what is your workflow for recreating a specific site in 3D ?

[khaledbou]

Hello everyone, quick question.

 

Once you get the geo coordinates of a project from your client, how do you go about creating that site?

 

let's suppose the site slopped, has a complex network of roads and it is located in an area where google doesn't offer street view and neither 3d buildings, also the client doesn't have a topographic map but you want to be as close to reality as possible.

what tools would you use? what services (payed or free) would help in this case?

[Gregory Davis]

I would tell them they need to hire a surveyor and get a crew out there to get some real data for topo, spot elevations, and locate the streets, buildings, existing trees and any other hardscapes. I usually tell local clients it will be more precise and in the end cheaper & faster just to have the site surveyed and sent to me in CAD form, rather than sending a 3D artist out to do a quasi survey.... (I mean, they don't ask the surveyor to do 3D renderings, right?)

 

I should note that this is on a case by case basis - we end up doing a lot of quasi-surveys...

 

But with larger scale / complicated sites as this sounds....i would push for a real survey.

 

Cheers!

GD

[notamondayfan]

If you don't have any topographic data, then you have 2 choices.

 

1 - Eyeball it, which might be OK if it's a simple site, and the client is happy for you to do that.

 

2 - Pay for surveyors / other services to give you the data you need, then re-create accurately. This would be a bit extreme though, as I'd expect architects / client to have this data already, and unless you've costed for this of course.

 

Dean

[Rodolfo Tanno]

This is quite common in my work. I basically use photos from the site and cadmapper (http://cadmapper.com).

With Cadmapper I import the basic geometry, as there is not much precision, I even add details and improve the geometry, based on the photos I receive. The final result is approximate, but for visualization is more than enough.

I would only ask the client to hire a surveyor if I were responsible for the project and execution of the work.