[REQUEST] Landscape covisibility plugin

Panga

Hi All,

I'm currently working on a urban/landscape study, and as I was doing my maps, I was thinking of making a covisibility map in order to evaluate the visual impacts of my project. And I was also thinking that SketchUp with my terrain model, could help me to check if there's any covisibility within two points. As it can be tedious to check all points of my perimeter, it could be great to have a plugin that could be able to evaluate the covisibility of a specified point or area.

Here is how it could work :

First make a terrain model.
Specify the point or the area to check
Specify the terrain and all potential barriers
The plugin evaluates the covisibility, and apply a dark material on the terrain where there's no covisibility.

I think this is doable, and maybe there's already some plugins or proceedings that can acheive that, but I did not find any efficient solutions right now.

Any idea ??!! Thanks in advance.

Regards.

Panga.

TIG

Please explain what 'co-visibility' is
Does 'eye-level' come into play ?
Is it perhaps all points on the mesh that are visible from a chosen point at eye-level 1.6m ?
Like a 'ray-casting' - there is 1001shadowtools that makes drawings of shadows fro a sun location by ray tracing, so the equivalent for an 'eye' at a given point could be possible but more complex since it'd need to 'spray' out in all directions ???

Panga

Co-visbility means a visual reciprocity between two points in a landscape.

@unknownuser said:

Is it perhaps all points on the mesh that are visible from a chosen point at eye-level 1.6m ?

This is exactly what I'm looking for, a kind of ray-casting that could check what parts of a terrain is visible / not visible from a specific point/area, at eye-level.

@unknownuser said:

it'd need to 'spray' out in all directions ???

Yes.

The must could to be able to do that in realtime, but here, I think I'm dreaming...

EDIT : I Think that this could be also usefull for architects in order to evaluate spot lights for interiors.

TIG

I wrote a RayTrace and RaySpray ruby that shoots out rays from a given point - it's be possible to modify that so that instead of the 'bounce' it added a point on a surface and then 'joined-up-the-dots to make a 'seen_area' group ? It'd need a lot of rays though ? Try it out......

Panga

Yes, I remember your rubys and I was thinking to them when I said this could be doable.

I don't think that I need a lots of rays, because I'm working on large landscapes, so I do not need a lot of precision. But As I don't know how it works, I don't know if you can control the rays the way you want...And if the plugin can be used for other purposes, maybe It's good to keep enough rays...

Anyway the way you described it could be good for me :
@unknownuser said:

added a point on a surface and then 'joined-up-the-dots to make a 'seen_area' group

I'll give a look again to your rubys.

Thanks anyway.