Stephen Thomas Posted September 19, 2008 Share Posted September 19, 2008 I have been given digital terrain info by an architect purchased from a mapping company. The data is basically a series of points at regular intervals and is in .dxf format. Does anyone know how I can get this data into max and create a surface from it? I know max can do this from .xml and .dem files, but this is all I have at this stage. Thanks in advance for any pointers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ipxstudios Posted September 21, 2008 Share Posted September 21, 2008 Do you think Autocad would be able to create splines with it. Which program was used to create the points - do you it would be able to create contours if done again? Julian http://www.ipxstudios.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Thomas Posted September 21, 2008 Author Share Posted September 21, 2008 Thanks for the reply Julian, and Claudio for your PM. I downloaded a trial version of TerrainCAD plugin which created the mesh no problem. Had a few problems bringing it into max to do with scale on friday, though I didn't have much time to play around with it. I basically have 4 areas to join together each measuring 5km x 5km. I think I'll need to adjust my units, as I normally work in millimetres, but when I brought in the model I couldn't zoom out to see the whole thing. I'll try again on monday when I've got more time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Thomas Posted September 22, 2008 Author Share Posted September 22, 2008 Importing the mesh now as a dwg... 3 hours in... 75% complete... This is gonna take a while! Just hope I can actually manipulate the meshes once they're imported. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Claudio Branch Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 Do you have to do any further modeling on the terrain? Also, you might consider breaking the thing up into smaller chunks if you have to map hi-res aerial images onto it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stephen Thomas Posted September 22, 2008 Author Share Posted September 22, 2008 No don't have to do any further modelling on the terrain. Just combine it with a block city model that we already have. I plan on breaking it up into smaller chunks for the architects to work on in sketchup, but don't know yet how manageable this will be. Might have to optimise the mesh somehow. Is it normal to take this long importing a mesh? Or is this just an unusually large area to import at one time (5km x 5km with 5m subdivisions)? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Claudio Branch Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 Is it normal to take this long importing a mesh? Or is this just an unusually large area to import at one time (5km x 5km with 5m subdivisions)? Yes, especially if the point file has a high density. Creating terrain from 3D contours has an advantage because you usually get to specifiy the distribution of points to be established along the individual contour lines. This allows you to create a fine mesh for up-close shots and a course one for everywhere else. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alrawli Posted September 22, 2008 Share Posted September 22, 2008 We had to import LIDAR data into max before and used a free script called Terrain Builder. If you could get the Terrain data as .dat or .xyz then itll mesh it for you and import quickly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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