vimutti

Thanks! I just checked T-Splines out. What an amazing plugin. Now I have to save some $ to be able to get it. Its almost like an entire modeling program in itself.

Hi Maurio, you are welcome - hope it helps a little. If yours is a project that an owner needs responsible accuracy from, either you or the owner should contract with a licensed surveyor or civil engineer to send you a digital file - they can send whatever format would be customary for you to do your work - .dwg. plines would be a common format and works great in Rhino. Any artistic renderings you might do would be clearly noted as "Conceptual Sketch" or something like that. But you already know all that. The link is at the very bottom of the webpage - this one you are looking at! There are 4 or 5 topics there - at least there in my browser, last thing on the page. best, v

Hi, What is your intended use? Accuracy or convincing rendering – or both? Quick and easy would be: If your original input is accurate civil/surveyor's splines (or can be converted to this as .dwg) then why not just import them and then loft them? For accuracy and convincing rendering check out the links at the bottom of the page here – “Terrain Modeling Help” has a lot of good suggestions. For convincing rendering, I sometime use a combo of the terrain generator normal map output from GeoControl 2 on top of an accurate topo from a surveyor which has been lofted as above – putting both inside a decent rendering package. The terrain generated in GeoControl (or similar) must be intuitively generated as close as possible to the lofted topo in Rhino, then the 2 put together (Rhino loft and normal map) in the rendering package that can read a normal map – Viz or Cinema 4D or such. The normal map only describes the "visceral" surface of the terrain that you give it but does not significantly change the actual topo levels - it can be controlled. It can take a little while to learn one of the terrain generators, but it is worth it to output really nice renderings. They are not usually too expensive. Good luck

I've tried the 'Mesh To Solid' plugin to convert meshes to solids from within Rhino (4) and it crashes the machine. I admit it is a fairly big poly model imported from another software - from C4D actually. Is there another solution for this? I'd like to convert some old poly models for use eventually within Revit after working with them in Rhino. I plan to use the .sat format to exchange. Many thanks, vim

Hi, just joined this group hoping to get up to speed with Rhino. This looks like a good idea! I first got Rhino in 1999 and really liked it but did not use it very much - just kept upgrading and now have v.4 - which I'm getting back into again. It really has great features for architecture now and looks to be nearly as fast as C4D for sketching out masses. I've been using (ACAD, of course) Cinema 4D for ArchViz for years now and am planning to try to work with Rhino and maybe Brazil for primary ArchViz. I'll be looking for the render package that can use normal maps - for convincing terrains. The terrain generator I presently like is GeoControl which is in R2 beta now - lots of features which the Cinema 4D render engine uses very well. I look forward to exploring the Rhino/Revit connection through .sat file format. Our office owns 3 seats of Revit but they are presently timid to try to convert from many years of ACAD. I'm taking university classes in Revit and hope to give them the push off to convert - no one else here knows it well enough - actually either Revit or Rhino. I do a lot of the prelim and schematic design through DD and so then using and this combo seems such a natural for me now. Good luck to all here!

Here is a screenshot showing a test for the correct normal switches. Good thing there are only 3 switches! The right combo was difficult for me to find and the lighting had to be very simple to judge results. It seems that Cinema and GC don't know what each other are doing in aligning normals....or something. Plus each normal map out of GC seemed to be different. I think I will have to get into the shadow bias in Cinema next.

Here is one quick test for a slope map in GeoControl2 (Alpha). The left object is a relief object using the GC heightfield with no normal channel activated. On the right has the normal chanel activated with the normal map from GC plus simple textures and a little fusion bump using alphas. Not very pretty, I know. Was just trying to see what it would do in varied conditions.

Oh, apologies! I checked back for a week or so and it seemed there was no interest, so I just sorta forgot about it. So here is the deal. Check out the terrain builder "GeoControl" It will export a very high res normal map. In Cinema, put this normal map into the normal map channel of a material. (I'm using 9.2) You have to play with the normal's 3 variable settings and simple lighting source to get it right. It is not very intuitive - or not to me yet anyway. Also export from GeoControl the hightfield map - lower res is OK. Put this heightfield bitmap into a relief object and run the relief object up to around 300 - 400 width and depth segments. It still won't look like much until the Normals map is added as a material. You dont have to make it editable, but you can if desired. This process gives the same result as a very very high poly and high res object (simulating around a million or more polys) that still will not bog down average machines. I try to get fairly close to the contours I need in Geocontrol - with varying success so far. slowly I'm getting a handle on it. When I get it into Cinema, then if not close enough to the contours I need, I will make the relief object editable and use the magnet tool or whatever to tune it up a bit. In GC there are ways to get spectacular close-up detail by "cutting" and repeat cutting. Use several relief objects if you really get into it! I've tried high res and high polygon imports from other terrain generators (as .objs) and it just almost shuts my machine down. Get a few nice trees going and some grass and it all stops being fun any more. GeoControl 2, which is in Alpha testing now, has slope, exposure and heightfield maps. So now slopes and various altitudes and the north side of terrains (for example) can be treated differently in all the ways Cinema can work with a bitmap. Export different slopes for different shaders maybe and combine a heightfield with a southwest exposure map put into the alpha channel or a fusion channel and it can get interesting. I shoot photos of big rocks and make up massive .jpgs to use on the terrains of some jobsites here in New Mexico. GeoControl takes some experimenting to get used to it. I still don't know all the major tricks with it but it is pretty stable and mostly forgiving. I'll be putting together a tutorial for Cinema when I do get a handle on the basics. The documentation is a bit sparse at this point and GC uses much different methods to get really handsome terrains. Release 2 will be really spectacular. Good luck. Keep an eye on my website for a little tutorial in a few months. site is: highdesertstudio dot net

Over they years I've tried some things to get good landscapes in Cinema. This is posted here in case others are interested. I now use GeoControl terain generator and normals maps in the normals channel. The contours are approximations - not accurate. Hope this may be of some interest. Just ask if you are interested and I'll provide more info. vim