Terrain Analysis

[c.prettyman]

I need to produce a slop analysis of a terrain model - basically land that is too steep to build on get a red color, land that is steep, but could be built on if you want to spend a lot of extra money gets an orange color, etc... Ideally, the color by elevation option for terrain objeects would havce a counterpart "color by slope" option, but as far as I can tell, it does not. Does anyone know another way to accomplish this sort of analytical function? Smoothly blended colors are not required, although they would be acceptable.

 

This is Viz 2006. Max 7 and Rhino 3 (sr4) are also available if it can be done in one of those apps.

 

Thanks

[Victor Erthal]

I guess what you want is to make the software add different colors for different ranges of inclination on the terrain. You could try to use a fallof map and tweak some options like customizing the curve. You create some sort of fresnel effect rendering the top view and using this render latter applied to the difuse slot of your terrain material. At least that's how i would do it. Good luck.

[c.prettyman]

Well, you seem to have pointed me in the right direction - usign a fall-of map I can get terrain above a given slope to be one color, and below that threshold to be another color. What I need to figure out next is how to get a total of four colors - I thought that a multi-sub object material might do it, but if it does, I'm missing something. The terrain is all one object, so this isn't doing it. I'm testing composite materials now. Thanks for the tip.

[Brolloks]

Using Viz2006 (and I would guess in Max)

Do the contours as lines. I think they need to be closed. Each contour needs to be on a differendt height, obviously.

Select all the contours/splines and click on Compound Object, Terrain.

 

There's a bunch of settings there to change the look of the terrain including Color by Elevation.

[William Alexander]

If I remember correctly there is a way to apply mapping based on the 'normal' angle related to the world or object UCS.

 

 

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