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    [Proto] Generating Terrain from a Cloud of Points

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    • fredo6F Offline
      fredo6
      last edited by

      @roland joseph said:

      I am saying for me at least generating a terrain with cloud point is not very exciting. It would be selfish to say I would rather a talent like you work on other things. πŸ˜„

      I think that generation of terrain is an essential feature for Sketchup, not to say that making organic shapes from control points can be useful too.
      Actually, this is not something simple to develop in Ruby, because of the lack of efficient algorithms and the variety of topological situation. So nothing straightforward in this plugin project.

      Fredo

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      • R Offline
        roland joseph
        last edited by

        You are saying this one has you absorbed. If your motivation is the challenge then for sure I understand. Just one last curious question. Is this a personal effort or has it been brought on by pressure from others?

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        • pbacotP Offline
          pbacot
          last edited by

          Nice work Fredo! I think the generation of terrain is very important. I would offer some examples but I am not too connected on this end of things. Usually I am working from contours provided by others who have already developed them from points. I wouldn't know what the original data is like. You've made great contribution to this functionality in SketchUp that was pretty backwards just a short time ago, falling behind programs like Bonzai even. With ThomThom's, Tig's and ValiArchitect's tools, as well, things have changed radically for this sort of work. Thanks, Peter

          MacOSX MojaveSketchUp Pro v19 Twilight v2 Thea v3 PowerCADD

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          • JClementsJ Offline
            JClements
            last edited by

            Fredo,

            A fellow who works for my previous employer, Brown and Caldwell Environmental Engineers, suggested downloading 2006 LIDAR data for the state of Ohio here:

            http://gis3.oit.ohio.gov/geodatadownload/osip.aspx

            Hopefully, they aren't too big of datasets.

            John | Illustrator | Beaverton, Oregon

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            • fredo6F Offline
              fredo6
              last edited by

              @jclements said:

              Fredo,

              A fellow who works for my previous employer, Brown and Caldwell Environmental Engineers, suggested downloading 2006 LIDAR data for the state of Ohio here:

              http://gis3.oit.ohio.gov/geodatadownload/osip.aspx

              Hopefully, they aren't too big of datasets.

              John,

              Thanks. The link does not seem to work however.

              Anyway, the current prototype is not really adapted to LIDAR data in general, due to the density and volumes. I may come one of these days with something adpated to this cases.

              Fredo

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              • R Offline
                rodman100
                last edited by

                Here's some data to try out...a survey CAD drawing, both 3D and 2D, together with raw data (600 points, an interpolated 5m grid of the data and a visual of the terrain model as generated by the data.


                Survey Data.zip

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                • fredo6F Offline
                  fredo6
                  last edited by

                  @rodman100

                  Thanks very much, very interesting model. I imported from the dwg and had to eliminate an aberrant point.

                  The results are in the attached SKP, based on different level of smoothing (best seems to be 25 deg.)
                  Rodman100 - survey.skp

                  Difficult for me however to say whether the terrain corresponds to the reality. Maybe you have some idea.

                  Fredo

                  Rodman100 - Survey - 25 -3.png

                  Rodman100 - Survey.gif

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                  • R Offline
                    rodman100
                    last edited by

                    Terrain Model c.jpgThat looks good Fredo from the gif, I'm still on SU V14 so can't see your posted model but the surface looks similar to my terrain model, which from memory looked like the actual terrain. The contours can differ slightly when generated solely from points (as in my attached terrain model) as this method does not take breaklines (distinct interruption in the slope of a surface, such as a ridge, road, or stream)into account. But that depends very much on the particular site.

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                    • pilouP Offline
                      pilou
                      last edited by

                      You say cloud of points, but seems it's very similar of a cloth falling on volumes ?
                      Maybe a cloth algorithm will be more speedy ?

                      Frenchy Pilou
                      Is beautiful that please without concept!
                      My Little site :)

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                      • pbacotP Offline
                        pbacot
                        last edited by

                        @rodman100 said:

                        [attachment=0:aclpnu4d]<!-- ia0 -->Terrain Model c.jpg<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:aclpnu4d]

                        I want my models to look this nice. πŸ˜„

                        MacOSX MojaveSketchUp Pro v19 Twilight v2 Thea v3 PowerCADD

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                        • ArcA Offline
                          Arc
                          last edited by

                          see this video
                          http://youtu.be/TgFYucpBBKs

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                          • fredo6F Offline
                            fredo6
                            last edited by

                            @rodman100 said:

                            That looks good Fredo from the gif, I'm still on SU V14 so can't see your posted model but the surface looks similar to my terrain model, which from memory looked like the actual terrain. The contours can differ slightly when generated solely from points (as in my attached terrain model) as this method does not take breaklines (distinct interruption in the slope of a surface, such as a ridge, road, or stream)into account. But that depends very much on the particular site.

