Clip Image by Group Extent

ryangarnett

Hello All,

I was curious if anyone knows of a script, or a way to clip and underlying image with a group? For example, if I have a site model with imagery for the terrain, and buildings generated as groups that touch the terrain. I would like to be able to clip the terrain texture according to the extents of the group for each group.

If this is not available, is there a function in the API, like get group extent, or clip texture?

Thanks in advance...

Ryan

Dave R

Wouldn't Intersect Faces do the job? Instead of clipping to the extent of the group it would allow you to trim the terrain to fit the geometry. In some cases those might be the same however if your group is not a simple box, it might not.

ryangarnett

Thanks Dave. I am unsure. I have a script that looks at unique group names and saves each unique group out as a sketchup model. For example, if I have 100 buildings in a site model, and each building has a unique group name, then 100 .skp will be written. The issue I am facing is that the terrain texture will be written out to each building model. My terrain texture is very detailed, so it is also large in size, making each building model large in size. I am looking for a way to modify my export, so that only the extent of the terrain texture around the building model is used and saved in the building model, which will significantly reduce the size of the building models.

Dave R

I think I see what you mean, now. So how do you define the limits of the terrain texture for each building?

ryangarnett

Hi Dave,
I use a plugin that allows me to bring in georeferenced aerial imagery as the terrain texture. The same plugin allows me to bring in the buildings in from a shapefile polygon. The plugin will group the buildings according to a unique code in the attribute table, and will extrude the buildings according to the height in the attribute table. When the buildings are imported into SU, they intersect the imported aerial imagery, and texture the horizontal planes (roofs) with the underlaying texture.

ryangarnett

A manual process that we found was to use the Make Unique Texture. Now it would be to run that in batch on all horizontal faces with an elevation greater than zero. Thoughts?