Best method to create faces for complex shapes?
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@kenny said:
I agree with Box, the Sandbox tool should be fine for the example shown with the house.
For creating roads on a terrain the following script is very useful:
http://www.valiarchitects.com/subscription_scripts/instant-road-nuiThey charge too much for a subscription based script, no matter how wonderful it is.
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@roland joseph said:
@unknownuser said:
Roland Joseph, from your images, it seems you only work with VERY planar streetscapes.
No...I live in Ontario. There is no flat ground in Ontario anywhere.....sorry Windsor is flat.
@unknownuser said:
It results in sideways sloped streets
No, you need to start with a relatively accurate mesh.
The roads can be contoured and flattened as per drawings manually with a projected image as a guide before you start building road mesh.Just like building on the site. Once you have a road bed you can cut the roads in easily.
This example would represent a more typical street contour in Ontario.... http://ibuildmodels.com/JMC2/beaverton/intersections.html
All of it with TOS.now, this is a very nice example with realistic terrain.
it would be awesome if you could show your workflow, from autocad drawings to the modelling of the streets and sidewalks, etc.
as I gather...
1 - you create a terrain from the elevation lines.
2 - you project an IMAGE of the project (including cities, etc) over the terrain, so you can flatten some surfaces for roads, etc. Can you give some more details on this workflow? Do you use the standard SKP terrain tools or Artisan?
3 - you use ToS to draw the streets, sidewalks, over the terrain, which is already painted with the image of the project, making it easy to paint it. (why you use ToS instead of DRAPING the DWG streets, etc?)
4 - you extrude stuff up (or maybe down, if you do with the streets) with Joint Push Pull?
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I think Aces' current mesh is better than what Sandbox offers for most cases. A regular mesh is best--I think something cleaner or simpler in the radiuses would be helpful prior to proceeding.
Would like to know Roland's modeling approach, for example curbs and ramps, given a particular street grade. I'd say those are perfect examples, not to mention the rendering.
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@unknownuser said:
1 - you create a terrain from the elevation lines.
2 - you project an IMAGE of the project (including cities, etc) over the terrain, so you can flatten some surfaces for roads, etc. Can you give some more details on this workflow? Do you use the standard SKP terrain tools or Artisan?
3 - you use ToS to draw the streets, sidewalks, over the terrain, which is already painted with the image of the project, making it easy to paint it. (why you use ToS instead of DRAPING the DWG streets, etc?)
4 - you extrude stuff up (or maybe down, if you do with the streets) with Joint Push Pull?
Yes to all of the above. The terrain can come from contour lines or a point cloud or just google mesh corrected by hand with the CAD drawings. I prefer the google mesh approach and you can get pretty accurate with the sandbox and by moving vertices by hand using the directional arrows as guides. I take many photos of the site and try to capture the elevations everywhere so that I can tune the mesh by hand. (note: the inference engine in SU is the prize to beat all prizes for this method. As far as I am concerned it has made Sketchup what it is today in terms of popularity. But like anything you have to practice. When I first started moving vertices around manually I had no idea and it was very painful but like any fine instrument, if you put in the hours it becomes second nature. I am glad I persevered cause moving mesh is easy now. (ask any SU car builder how good he is at moving vertices manually)
@unknownuser said:
DRAPING the DWG streets, etc?)
Oh my god no!!! building the roads and then trying to attach them via drape creates a nightmare mesh that is impossible to work with. The streets are normally way too complex.
@unknownuser said:
modeling approach, for example curbs and ramps
Where the curbs/ramps break down the original CAD is created as you see it so that it can simply be folded flat to the pavement by selecting the lines manually. After folding you can smooth it by using "from contours". The transition becomes seamless this way.
It is best to experiment with SU creating the template where the sidewalk breaks down so that you can use the template mesh in the initial CAD. -
if you don´t drape the DWG over the mesh, how do you separate parts to use different materials (Example, grass, pavement, sidewalks, etc)
You use ToS on it? But won´t ToS also create a nightmarish mesh impossible to work with?
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I have to say that although I use meshes formed by taking a site level survey, then creating a point cloud and triangulate in SU to form a mesh, (only smoothing once all model editing is done - because it makes editing easier), I am lost with some of the discussions here.
