Posts made by gealagie

These are helpful, thank you. I was successful with tests of these workflows just now and got the results i wanted--when I was very mindful that the group from which elements to be moved (selected, grouped and re-assigned to the other layer) still resides on that original layer. I think I'm trying to add to your suggestions that you need to explode (or ungroup--that does mean the same thing as explode, right?)the group in the layer of origin (Layer 0) before reassigning it to the destination layer. Otherwise the reassigned elements are still in a group that's attached to layer 0 and will not be visible on the destination layer if the destination layer is the only one turned on. Am I making any sense? My project is pretty cluttered with close-fitting groups on different layers and I may have been afraid in the past to ungroup all these TIN elements for fear I'd never get the remainder back together in a group again! Truly in my mind a toggle switch to switch ALL layers on and off at once would be helpful on projects like mine.

Pilot error again, sorry. I imported all these terrain surfaces at an earlier stage of SketchUnderstanding, and I see I have a few things associated to layers differently than planned. Now that I'm older and wiser, I'll watch more closely for those errors.

I need to wrap this test project up soon. The plan now is to finish the geometry, apply smoothing to each of the terrain surfaces (which I've tested), apply color and/or some canned rock-like texture to them, and then render. Render--I'm not even sure I understand exactly what that encompasses and what possibilities exist. I assume it's basically light settings (multiple lights are possible, I hope) and allowing shadows and such. I envisage this "cliffscape/canyonscape" bathed in a warm morning light, but there are lots of nooks and crannies that should be properly illuminated should a viewer want to navigate into one of them to investigate. I'm not ready to buy a special rendering package right now--would like to exhaust what SU has to offer first. Any suggestions?

I will also tell you another thing I have done and why. This model is so large (I think 81,500+ elements), that at some point orbiting and panning would cause several of the groups (individual surfaces) to disappear which only their box-frames visible during the actual orbit or pan. The solution I tried seems to work--I can use the orbit, pan and zoon tools to guide someone through the model without this happening. What I did was save out a secondary, "presentation" file within which I then exploded every group in the model and regrouped everything together in one group. I know it's a dead end file with regard to significant additional model changes, but except for making some areas invisible (which is no longer possible in it), it seems to be fairly stable for demonstrating the geometry. I have no idea what unforeseen consequences I might encounter with it this afternoon! Can you think of any?

Simple style, attached!

Okay, if and until something turns up it's save separate files to save different animations (messy but it works!). I'll probably just make one animation long and boring....

It's a very good overview, Dale. Thank you. I'm having fun with this. Now that question again: can I save multiple animations?

I'm discovering the jumpiness in my large model. It's not too bad, but definitely jumps to the new scene in steps, rather than continuously smooth camera flow. I think I'm getting the hang, but i don't see the place to save various animations (various collections of scenes).

So is an animation just a collection of still scenes? Like a power point presentation? Or can it be a true, continuous fly-through movie?

That's a great idea, Dale. That's one more thing I have no knowledge of yet! I am looking for the video tutorial on scenes--I'm sure I watched on once before. I might as well explore that area and animations in general. Can you point me to a source?

Thanks for the advise, Gaieus. And thank you, Chris. Although I would like to very much, I may be unable to share the file of this stuff with you. This IS of a confidential oil "bidness" nature--and I really need the whereabouts of this actual geology keep secret (my personal info as well, Gaieus!). I don't want the Government of Madagascar, no, Corsica (Tasmania? Falklands?) to become upset that their area has been exposed.

As it turns out I have a reprieve to a later date for the meeting I mentioned, so I can explore a few more things to better sell the idea of replacing 2d map representations of 3d geometry with solid 3d modeling.

Yes, I typed 200' and Enter, but it appears to get a little confused when you are standing 1860' below the surface! I'll tell you though, the Walk tool is the solution to being able to view features down in the "canyons". Before this I viewed and edited in those places by making groups obstructing my view invisible. Walk sets the camera without regard to what geometry is behind you. Dhuh! Like touring inside a building! Hey, I'm still an infant, okay?

Yes Gaieus those are exactly my thoughts.

Wow Pos Cam and Look Arnd are cool but being set to the scale of a mere human (i.e., 5' 6" over the surface) my model is a bit overwhelming! Here's something I had not foreseen: in Look Around I type the elevation I want my eyes to be (above the surface I'm standing) and I get weird things happening--usually I end up beneath the surface. Then I remembered--in all these imports the Z (blue) is negative. The entirety of my model is underground with a small exception. It would be helpful to adjust a setting where the little Position Camera icon man "lands" his eyes about 200-300 feet over the surface, rather than at 5' 6". Do you know how?

I know I am loading this forum up ahead of responses, but today I'm going to present the work so far to The Deciders (at 3pm US CST), so I'll probably try a few more things and then I want to poke around with Look Around, Position Camera and Walk--which until now I've not even tried out! Somehow I got the impression early those were basically tools to "shoot" an animation, rather than ways other than the zoom, pan and orbit tools to observe the model. I want to know more about creating a fly-through animation--beginning with whether it's possible without additional software--but today I'll have no time to learn all that.

I have also played just a little bit with Styles and Shadows. Most of those Styles are cool but a little too arty for my technical application. I think Simple Style (under Default styles) is my choice among those (see attached). I didn't play with Shadows much--the model naturally faces north so unless I can get the sun to rise in the ne and set in the nw, I would have to rotate the whole shebang. I can do that, of course, in a saved alternate file. I might try that.

The view without edges is okay, but some of the drama is missing. The lighting also appears "overexposed" to my taste when the edges are turned off. I would very much like the Profiles edge style if all the edges other than the perimeter edges would remain hidden, which they won't. The no edges view is better on close-ups (see second attachment), probably because it does look so washed out by the lighting. I thought I had remembered from my review of the video tutorials that there were lighting settings possible, but I can't find those now. I have a very full featured lighting controller (with five spot directions possible) in a geophysical 3d visualizer package--I think I was thinking SU had the same.

I would like to adopt the workflow you and others use. I believe you create raw geometry on layer 0 and cut/paste it to a layer you have defined. I have tried that and only in a few instances have been successful--I go where I want it pasted and find both Paste and Paste in Place grayed-out. Specifically, I cut or copy selected elements from layer 0 (typically the selection would be from a group so I would be in group edit mode in layer 0 with layer 0 active), close the edit on layer 0, activate the destination layer, and then find the Pasties grayed out in the pull-down menu! I'm doing something wrong.

Thank you. Editing it seemed to jog it out of its confusion.

Still something peculiar about that group. I selected all the groups in the project (with intent to rotate them all in unison), and now this trouble group (the one that was red and I unlocked) remains black instead of blue when the supergroup is selected and it fails to rotate with the supergroup. Any ideas?

Ok. I right clicked and Unlocked it. So what does it mean to be locked? Just dis-enables any modifications?

Eeeek. What does it mean when a group turns RED?