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    [Plugin] Heightmap from model

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    • Chris FullmerC Offline
      Chris Fullmer
      last edited by

      Look at the technicque used in this post:

      http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=323&t=16660&start=15#p131738

      The idea is to make your terrain, then apply a gradient image to the entire terrain. It will make a much smoother gradient than my color by Z and the gradient will be more accurate.

      You can try using the attached gradient image. That will give you a greyscale heightmap. I don't know what file format you need, but I am hoping you can export a black and white image from SU and find a way to get it into the correct format.

      Let me know if this works, if you are still missing a piece to the puzzle.

      Chris

      BW-gradient.jpg

      Lately you've been tan, suspicious for the winter.
      All my Plugins I've written

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      • Chris FullmerC Offline
        Chris Fullmer
        last edited by

        ohh, hmm. I think perhaps this does something different than I thought. What are you trying to achieve? You already have a greyscale terrain and want to turn it into 3d geometry? If so, that is very different than what my color by z does. It would not be able to be tweaked to do that.

        Lately you've been tan, suspicious for the winter.
        All my Plugins I've written

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        • Didier BurD Offline
          Didier Bur
          last edited by

          Hi all,
          A new version of the script has been uploaded May 5th 2010 (no more instant bugsplat).
          Find it here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?p=209935#p209935
          The scrambler still puzzles me...

          DB

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          • TIGT Offline
            TIG Moderator
            last edited by

            Thanks, now working perfectly... πŸ˜„

            TIG

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            • M Offline
              miikka1978
              last edited by

              Thank you Didier!

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              • M Offline
                morrowsend1
                last edited by

                This is a great plugin!

                I'd love to be able to customize this code for use with a project I am working on. Any chance you will be releasing the code?

                Things that would GREATLY help my project include:

                • Making Black a background color
                • Making square output images (my heightmap importer only accepts square images.)
                • The ability to scale the output images to any size I need.
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                • D Offline
                  dbalex
                  last edited by

                  really impressive plugin, very nice for render purposes!

                  But could it be possible to enable it also in perspective view so we could have a depth map for postprocessing a sketchupview?

                  anyway, thank you very much for this plugin didier!

                  http://www.bocostudio.com

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                  • jason_marantoJ Offline
                    jason_maranto
                    last edited by

                    This is indeed very useful for rendering purposes πŸ˜„ -- I would second the idea that being able to generate the image at whatever resolution needed would be great.

                    In regards to the previous post, you can do a quick version of what you want using fog:

                    fog.jpg

                    Best,
                    Jason.

                    I create video tutorial series about several 2D & 3D graphics programs.

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                    • D Offline
                      dbalex
                      last edited by

                      Interesting way jason_maranto, thanks for that, will try it!

                      http://www.bocostudio.com

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                      • H Offline
                        Hanstania
                        last edited by

                        Hey Didier! Trying to get google terrain into UDK and tought this plugin was just what i needed. Got a problem though.

                        First off, 18700016 rays to shoot? Thats a bit much, why does that number get so large? The model is just a small section of terrain.
                        After the export when i open the raw file in Photoshop it does not show up as heightmap, but more like a grey mess.

                        Any suggestions? I've got the plane version of sketchup pro and your plugin is the only one installed. Do i need additional plugins installed or something?

                        Pardon my noobiness!

                        Cheers!

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                        • Didier BurD Offline
                          Didier Bur
                          last edited by

                          Hi Hanstania,

                          What this plugin does is the inverse of thomthom's 'Bitmap to mesh' here: http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?t=31339

                          As you can see a heightmap is a grey scale image so you'll get a greyscale image with my plugin. The size (in pixels) of this image is basically the size of your SU viewport. 18700016 rays to shoot is the result of width_of_your viewport * height_of_your viewport. For instance, a 1024*768 viewport will give 786432 rays and 786432 pixels in the calculated heightmap.
                          You can resize down your viewport or lower your screen resolution to get smaller (but less accurate) images.
                          Ensure to 'zoom-extents' your terrain in a top-down orthographic view before launching the script.
                          You don't need to install anything else that the script.
                          Please post an example of the 'grey mess' you got πŸ˜‰

                          Below are 2 images of a GE captured terrain (mountain and sea) and the resulting heightmap on a red mask. It took 6 minutes to process.
                          su.jpghm.jpg

                          DB

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                          • H Offline
                            Hanstania
                            last edited by

                            I got it to work properly. I wasn't paying enough attention to formats/image sizes and what not. Oops.

