3DS Max site modelling

[Chris MacDonald]

I'm an avid Sketchup user and am looking to move over to 3DS Max for modelling more organic forms such as terrain, however aside from rendering within max I have no experience modelling within it.

 

I'm often asked to produce accurate 3D Models from site plans, elevations, sections etc - my question is how do you people go about modelling;

 

1) Site terrain - accurately, including existing/proposed levels and such.

2) Site roads, kerbs, hardstanding - and getting them to match the terrain vice/versa.

3) I might have outdone myself here, but I'll add more as and when I think about it.

 

I really appreciate any help you people can offer because I really am starting from scratch here having never modelled in 3DS Max before.

[Thablanch]

If you have levels curves lines, there is in Max a terrain function.

 

If you take a look at this link:

 

http://www.louismarcoux.com/MaxTips.htm

 

At the very bottom, there is 2 terrain/roads tutorials. Good place to start with.

[Chris MacDonald]

Yeah I took a look at those, they're pretty good and I've just had a practice go at modelling roads using that technique and it works perfectly. Now I just need to find a way to accurately model the site for the road to sit on!

[andstef]

You can accurately model the site from topo maps and/or site plans, combined with google earth if the resolution is big enough and the site plans don't cover a large enough area, after, of course, you resize the drawings to be at the right scale (I usually do this in autocad, not max, but max will do).

The terrain compound object in max works pretty well, you can use that to model the terrain. It is a good idea to apply a normalize spline modifier to the splines resembling the elevation contour lines, otherwise the terrain object will create very simplified surface (if the curves are done in max), or with much much more than you need and will slow you down (if the curves are imported from autocad).

[Liman]

hmmm, very interesting