[Plugin][$] TopoShaper - v2.7a - 01 Apr 24

fredo6

Matt,

I had a look. In the area you mention, the issue is that your contours correspond to an overhang. This is not something TopoShaper can handle correctly.

Topo - Matt Gordon.png

Overhang - Matt Gordon topo.png

More generally, I think you can do with less contours, as anyway the shape of the terrain is driven by the grid resolution.

Fredo

Panga

Hi Fredo,

First feedback on Toposhaper. Nice tool but I'll have two request in order to make it near to perfection :

Is that possible that Toposhaper can handle guide points with contours simultaneously to generate terrains ? I often have points and contours to define my terrain and that was a big limitation in native sandbox.

I tried to edit my points (components) where I replaced the point by a little cross but Toposhaper ignores them as they are too small in comparison of other contours.

Next, as we have in Artisan, is that possible to have a crease tool in Toposhaper. I often have a closed contour in border of my terrain and I would like that Toposhaper keeps exactly that contour to define terrain border.

Hope I'm clear...I'll do more feedback soon.

Thanks again Fredo.

fredo6

@panga said:

Is that possible that Toposhaper can handle guide points with contours simultaneously to generate terrains ? I often have points and contours to define my terrain and that was a big limitation in native sandbox.

This is possible. Point of altitudes could be based on Construction points and small cross components. Simply, the algorithm may not give perfect results if you have too many. Points should be more to mark hill tops, but not as a substitute of iso-contours.

In the meantime, use circles which have roughly the size of the mesh cells.

@panga said:

Next, as we have in Artisan, is that possible to have a crease tool in Toposhaper. I often have a closed contour in border of my terrain and I would like that Toposhaper keeps exactly that contour to define terrain border.

I did the implementation actually just to see, with adjustable creases. The major problem is that the mesh does not follow the contours and therefore you will not obtain the desired result. One evolution I was planning to do is to constrain the mesh to a few contours designated by the user (hence the small editor in the Preview mode). Then it is easy to make them creases and influence the neighboring slope.

That will be for future releases, not immediately, as I am doing some repackaging of my scripts.

Fredo

pbacot

I wish just to upload this example made from survey contours (as produced by a civil engineer in California) for reference as you like. It also contains sections I made with "create group from slice" and set to scenes for overlay in Layout (shown in previous post way back on first page).

Old Coach topo.zip

JGA

Fredo,
Thanks for sharing & providing the excellent documentation to go with it.

jemagnussen

Hi Fredo,

Working with Win 7 and SU 2013, downloaded toposhaper and LibFredo6 4.9c and have problem staring this. I get errors when starting SU 2013:

Error Loading File bootstrap_TopoShaper.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::T6
Error Loading File TopoShaperAAMixin.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::T6
Error Loading File TopoShaperAlgo.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::TopoShaperAlgo::TopoShaperContour_mixin
Error Loading File TopoShaperCleanser.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::T6
Error Loading File TopoShaperDialogs.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::T6
Error Loading File TopoShaperTool.rb
uninitialized constant TopoShaper::T6
Error Loading File __loader.rb
undefined method `effective_load' for nil:NilClass

Any ideas on what to do?

Best regards
Jesper

fredo6

Jesper,

You simply did a wrong installation and does not end up with the footprint required, as described in the first post. probably coming from your unzipping operation.

I would suggest you install once for all the SCF Plugin Store and then install plugins (TopoShaper and many others) from there, as you don't have to interact yourself with the unzipping operation.

Fredo

bulba

thanks a lot
still learning now

tomislavm

thank You!

filipeefilipe

am I ignorant?
Why is this plugin better than sandbox?

Filipe from Brazil

miikka1978

Thanks for this excellent plugin!

One question. I have a terrain with contours which is 3000x3000m. I have been using TopoShaper for creating terrain, but I have been running problems when changing the grid size from 50x50 to 100x100. TopeShaper always gets stuck in 63% (calculating boundaries). Has anybody else had similar problems?

fredo6

@miikka1978 said:

Thanks for this excellent plugin!

