training

i would love to have some training in terms of site work where the site pitches, including parking and even islands on that parking surface. i just can't get my head around it. i've attached a picture as an example. there's a building with a sidewalk around it, then parking surface (this one doesn't have islands, but would like to learn that too).

1. how do you deal with curb shapes that are swept from a flat area of parking down around onto a sloped area of the parking lot such that the gutter doesn't stick out at a right angle thus floating above the parking surface

2. what if you wanted to pitch towards drains?

anyway, anyone know of good online paid training? i prefer one-on-one because there are a lot of "but what if..." questions in these types of situations, like "what if the building itself is up a foot or two above the parking surface and you have to pitch the sidewalk (which i don't really think you do?) but how about pitching grass edges?

i think my biggest problem is dealing with this in a way that is relatively easy to repeat if site layout changes (all my projects are "work in progress") - a process of doing this.

thanks,

sg

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i would not do one on one training that is very expensive in the UK it's about £300 for 3 hours and i would never pay that i went to applied software in atlanta GA US if your looking for an training center i would go to the autodesk site and look up the ATC if you have that kind of money to which then i would do it but most don't

link http://www.autodesk.co.uk/adsk/servlet/partner/search?siteID=452932&id=15707518 (put in the country and the product and autodesk will pull up the training center in your country)

these are a lot of training material that are out there which are free like on youtube and also the ones you would need to pay a weekly, month, yearly subscription for

i've seen a lot of the free stuff, adapted different techniques, followed forums, used plugins etc. what i need is a good approach through specific example (ie one of my projects). i end up eating up a lot of time trying to figure out how i'm going to project A or project B then experimenting on each project. a lot of "canned" training is not specific enough.

for example, the building in my screen shot has a curved entry facing the parking lot (or, what if that were a cafeteria looking out over a retention pond). how do you go from that complex curve (keeping it's exact shape) into a clean surface without tons of long thin lines or tri's or multi-sided polygons? using boolean, shapemerges, just doesn't give a good clean result with crisp edges for curves in other pieces of geometry. it also doesn't give you the ability to push and pull vertices to "sculpt" the land mass.

thanks though,

yes there are a lot training softwares, plugins etc you are never gonna find everything you want online! from books to training dvds because they are not specific enough the book i liked is 3ds Max 2010 Architectural Visualization (Advanced to Expert) but you can only get it on kindle because is was about $140 in colour paperback, i think they disconutined it,

anywho have you tried the numbs curves? it's a good tool but some people don't recommed it or have you tried the sweep modifier.

example

The Sweep modifier is used to extrude a cross-section along an underlying spline or NURBS curve path. It is similar to the Loft compound object but is a more efficient method. The Sweep modifier allows you to work with a series of pre-made cross-sections such as angles, channels and wide flanges. You can also use your own splines or NURBS curves as custom sections that you create in 3ds Max or import from other MAX files.

Note: This modifier is similar to the Extrude modifier in that once the Sweep is applied to a spline, the end result is a 3D mesh object. Both sections and paths can contain multiple splines or multiple NURBS curves.

This modifier is very useful for creating structural steel details, molding details, or in any situation where you need to extrude a section along a spline. also you can custom your own shape

i have not thought of the sweep... so make a profile of the contour of the land and then sweep that out. hm. ill have to try that.

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what about the Terrain in compound objects? maybe or maybe not?

The Terrain button lets you produce terrain objects. 3ds Max generates these objects from contour line data. You select editable splines representing elevation contours and create a mesh surface over the contours. You can also create a "terraced" representation of the terrain object so that each level of contour data is a step, resembling traditional study models of land forms.

• Visualizing the effects of grading plans in 3D.
  
• Maximizing views or sunlight by studying topographical undulation of land forms.
  
• Analyzing elevation changes by using color on the data.
  
• Adding buildings, landscaping, and roads to a terrain model to create virtual cities or communities.
  
• Viewing corridors and completing ridge analyses from particular locations on a site by adding cameras to the scene.
  

Model the basics with splines and set up what levels you can, then use Populate Terrain script to generate a quad topology that you can push/pull/sculpt. Have been using this technique for a while now and it is brilliant.

