Golf Resorts and Lands' very large models

[Sketchrender]

Hi

These type of projects keep coming in the door lately.

They consist of very large terrain models and then golf villas, resential blocks and a whole host of things like hotels and commerial blocks schools ect, all on the one model.

 

Hence my question.

The models are getting to breaking point.

The terrian models are usually stepped or meshed.

Then the houses are blocks, the golf courses are usually high polygon counts because all the greens are curves.

 

Has anybody any idea a way of cutting down the polygon count.

I use formz and cinema 4d.

Microstation is a nightmare to terrian model in, as nothing can be touched after you have completed your basic terian model.

 

 

Trees are a major problem.

is there a fast way to model hundreds of trees.

I know there is speed tree, but for formz......there are about 3 plug-ins, a joke.

 

.......help would be great.

thanks.

[Ernest Burden III]

These type of projects keep coming in the door lately.

They consist of very large terrain models and then golf villas, resential blocks and a whole host of things like hotels and commerial blocks schools ect, all on the one model.

 

Assuming that you like earning a living, you have a very enviable problem.

 

A few quick points:

 

You can do the terrain as a mesh and lay all the golf course stuff on as a high-res texture map.

 

You can optomize and poly-reduce the terrain mesh. I did that recently with FZ and Cinema (but made the terrain in SketchUp, which was fantastic).

 

Work with lowpoly versions of the site objects (houses, etc) at first to set cameras, lighting, animation paths. Replace with higher detail models only as needed for each view or anim. shot.

 

Buy more computers! If you have large-scale work then you should have large-scale budgets which allow you to have enough PC power on hand. In fact, charging high fees really requires it, in my opinion. The costs of the hardware are part of the justification for what we charge clients.

[Sketchrender]

Thank you for the reply.

The jobs are getting bigger but the wages stay the same , I work for a large architectural firm, and am the only one dose the 3d work.

So meshing the model seems like a good I dea.

Appling a hi res image to the mesh in the new 4.2 formz, that I am having problems with the textures seem to have lines in them and blured images in them too.

 

the latest version has too many flaws for my liking.

I end up having model all seperatly , and dxfing them out to cinema, which hadels nearly anything I throw at it.

 

Any plugins that may help that you know of to help with tree end of things?

 

What sort of light should I use 3 point or radiosity, any special setting sky domes ?????

 

Thanks again.

 

phil

[Mino]

Any plugins that may help that you know of to help with tree end of things?

 

What sort of light should I use 3 point or radiosity, any special setting sky domes ?????

 

phil

 

Take a look at Exteriors for Cinema 4d from Maxon: it has a large collection of trees, bushes, flowers and they are not too much cpu intensive.

Use radiosity if your model is not too big, a skydome with an Hdri map on the luminance channel of Cinema.

ciao

Mino

[Mino]

I have seen you asked for Hdri in a past thread: here is a couple of links to free Hdri images and some informations to use Hdri in Cinema

4d.

http://www.debevec.org/Probes/

http://www.rain.org/~msavard/hdri/Articles/UsingHDRIs.html

ciao

Mino

 

p.s. I use Archicad and its plug in Architerra for modeling large scenes that includes terrains and trees, then I export the model in Cinema or Lightwave for the rendering.

[Jeff Mottle]

Unfourtunately not a FormZ or C4D program, but if you are getting more of this work you might consider looking at other options if it means you get the work done more efficiently.

 

http://www.wavgen.com/

 

They sell a wavelet technology that allows you to render VERY high res textures (in the 100's of GB) without taking up more than a few 100MB of RAM. They also have a LOD control I think so this could be the solution for you.

 

Worth a look none the less. I spoke with them in depth at SIGGRAPH and this is definety a cool technology.

[Sketchrender]

Hi Thank you for the heads up.

I have never heard of it, I will give it a look.

It is a different ball game really isn't it.

We are talking big machines and accurate mapping and texturing.

 

i will have a look.

phil