Quick tutorial for road design on a terrain

Chris Fullmer

SU does not really have a simplify mesh feature built in, unfortunately. Simplify contours will only simplify contour lines before they are made into a terrain mesh. It won't help on a mesh like this.

Didier did make a plugin though that will help with this. It is called terrain re-shaper. It has many uses, one of which is to downsample a terrain. But it will also be a time costly process.

http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=11320&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Check it out, and see if it helps. The simpler the mesh, the faster it runs. I think you could measure the width of your terrain you have there, and then use that to help determine how to use his plugin. Anyhow, check it out. It will probably help,

Chris

solo

That's the thing, like I mentioned in another thread relating to this, you need to divide the terrain to a point where it's smooth before even attempting anything road-wise.
For anything really accurate and useable for construction or even client visualisation I would seriously urge you to look beyond SU, SU just does not have the 'balls' for this kind of work. I would recommend Geocontrol 2 and Vue for this. Here is a link to how it can be achieved with Geocontrol 2 (it's a road tutorial), after which you can either continue working with the terrain in Geo or move it into Vue for finishing.

(www.cajomi.de)

charly2008

Hi Chris, hi Pete,

thanks for your detailed advices. I will try it with the terrain reshaper and consuming some cups of
coffee.

Another question is how to get a less triangulated mesh out from Vue. Maybe that would be the way for future to start with less triangulated Terrains. I have spent some time for work with VUE. Geocontrol seems to be a nice tool.

Karlheinz

solo

Karl

Select the terrain in Vue then go to your file drop down menu and select 'export object', a new dialogue will appear which will give you a mesh quality slider, the lower the slider the less detailed/triangulation, the highest will probably kill SU.

charly2008

Hi Pete,

i had a look at the Geocontrol tutorial and it seems not bad and relativly simple to use. I have downloaded the trial version to carry out some tests according to that video. From Geocontrol i exported a wave object file with a project size of 128, then imported the file into Vue and exported a 3ds file. The file size in Sketchup is now reasonable. It seems to be a promising solution. To have a similar tool inside Sketchup would be very nice. It should be possible somehow to develop something like that also for Sketchup in anyway.

Karlheinz

Test road 1281.jpg

Test Road.zip

charly2008

Hi to All,

in the second test, the road looks fine in Geocontrol. But the exported road doesn't look exactly the same in Sketchup. May be anyone has an Idea how to improve the road in Sketchup.

Karlheinz

Test Road.zip

charly2008

Summary:

Up till now I have not found any satisfactory possibility for the construction of roads in Sketchup. Road design within Geocontrol is done simply and shows satisfactory results. The Terrain was exported as an .obj file and changed to an 3ds file which is Sketchup able to import. To have good view of the road in the triangulated terrain in Sketchup it is neccessary to import it as a high resolution terrain.

The biggest size which Sketchup was able to load is the terrain shown below. The difficulty is that the road doesn't have a sharp borderline as shown in Geocontrol.

I'm not shure if it is possible to create smooth borderlines because for the road also we have only triangles.

I will devote again myself to other more pleasant work. May be in the future somebody has a brainwave.

Karlheinz

Test Road 512.jpg

solo

Karl

That looks great, good work.

Is this for a particular project/client? is the road asphalt/concrete? and i assume you would need stone barriers too right?

I would suggest making the road using a profile in GC, extracting the vector road seperate and the profile seperate, taking them into Vue and exporting them seperately then overlaying them as components in SU that way you will have clear control over them. However it will probably cripple you unless you work with strict layering (but that may not be enough once you start texturing)
Or, work the entire project in Vue or GC.

charly2008

Hi Pete,

it is not a particulare project it is only for fun. I try to find only a comfortable workflow for road design that can be used within Sketchup. With GC i did only some first steps. I don't know how to make a profile in GC and to export them separately. Up till now I have exported only an obj file from GC. In the use of Vue i'm also a beginner. It seems to me that you have some experience with GC. Your method sounds promising but I comprehend not yet completely the steps. Perhaps I can soothe my frustration again. Would you be so kind to give me a rough description of the steps within GC.

Karlheinz

solo

Actually Karl, Pilou may be onto something here, the 'tools on surface' ruby will be good to trace the shape of the road in SU and from there you can pull up the barriers as needed, will be a lot easier than my idea above.

Gaieus

What I'd do here is to soften the whole terrain first and then drape the road lines in their place. It wouldn't add further geometry but simply unsoften the two sides of the oad.

Now from then on, you can use TOS to offset and Joint PushPull to erect side barriers, copy along path to distribute road side posts or what you call them or anything for a road.

charly2008

Pete, Csaba, Pilou,

please can you show me an example how you would do this on the Test Road.skp above.

Karlheinz

Gaieus

For that, I'd need the mesh as it is now AND the road that you integrated in that other app (which I don't know) separately imported into SU.

Can you rip the road only, somehow like Pete suggested above? It would be a long, thin strip this way.

pilou

In theory you can draw your road with "Tools on surface" by Fredo6 on top view
Just hide or separate some useless reliefs around the road for have a speedy calculate

charly2008

Hi Csaba,

the road was generated with Geocontrol (GC). The workflow is as follows:

Generation of a terrain
Drawing the road direction by a Vector tool on a 2D height shaded view
Road will be generated by GC automatically
Export terrain as a Wavefront object (.obj).
Changing the obj file into a 3ds file using Vue or Cinema 4D
Import of the triangulated mesh (3DS file) into Sketchup.

At present i can't see any way to separate the terrain mesh from the Vector road. It is exported as one triangulated mesh.

Karlheinz

Sketchup mesh

Gaieus

Hm. I see. Too bad actually. The other option would be to soften the whole surface, turn on hidden geometry and unsoften the bordering edges of the road manually (Shift+Ctrl+Eraser tool) but certainly that's a whole lot of tedious,manual work although can be done at the weekends while one's wife is knitting beside)