In that case, I'm not sure if this is relevant or helpful but I personally create a mesh for my garden landscapes, (admittedly they're not huge), and then turn that mesh into a "solid" group. I can then use the solid tools to cut away at the mesh if terracing is needed, cut buildings or objects into it, (which would also be solids) and generally interact with the mesh without creating nightmare geometry. If any terrain then needs tweaking around the new additions, this is easily done by manipulating points on the mesh.
Like I said... Not sure if that helps, but it works for all my garden design projects.
Secondly, I'm not sure how "real world" it is when people drape roads, etc. over existing terrains. It may provide a visual, but obviously road contours would never follow all the humps and bumps of a real-world terrain. They'd be contoured to follow the terrain to some degree, with the correct gradients / cross falls / cambers of the road being used and the terrain adjusted around the road accordingly. I just mention this because some methods of work you see for terrains are great for creating hypothetical / semi-accurate terrain look alikes, rather than models of an actual terrain, (if you see what I mean).
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@Catstock:
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one alternative is to use Roads Nui plugin, but it´s an expensive plugin that is subscription based ($40 dollars per year)
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another is like mentioned by Roland, to paint a bmp of the dwg over the bumpy original terrain then to smooth it out and do "earth works", etc, in the terrain, following the bmp.
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but after it is smoothed in the right places, I still wonder what methods Roland and you would use aside from draping. How to lay the roads, curbs, sidewalks, etc, etc over the terrain except by draping?
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Hi Aces, thanks for the tips but I'm happy with my workflow method and don't need to change it.
In response to your points:
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If this plugin does the trick and saves you time, surely $40 is a very small amount to pay per year ? That said are you using SU for commercial use like me are "for fun" ?
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I personally don't see how draping a road on a mesh would work on anything but a very flat site, that is for anything other than a visual only type road - not a representation of a real road with real road characteristics. That said I could see how you could drape the road layout and then delete this area to enable you to construct the actual road within that cleared space. Obviously I could be totally wrong on this and some people may drape a road and then play around with its contours to adjust the levels - seems a long winded route to me.
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Like I said, I don't "drape" very often, I create the road, (more like paths, decks, lawns and patios in my case), in the 2D plane and then give them some depth to make them a solid and then "insert them into the mesh, (which usually represents the existing lawn and other levels surrounding the property). IF the property is as near to flat as makes little difference, I ignore all levels and create the whole model on a flat 2D plane.
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@calstock said:
Hi Aces, thanks for the tips but I'm happy with my workflow method and don't need to change it.
not trying to change your workflow. Trying to understand other people workflow so I can improve mine where I can or see fit.
@unknownuser said:
- If this plugin does the trick and saves you time, surely $40 is a very small amount to pay per year ? That said are you using SU for commercial use like me are "for fun" ?
that depends on your currency exchange rate, your other expenses and how much you will be using it and for how big projects.
@unknownuser said:
- I personally don't see how draping a road on a mesh would work on anything but a very flat site, that is for anything other than a visual only type road - not a representation of a real road with real road characteristics. That said I could see how you could drape the road layout and then delete this area to enable you to construct the actual road within that cleared space. Obviously I could be totally wrong on this and some people may drape a road and then play around with its contours to adjust the levels - seems a long winded route to me.
as mentioned earlier, draping directly over a terrain created from contours will result in a road full of bumps, sometimes tilted sideways, etc. But with Roland's method, you can first work on the terrain like a real terrain and smooth or flatten the places where the road will go over.
Then you drape the road streets from the dwg (Roland does not do this, but I am still waiting for him to explain better his workflow method).
@unknownuser said:
- Like I said, I don't "drape" very often, I create the road, (more like paths, decks, lawns and patios in my case), in the 2D plane and then give them some depth to make them a solid and then "insert them into the mesh, (which usually represents the existing lawn and other levels surrounding the property). IF the property is as near to flat as makes little difference, I ignore all levels and create the whole model on a flat 2D plane.
I don´t understand how you make the paths smoothly follow the terrain if you just extrude 2D planes.
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Aces, to say I never use the drape would be a fib....so sorry to confuse. I guess it would be best to say I
Youtube Video -
Sorry...made a mistake and can't edit....
As I was trying to say I do use the drape method depending on how clean the CAD is. Often I find it easier to hand trace small jobs and offset the curbs sidewalks etc. But from time to time when I have to mass up a lot of buildings I will drop the CAD onto the surface.
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