Ignore booleans, shape merges, etc. They generally produce crappy geometry.

Don't forget the glue tool. http://www.itoosoft.com/freeplugins/glue.php

You need to balance what is 3D versus what is considered "flat" when it comes to site work. Sure, the civil plans say there is a grade but do you visually see it? If the answer is no, then you are wasting time creating it versus just modeling it flat in 1/4 the time it takes to do it in full 3D.

Well what you are asking does not exist. Because as you mentioned it change from case to case. you can see and learn different techniques that you may have to decide how to apply to your particular case. But there is not only once recipe, sorry. As mentioned for others here, there is also many tools that could be applied to do the same. Populate terrain is a good one, glue too, shape merge, even cloth modifier could be use to do complex terrains. In this case for us is just hard labor. When I have this type of project I always try something new, and as Scott mentioned before I start anything I think, how much visible this would be and if it is really worth to go all way to details.

You also ask if there is anything that would help you to keep doing changes. The more flexible tools for me so far are I-too railclone and VRay distance text. If you get creative enough you can do a lot with those.

For instance for site in my last project with inclined terrain I used shape merge to define sidewalks, landscape and slabs areas, then used raiclone to build sidewalk, curves, ADA ramps. (Draw in 2D top view the splines then shape merge or glue to terrain) for everything parking striped ADA marking on floor and hardscape I used the original CAD lines with VRay distant text (hidden splines extruded). any change or adjust was done in the original CAD and updated easily with the VRay shader, raiclone you just move the spline around and everything will adapt. of course there is some mesh issues here and there but is way better than re-model, merge, collapse and what not that you have to do otherwise.

Hope this give you ideas to develop a more flexible workflow.

best luck.

many years ago (I think around 5 to 6 years) 3DAS did a series of tutorials , one of which covered modeling sites and terrains. It might be a bit dated but the concepts still hold true. Maybe do a google / youtube search for 3DAS tutorials

Now 3DAS and Jeff have teamed up to form the CGSchool , check out the training tab for more info.

speaking of populate terrain - does that work in 2015 or 2016 max? i guess i should try it seems to me i did though and thus didn't uninstall 2014.

yep and i love glue too.

i've tried a lot. the way that appealed to me most at one point was starting with a plane and extruding edges. that's gets pretty crazy too. i did see a video on using the conform tool and relax modifiers to put a nice even plane over a terrain object. in the end though, seems like i'm always left with a needed "flat spot" for parking and it's related curb/sidewalk that get twisted or don't match up exactly with each other.

seems like topo-lines are never quite right, or at least need to be modified to reflect grading of a site. i suppose one of my problems is not thinking of a site as multiple components added together, but also thinking of it as one big detailed surface? idk. i'll do some more playing around. i'm not intimidated by modeling a countertop with integrated sink basin or other complex curved objects. maybe i start getting lost when i think of the "scale" of the object being modeled, which really is meaningless in 3d

i'm going to do some more practicing.

terrain works fine, use it all the time

terrain works fine, use it all the time

Yes I "dig" populate terrain (hehe)

Sometimes I wish we could get an update to the free populate panels, something where you could make triangular ETFE cushions and even mix and match the rectangular ones and triangular etc.

Currently for triangular, the square one needs to have the 4th point squeezed into the corner of the 3rd. Looks ok from a distance but up close not so much. I guess there's always RailClone

Typically I first use the terrain modifier, then run the terrain plugin, collapse it to editable poly and use the paint deform to flatten off areas or relax to smooth off.

Shape merge out the roads.

run co-linear Vertex cleaner script to get rid of excess/ unnecessary vertices.

grab the edges of the road extrude the edges, detach the new faces and shell to make a kerb

repeat the process for side walks and garden beds etc.

If I need more detail in the kerbs, I'll use rail clone.

That is a nice workflow example Justin, it is very similar to what I typically do.

For flattening large areas I will also use vertex selection in an editable poly with soft selection on and then the "Make Planar Z" function.

Another vote for Populate:Terrain and Edit Poly paint deform as indispensable tools for custom terraforming.