One question. I have a terrain with contours which is 3000x3000m. I have been using TopoShaper for creating terrain, but I have been running problems when changing the grid size from 50x50 to 100x100. TopeShaper always gets stuck in 63% (calculating boundaries). Has anybody else had similar problems?

If you can, could you open the Ruby console when you do the test 100x100 just in case there is a message displayed.
Otherwise, may be the best is to post or PM the model.

Fredo

miikka1978

I just checked Ruby console but there was nothing. I will PM the model.

fredo6

@miikka1978 said:

I just checked Ruby console but there was nothing. I will PM the model.

I answered the PM.
The problem is due to an artificial rectangular hull which you includes in the terrain. This prevents to calculate the correct concave hull and therefore the zone of influence of contours.

Fredo

PS: By the way, your model is quite complex, but apparently Toposhaper could deal with it

bobpineo

Toposhaper screen capture Hello Fredo
Love your script!
Can't tell you how long I have hoped for something like this.

I am having a problem with a large topo map I am working on.
As illustrated in the attached image, when I go to preview created mesh there are lines that do not correlate with my topo set.
When I generate the mesh, i get this type of deviation.
Can you suggest what might be going wrong?
many thanks in advance.
Best.
Bob Pineo

Result on mesh

bobpineo

Fredo,
Thought it would be helpful if you had topos in case you wanted to run script yourself.
Here is a link to Dropbox.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0brplieftg8p27v/just%20raw%20mesh%20for%20TIG.skp

Best.
BP

fredo6

@bobpineo,

Your contour map is extremely large, with close to 30,000 edges, 750 contours, 400 automatic junctions, but also extremely dense, since contours are separated by a very small distance.

It's a miracle that TopoShaper (and Ruby underneath) can do something with it!

There are a number of problems that I detected:

do not simplify the contours. There are only 12 simplified, but the contour map is so dense that the simplification creates overlaps with adjacent contours.
watch out some automatic junctions at the periphery. Some are overlapping.
there seems to be a bug in Toposhaper, because I observe some shadow straight contours in the Preview mode (but not in the Cleanser mode). I keep your model and will have a closer look at it. It may be related to the calculation of the Concave hull.

I run the generation with a 100 x 69 and obtained a result which is not too bad. But with the density of the contours, I think that the sampling should be over 300 x 200 to exploit the high definition of the contours.

I can't tell you what to do exactly to avoid some of the artefacts you may observe, except maybe to remove some contours and try again.

Fredo

Bobpineo contours - shadow lines.png

Bobpineo contours - generation.png

bobpineo

Thanks Fredo.
Yes you are right, this was a dense a map, but I thought I would get as high a resolution as possible because I thought the denser mesh would provide finer resolution for up close shots.
The way I solved the problems showing up when I ran the plugin was to open the sketchup file twice, and arrange each one on my split screens. I ran Topo Shaper on one file, and where I noticed a particular problem on one of the contours I would spend some time on it figuring out what was going on.
In some cases there was an odd remnant that had to be removed, in other case I just deleted that entire line.
in the end, and once the problems where identified and fixed the mesh was created without any trouble.
Thanks so much for this plugin, its been wonderful.
Best.
BP

ly871108

The Chinese version by GUANJIN is too bad ,and lots of Chinese friends ask me to translate the TOPOSHAPER in Chinese again.It spends me a lot of energy and time.This one must be the best Chinese version.Enjoy it!Thank You!

Here is a contrast:LY's and GUANJIN's.

You will find the truth.
SketchUpBAR LY871108

fredo6

Bob,

Glad to see that you finally found some workarounds.

My experience with the few contour maps I have been using for testing is that the resolution of the contours should always be put in perspective of the required mesh definition. Toposhaper is based on interpolation, which means that intermediate contours below the resolution of the mesh won't really be useful. In the case of your terrain, I think you needed a resolution above 300 x 200 to exploit all the details of your contours.

I still think there are some bugs left in TopoShaper and your contour map will be useful for me to track them (and hopefully fix them in a next release).

Fredo