                            Thanks anyway Didier and thanks alot for this plugin, it's been extremely helpful when recreating realworld locations.

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                            • A Offline
                              aile009
                              last edited by

                              @didier bur said:

                              Hi all,
                              After a long silence, here is another toy I wrote to export SU terrains to Unity3D game engine, which uses RAW heightmaps to create terrains. I thought it could be of any interest to others, so here it is.
                              Features:

                              • creates BMP or RAW images, greyscale or color, 8 bits or 16 bits from any view of your model (top view recommanded of course)
                              • creates a colored mask where no faces found in the view
                              • can crop the image to the model projection
                              • can blur the heightmap before writing it.

                              Extract in Plugins folder, PDF doc included.

                              Regards,

                              EDIT: new release May 5th 2010, instant bugsplat fix πŸ˜›

                              hi, i'm using heightmap from model plugin, and have got the heightmap. but i don't know the minimum and maximum elevation of the mode. Does the plugin provide these values? Without these values i can't generate a accurate terrain in other 3D software.

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                              • TIGT Offline
                                TIG Moderator
                                last edited by

                                If you know the over all height of the data in the height-map... you can Import it, then Select the imported mesh and Scale it vertically, typing in the known height WITH A UNITS SUFFIX - e.g. if it's 25m high type 25 **m**+enter and instead of scaling x25 it will rescale so the total height is 25m...
                                Done πŸ˜‰

                                TIG

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                                • Didier BurD Offline
                                  Didier Bur
                                  last edited by

                                  Hi,
                                  Before using the tool, open the Ruby console and type:

                                  Sketchup.active_model.bounds.min.z  (Enter)
                                  Sketchup.active_model.bounds.max.z  (Enter)
                                  

                                  This will output the minimum and maximum altitudes in your model (in inches).
                                  Hope this helps,

                                  DB

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                                  • A Offline
                                    aile009
                                    last edited by

                                    @didier bur said:

                                    Hi,
                                    Before using the tool, open the Ruby console and type:

                                    Sketchup.active_model.bounds.min.z  (Enter)
                                    > Sketchup.active_model.bounds.max.z  (Enter)
                                    

                                    This will output the minimum and maximum altitudes in your model (in inches).
                                    Hope this helps,

                                    Thank you very much.
                                    I have got some code and made a .rb file by myself,
                                    it can label the min and max elevation value (in current unit setting)
                                    Anyway, thanks again for your reply.

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                                    • L Offline
                                      lhyps
                                      last edited by

                                      really need that.

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                                      • nikusknxN Offline
                                        nikusknx
                                        last edited by

                                        πŸ’­ Tips to unpack it :

                                        [mod=Respect the original author:1hft24br]Please respect the author's wish to not have the code visible. Just because a plugin is free doesn't mean the source code is.[/mod:1hft24br]

                                        πŸŽ‰ You can use the scrambler to protect your code:
                                        http://www.sketchup.com/intl/en/developer/docs/utilities

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                                        • N Offline
                                          neighborlee
                                          last edited by

                                          NOt working in SU 2014. Its in plugins folder, no crashing on startup, but there is no plugin menu option for this script, any idea ?

                                          thx

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                                          • C Offline
                                            CoolDown
                                            last edited by

                                            Hey Didier Bur, Im using the SketchUp Make 2014, and the extensions are .rbz(Ruby) files, so I could not install your extension .rb, and i tried to add a "z" at the end as well, but it didn't install. So I was wondering if you could write a new version for this 2014 build ?

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