@tig said:

I know - it didn't exist till you asked for it...

thats great TIG, I had done a search but it had been futile... thanks a lot!

Is there a plugin or a way using the default drape tool, to drape, and the new contours on the mesh, already appear with the materials of the contour you used???

lets say I have a road I want to project over a complex mesh. In 2d, I am able to create the road contour, and in theory, its easy to make it asphalt. But what if I want to create the aslphalt lines, pedestrian crossings, etc? I can drape them over the mesh, but then I have to select like 500 different polygons to paint them into white lines? (if drape trnasfered material too, you could make the road lines and pedestrian crossing, select it all, paint white, and drape it over the mesh)

@plex said:

I second!

It is almost painful that one needs to jump hoops to use GE with Sketchup. I use pretty good product with AutoCAD that works fine for the purpose intended (plex.earth tools from plexscape.com), so it should be expected that after purchasing SU8 Pro and GE Pro you should have tolerable work-flow. Even C4D has plugin.

being able to select a large area, and Sketchup automatically importing several pieces and mounting the puzzle should be a must. If possible, also select areas of "focus", so in those areas Sketchup will import smaller, higher res pieces. If possible, already drapping the most detailed pieces over the larger, less detailed ones, and joining the higher detailed terrains (more triangles) with the less detailed ones (less triangles), in the borders only, of course...

so VUE can import directly from GoogleEarth?? With the textures? And how big an area can it import?

@gaieus said:

As for the logo (#5) - it would be against the TOS to hide/cover it if you use the imagery (I think). But actually any solution would be better than what we currently have.

what if you could have the logo only in the large image (total terrain, instead of every 200 meters (since several snapshots were captured)??

the TOS probably doesnt limit the size of the area in which the logo must exist... maybe it limits the size relation (lets say, if you capture 50x50 meters, the logo will be about 2 meters height... if you captured 500x500 meters, the logo would need to be 20 meters in height)

Its very cool that Sketchup8 imports terrain already colored from GoogleEarth... however, there are several issues for users who want to make a model using a large area (lets say, you want the terrain around an entire town!)

1 - the maximum terrain area you can grab each time is very small

2 - unlike in version 7 (when you used GoogleEarth), you can not pan with arrow keys anymore, just with the mouse. Thus, sometimes, you wont get multiple terrain captures in a straightline

3 - every time you make a capture, when you go to add more imagery, the window resets to the original position of the FIRST terrain captured. therefore, if you must capture like 50 different terrains, its VERY VERY burdensome to reposition in the correct spot every single time you will capture a new terrain

5 - it captures every piece of the terrain with some Google logo under it. Thus, when making new captures, you must position the square not onl in the correct position, but also be careful to position in a way that the area without the logo, of the new capture, will be OVER the area of a previous capture that displayed the logo.

5 - it seems terrain still does not matches quite perfectly. You can always use Didier´s terrain remath plugin, but applying all the textures again is next to impossible if you are dealing with big areas...

Can a plugin be made to import larger areas from GoogleEarth, maybe even allowing the selection of "focus areas" (the closer you get to the terrain, the more detail Sketchup captures... you USUALLY dont need huge detail for the entire model...

oh god damn... I just finished making the 3D Terrain (without roads yet). I only used the main contours (each 5 meters). Even so it was already a lot of work.

But to my surprise, when I created the mesh, some areas of the terrain have some severe problems, with faces appearing and disappearing when I rotate the mesh, or get close.

I went back some steps to when there were only lines in the model, and noticed that SOME LINES, when I get closer, also display strange behavior. In fact, some lines, when I get close and rotate around, make the whole screen "shake". Its very weird, but I had already noticed the same thing on some 3D models I once imported from autocad DWG file...

hmmm, ok, but doesnt the stamp creates a TOTALLY flat surface on the mesh?

I mean... if I stamp the flat road plan on the mesh, how to make the road go up and down later?

@tig said:

You do have contours but again these are all drawn 'flat'.

yes, I know

@unknownuser said:

Perhaps if you edited the CAD file and kept just the contours, long sections and road curbs etc... and gave 'elevation' [height] to the contours then maybe you could import that reduced set of info into a SKP and use the Sandbox tools to convert From Contours into a mesh...

ok, in theory you can do that directly from Sketchup, cant you? But I guess selecting the lines and cleaning the file on Sketchup would be harder...

@unknownuser said:

Then add faces to the 2D road plans and Sandbox Drape them over the land surface ?

yes, but how to pull up the curbs? And how to make the road flat??

As far as I understand, if I drape the road plan over the mesh, it will only crate "cut lines" over the mesh. But it will still follow all the mesh contours.

@charly2008 said:

Hi AcesHigh,

I think that these 2D drawings are from a originate CAD Road planning application. I think that you can not use ​​these drawings to create a 3D terrain. I've ever dealt with such programs for a while. And if I'm not mistaken, the model must be exported from the corresponding 3D CAD program as a 3D DXF file or a point cloud file.

Regards Charly

Can I do that myself, opening the DWG file in Autocad and re-exporting it again???

should I export one layer at a time as a 3D DXF file?

ok, thanks. But and what then? How to proceed next to create a terrain mesh from those lines?

added the file below... had to compact it with Winrar however, because it was larger than 4mb

AV TRAVESSÃO FERRABRAZ.rar

Dont know where to start on how to transform this DWG into a terrain... in Sketchup... adding streets could be easy with DRAPE, but then, how to pull up the sidewalks over the terrain??

I will attach the dwg file... if anyone can show me how to make a tiny part of it, I will take on the rest of the monumental task...

thats it, thanks a lot!!!

gee, I suck at Google Search... I did some 10 different searches, to no avail.

did you found it through Google or did you have an idea it was from Nomeradona´s blog?

Hi everybody. Some weeks ago I run across a tutorial on how to add grass to you rendered scene, without losing shadows, etc. It kind ended looking like the old method of Infinite Grass for VRAY (that doesnt work anymore on newer versions).

Anyway, the tutorial talked about using for your glass a SINGLE light green color (not a texture). Then you would render and make some selections in photoshop and replace the light green color with a grass texture... and the shadows over the grass would still be there!

UNFORTUNATELLY, it seems I did not bookmark the tutorial, and now I cant find it anymore!

Does anyone knows this technique? Or knows what tutorial I am talking about?

there are many uses for this plugin.

for example... think of 3D tiles on a roof. Each tile is a component. But the roof gets so artificial, with all the tiles exactly the same color, no stains, etc. With this plugin, you would be able to, for example, create some 10 different roof tiles, each of them a slight different color variation, some stains, etc. And randomly replace the original components along the entire roof.

another possibility: a building with a glass façade. Real such buildings will have curtains/blinds behind the windows. Make the the building with window components. The random replace them with OTHER window components, each window component with blinds in different positions (no blinds, blinds half way pulled, pulled down completely)

there are so many uses!!!

How do I re-select a specific imported object?? I imported a house and later imported other objects and placed them around that house. Now, I want to change some textures of the house, but I cant find its icon anymore... every icon I see belongs to the other imported objects! (mainly plants I imported and pasted all over the scene)

very interesting. Does it works if the light is INSIDE a component?

to me its clear, yes. One use for it too would be to replace thousands of windows on a skyscraper, with slightly different windows (lets say, some windows opened, others with curtains behind... it would also make it possible to create distorted glass reflections, among thousands of glass panels, without repetition)