Drawing And Then Editing On Terrain Or Curved Surfaces
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I'm looking for tips for drawing on undulating terrain, (although I guess the same could apply to any curved surfaces).
Think about drawing a footpath onto the terrain: I know I can use a plugin like "Tools on Surface" to draw directly on to the terrain. I can also draw the footpath on a flat plane and then drape the outline onto the terrain. Both work well but my problem comes when I want to then edit the footpath, perhaps change it's alignment or delete it all together. The editing problem being that the footpath is now part of the terrain topography so any editing involves messing around with that and all that involves.
A solution I have thought of is to draw the footpath on a flat plane that's fixed in orbit directly above the terrain. I then could make a copy of the terrain, leave it in the exact same location and drape the footpath onto it.If I then hide the layer containing the original terrain and the layer containing the flat plane, (with the footpath on it), I'm just left with my footpath drawn onto the terrain visible.
Why go to all this bother ? Simply because if I want to edit the footpath I can unhide the flat plane, edit the footpath very simply on there, delete the terrain containing the path I don't want, make a new terrain copy and drape my new footpath layout onto that.
What would be easier? If someone could tell me that all that is unnecessary and they know a way to easily edit lines, arcs, circles, etc. that are drawn or draped onto a terrain or curved surface. Perhaps there's a way of draping something onto a surface without it actually being attached ?
Hope this isn't another of my Doh! moments and the answer is obvious !
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Hi, Calstock:
If you are using the Sandbox Tools, that draped footpath would at least be a Group, right? If so, then it is not stuck to the terrain. If it is a group, then it can be a Component, and copied to produce an instance that can be moved away from the terrain and edited. Everything you do to the instance will happen in the original component.I am sure I have misunderstood your point, but this is what I get from the drape portion of your writing.
As for Layers, an important advisory would be that only Groups or Components would be layered. Raw geometry done only on default Layer 0.
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Hi Mitcorb,
Thanks very much for your reply. When I drape something onto a terrain, it doesn't end up as a group, it ends up as part of the topography. Am I doing something wrong there ? Secondly, even if it was a group an arc ends up split into individual, small sections of an arc, making editing far more tricky.
For those of you that don't deal with terrains, perhaps think of applying a line drawn pattern to a vase and then wanting to edit that pattern. The pattern may start of as simple lines, arcs and circles but once draped onto the vase, they become far more complicated / split "components" of those lines and arcs.
I hope that makes sense and I'm sure there's a simple answer because surely this is something encountered regularly when trying to draw and edit designs onto curved surfaces like those in cars, vases and terrains ?
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Hi, Calstock:
Glad you replied back. I think I see a little more in there.
It would help if you could post either an image of what you are working on, or at least a portion of the model in skp (v6 or v8), so that others can also help get you to the goal.Your vase analogy does help, however, the application of the design to the side of a vessel would be better achieved with projection methods, or intersections.
With regard to the fragmentation of the curves after engagement with the rest of the model, there is a plugin called Weld. There is also Recurve, and Curvizard.
Comment back.
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Thanks for your help and patience Mitcorb. Here's a Dropbox link to a mocked up model to try to explain what I'm trying to do:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/tfmicfwe406w6ag/drawing%20and%20editing%20on%20terrains.skp
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Calstock,
What you have here might be a question of selection. You have to select only the right parts of your terrain to make it reeditable in your process.
What you should add to your workflow is that you should soften/smooth all terrain edges before draping. After that, just find your own methods of selection of draped curves, so you don't destroy original terrain info. The plugin that helps me the most with terrain curves is select curve from Thomthom
Most importantly, if you have to reshape a complex mesh or erase something to create holes, don't do it!!! Hide stuff, group it, copy it, "backup" it, make component and "save as" external file. Any method is good but erase and loose all those hard to remake polygons.
If you don't think this as anything to do with what you want... watch the video:
http://screencast.com/t/ADucyyw1
I hope this helps,
JQL
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@Calstock:
I think JQL has a very good example addressing this question, and his comments are very helpful. -
Thanks guys, some great advice there. I would normally soften the terrain, I didn't in the example I gave because I didn't realise it would affect the answers I'd receive. Good point to note for future questions that one.
The ThomThom curve finder plugin I didn't have and it's a great tool - thanks for that. This will definitely come in useful on future models.
The tip about hiding things rather than deleting them is something I do elsewhere in models quite often but for some reason I wasn't doing it when doing this task - good tip.
Although it's not a huge problem, we still seem to be in agreement you need to create and preserve a "flat plane" editing layer where you do all your adjustments. This is then used to drape the edited version of the path, (or whatever), onto the terrain. I know I can use plugins to draw directly onto the surface as well but I find getting the curves and tangents I want easier on a flat plane. So on that point I guess you don't necessarily have to have an editing layer, it's just easier for some tasks.
My next question, (if I'm not pushing my luck), would be how to easily apply a texture to the draped footpath without it being distorted into loads of different directions.
Sketchup - where would be without excellent forums like Sketchucation and where would we be without plugins !
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Apply teture. Turn on hidden geometry. Select a face and choose contextual menu texture / projected. Sample that face with the paint bucket tool. Turn OFF hidden geometry and apply the projected texture to the full surface.
There are plugins and ways to get a natural tiling pattern or even quad-mesh UV mapping based on the geometry of the object, but this projected texture is the simplest and easiest. Fredo ThruPaint and SketchUV are a couple of plugins that can help texturing multifaceted surfaces. -
Thanks a million - I just tried that and it worked a treat.
It's not just me is it - this texturing question for instance is not that easy to find out on your own.
@pbacot said:
Apply teture. Turn on hidden geometry. Select a face and choose contextual menu texture / projected. Sample that face with the paint bucket tool. Turn OFF hidden geometry and apply the projected texture to the full surface.
There are plugins and ways to get a natural tiling pattern or even quad-mesh UV mapping based on the geometry of the object, but this projected texture is the simplest and easiest. Fredo ThruPaint and SketchUV are a couple of plugins that can help texturing multifaceted surfaces. -
You found it by your own questions here... so it's easy
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Hi, Calstock:
Easy is a relative term.
You can, while working, use the help available at the top line menu. Help>Knowledge Center, which takes you to help.sketchup.com, on which you can search for your answers. You can also use your favorite search engine and find loads of information, video tutorials, such as from YouTube.
If you are logged in to Sketchucation, you can do a search by typing in keywords in the search box at the very top of this page.
I am glad these other folks were able to help you. -
It seems texture support was only taken so far in SU to accommodate the basic flat surface modeling. Organic modeling wasn't a priority. Therefore it appears to the user that tools are lacking.
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