Terrain from contours - improve on native 'from contours'?

EarthMover

A quick play with the contours. Simplified the curves using Thom's Edge Tools. Then did a From Contours terrain. Then a Drape Cpoints / Triangulate method to retopo. Then opened the high res contour lines in 3ds Max and used the free Populate Terrain plugin to generate a similar terrain. Then brought it back into sketchup and compared the two.

Earthmover Coleman Topo (1).skp

dtrarch

Terragen2 download
http://planetside.co.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=30&Itemid=170
Someone here was looking for this and here tiz

dtr

fredo6

By the way, did anyone try SimuTerra? (see this post)

Fredo

Chris Fullmer

Does anyone know if Erez is still maintaining his Simuterra program? We haven't seen him around in ages!

solo

Nice clean results.

I have a set of contours that I'd like to compare if you have the time, I used sandbox and got a mess, wondering if this will give a better result. Here is the skp, however I'm wondering if the dwg would not be better.

test contours.skp

fredo6

@solo said:

Nice clean results.

I have a set of contours that I'd like to compare if you have the time, I used sandbox and got a mess, wondering if this will give a better result. Here is the skp, however I'm wondering if the dwg would not be better.

Here is the result on your model without any change, with the current version of TopoShaper. Grid definition is 60 x 27. I did some tests with a higher definition but cannot post it back because the size of the skp file is bigger than 4 Mb.

Note that your contours add up to more than 44,000 edges, with a quite complex concave hull. So it takes a minute to calculate it and there are still some problems on the borders.

Solo test contours.skp

Solo Test Topo.png

Fredo

solo

That's very clean, wow, this is awesome.

pbacot

Adam,

Very cool working out the c-points method. I didn't realize those capabilities existed.

Fredo,

Thanks for interface video. Looking great! What you do to program this is so far beyond my ken....

Peter

fredo6

@krisidious said:

here's a topo I just got from a survey company... if you need tests.

I imported the dwg file and found that most contours were interrupted in their middle. This is a problem for TopoShaper currently, at it allows topological communication between contours.

Krisidious Hanna Topo 2.png

I just closed the missing links, and here is the result
Krisidious Hanna Topo.skp
Krisidious Hanna Topo.png

Thanks again for this testing model

Fredo

Krisidious

Yes, Fredo... No problem. That's where the road runs in the property. I just thought you'd like to get samples directly from surveyors. no touch ups. Looks great. can't wait to buy/download this plugin.

Edit... actually that is not the road. it's where the grade heights are typed in as text.

solo

Any news?

Sorry about bumping this topic but I'm anxiously awaiting this plugin, hopefully it will be in the store soon.

I have a tricky project, I got contours from Civil 3D in fbx format but even though it's not a very large or complicated mesh needed it seems that there are too many edges (think the segments are too much for su) I open it but it crashes sandbox after 7 minutes of thinking.

fredo6

@solo,

I am progressing. Actually, I had to build a cleanser module because all the contours I have seen so far have many glitches that prevent correct generation of terrain.

For your terrain, just send me the contours and I will see if TopoShaper can handle it.

Fredo