C Offline
                        charly2008
                        last edited by 16 May 2011, 12:24

                        Dear specialists,

                        I have a question again. I have created in Global Mapper contour lines. Then I export the vector data as a DXF. When I import it into SketchUp, the layer are displayed, but the model is not visible. What am I doing wrong? I thank you in advance for your help.

                        Charly


                        11.jpg


                        2.jpg


                        12.jpg


                        4.jpg


                        1.jpg

                        He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing

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                        • C Offline
                          charly2008
                          last edited by 16 May 2011, 12:37

                          Hi TIG,

                          then I see a very small piece. Only when I scale it I see it is only a grid. Now what I've discovered! The problem I had once before. I can not remember the solution.

                          Charly


                          5.jpg


                          6.jpg


                          6.jpg

                          He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing

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                          • G Offline
                            Gaieus
                            last edited by 16 May 2011, 12:59

                            Could it be a scaling issue? Is the import scale and the original scale the same? If it is very tiny, it would explain the missing faces.

                            Gai...

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                            • C Offline
                              charly2008
                              last edited by 16 May 2011, 13:28

                              Hi Gaieus,

                              If I knew that! I only know that I yesterday tried it with the contour lines (same Options in Global Mapper) of the Vesuv and it worked.

                              Charly

                              He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing

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                              • C Offline
                                charly2008
                                last edited by 16 May 2011, 13:49

                                Problem solved! I forgot to change the projection to UTM Datum WGS84.

                                Charly


                                1.jpg


                                2.jpg


                                3.jpg

                                He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing

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                                • G Offline
                                  Gaieus
                                  last edited by 16 May 2011, 13:55

                                  Cool. And now let's see some nice eruption!
                                  😄

                                  Gai...

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                                  • D Offline
                                    dbwv69
                                    last edited by 16 May 2011, 17:25

                                    Through some experimentation and the help of someone who has a newer version of DE, I was able to determine that the problem I was having is related to the way the DE reduces files of different types.

                                    Solo was importing the DXF file into Sketchup and saving it as Sketchup version 6 prior to reducing the mesh in DE. I was unable to import the DXF file into Sketchup due to it's size so I was opening the DXF file directly with DE.

                                    After sending a sample DXF file to a friend with a newer version of DE and hearing that he was seeing the same problem, I began to suspect that it must have something to do with the file type so I tried converting the DXF file to another type, OBJ I think, then opened that with DE and reduced the terrain mesh. After doing this, I was finally able to obtain acceptable results at 90% reduction.

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                                    • C Offline
                                      charly2008
                                      last edited by 18 May 2011, 13:56

                                      Hi,

                                      I have a additional question to the downloaded SRTM. For what purpose is served by the tagged files. Thanks in advance.

                                      Charly


                                      2011-05-16_201330.jpg

                                      He who makes no mistakes, makes nothing

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                                      • N Offline
                                        noklu
                                        last edited by 19 May 2011, 00:21

                                        I have used Global Mapper quite a bit to generate contours for import to SU. The largest I have done was about 2000 acres. You may want to play with the contour interval to speed up SU. I generated a terrain model with 2' contours on 2000 ac. SU ran all night. When It was complete, I had to zoom WAY back (really far). Good Luck, sounds like a cool project.

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