                            Here is the file in SU2014
                            Rodman100 - survey - SU14.skp

                            Fredo

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                            • fredo6F Offline
                              fredo6
                              last edited by

                              @arc said:

                              see this video
                              http://youtu.be/TgFYucpBBKs

                              That's what I said. There are specialized application to treat massive volumes of points and generate heightmaps. So handling it in Sketchup is really just a convenience for very simple cases.

                              Fredo

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                              • fredo6F Offline
                                fredo6
                                last edited by

                                Here are additional pictures

                                • one with a Tri-mesh from the Cloud Point
                                • the other with a Quadmesh generated from the iso-contours of the tri-mesh terrain
                                  Rodman100 - survey - SU14.skp

                                Fredo

                                Rodman100 - Survey 2.png

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                                • M Offline
                                  mac1
                                  last edited by

                                  @fredo6 said:

                                  @roland joseph said:

                                  I am saying for me at least generating a terrain with cloud point is not very exciting. It would be selfish to say I would rather a talent like you work on other things. πŸ˜„

                                  I think that generation of terrain is an essential feature for Sketchup, not to say that making organic shapes from control points can be useful too.
                                  Actually, this is not something simple to develop in Ruby, because of the lack of efficient algorithms and the variety of topological situation. So nothing straightforward in this plugin project.

                                  Fredo

                                  Not by wheel house but using posted point cloud data must be predicated on high confidence the data you are using is "good". Some of the data you have used looks good visually but appears to include several data sets and some of the vertex normals questionable.You cannot tell that by using SU to just look at the data. "....You probably do not need shading so using a mesh built using Voronoi Filtering may be more useful but it needs a very clean data set to work with."
                                  Ref http://meshlabstuff.blogspot.com/2009/09/meshing-point-clouds.html. I am guessing contacting them they may very well have good test case for you?

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                                  • utilerU Offline
                                    utiler
                                    last edited by

                                    This is a super plugin, Fredo! I'll be sure to get it..... πŸŽ‰ πŸŽ‰ πŸŽ‰

                                    purpose/expression/purpose/....

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                                    • fredo6F Offline
                                      fredo6
                                      last edited by

                                      @mac1 said:

                                      Not by wheel house but using posted point cloud data must be predicated on high confidence the data you are using is "good". Some of the data you have used looks good visually but appears to include several data sets and some of the vertex normals questionable.You cannot tell that by using SU to just look at the data. "....You probably do not need shading so using a mesh built using Voronoi Filtering may be more useful but it needs a very clean data set to work with."
                                      Ref http://meshlabstuff.blogspot.com/2009/09/meshing-point-clouds.html. I am guessing contacting them they may very well have good test case for you?

                                      Well no intention to mimic a Meshlab that can swallow 9 millions points. Instead my design goal with this plugin is to generate a surface from a few points (say a few tens or hundreds). Therefore, I am more faced to a problem of interpolation than filtering. My question and the reason I wanted to have sample model is to test interpolation algorithms.

                                      By the way what is exactly Voronoi filtering (The Meshlab demos refers to Poisson disk)?

                                      I do agree that the original data are important because they do influence the shape. Unfortunately, even if I wrote some part of the script in C, I don't think I can produce an interactive version where you could edit, move and delete points and see instantly the impact on the terrain.

                                      Fredo

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                                      • M Offline
                                        mac1
                                        last edited by

                                        @fredo6 said:

                                        @mac1 said:

                                        By the way what is exactly Voronoi filtering (The Meshlab demos refers to Poisson disk)?

                                        Fredo

                                        I can not give exact definition but is my understanding is the output is more of an interpolation of the input data rather than a estimation like some of the other filters. The voronoi filter is included in meash lab program and this link is rather interesting and covers how to convert the veronoi shell to a solid suitable for 3 printing http://meshlabstuff.blogspot.com/2009/04/creating-voronoi-sphere-2.html

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