Terrain modeling vs vertical surfaces

[dorapapp]

Dear members,

I am modeling a garden terrain (not an expert, just a poor landscape architect ) with 4 m of height difference. I have quite a few retaining walls, and my terrain comes out very strangely close to these vertical surfaces and messes up my model. I drew the contour lines "through" the walls (so the lines are on top of each other with the appropriate distance - and walls are not modeled yet, so I only have the contour lines elevated), but I guess the 3dsmax can't handle that and actually makes a zigzaggy slope instead of a vertical surface. Do you have any ideas or suggestions for these cases when a terrain and a vertical surface meet? I tried 3-4 different ways but none of them seems to work nicely. Thank you!

[Francisco Penaloza]

do you have an image to explain the situation better?

are you talking about the transition between vertical and sloped terrain??

[dorapapp]

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7OtXa1kwA6dRXhoMXdMRzF4SHM/view?usp=sharing

 

I have put an image in my googledrive, I hope it helps

Edited December 8, 2015 by dorapapp

[Francisco Penaloza]

oh, you are using the terrain tool from Max, yes that very limited.

You could divide your terrain in 3 levels, using your flat areas are section planes, that can help the terrain tool to define better your terrain.

You can also use this plugin, that work much better

http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

 

 

Having said this, if this terrain is for visualization purposes only, do not be afraid to "cheat" a little, letting mesh intersect or go through other mesh it is OK as long it does not show in your view.

[dorapapp]

thank you! well, I know 'populate terrain', but It just creates a smoother surface for me, It doesn't really help around walls. But yeah i'm going to try to assemble the model from more levels and parts. thanks!

[Francisco Penaloza]

terrain are always hard in 3D Max, or any software actually, unless you have lot of information or cloud point data.

Besides with those very sharp edges, it will be hard for such tool to get it right at first try,

Maybe nurbs or conform modifier, but still, I think it need to be worked by parts.

 

This other tool is more complex, and also more expensive but if you usually do landscaping it may come handy.

 

http://rendering.ru/ru_en/splineland.html

 

best luck. and show us your progress so we all can learn from it

 

Fco.

[Nicolai Bongard]

You should make sure that none of the height lines are directly above eachother, allways have a slope. That usually helps when generating the mesh. With populate terrain i thought it was a requirement. You can allways move the edges/verteces back later. Also it is worth remembering that your walls will have a thickness, so you can "hide" the slope in there if you do not want to fix the steep slope later. Populate terrain will smooth out your geometry based on the density of the grid you set. Also you can apply additional smoothing with turbosmooth and relax modifiers within the terrain menu, so if you want less smoothing you should turn those off. You can allways add them later in the modifer stack of your geometry, should you need them. The main big thing about the populate terrain plugin is the generation of a grid topology on your geometry, thus making it easyer for further editing and stuff like turbosmooth and displacement to work as intended.

[Chris MacDonald]

I'd draw the areas with splines, and move the points of the splines to their relative heights to create a rough shape of what you want. Then use Populate Terrain script to subdivide this and move vertices around until you get the form you are after. After this simply use a relax or turbosmooth, etc modifier to smooth the resulting mesh.

[dorapapp]

Ah cool, I will try to replace the walls with slopes then and move vertices back after generating the terrain, that seems to be a good idea. Thanks everyone for the tips!

If I get it finished in this life, I'll share the results, of course:)

[Scott Dombrowski]

I have this problem a lot with retaining walls, but also with curbs, roads, and sidewalks when trying to generate them from contour lines. I've found it helpful to add vertices to the areas where you're getting that "sawtooth" look, and also add your own breaklines that connect the corners vertically to help sculpt the surface. In the Simplication section of the terrain parameters, you can sometimes cheat some extra vertices by choosing Interpolate Points *4. If that doesn't work, go into the segment sub-object mode of your topo spline, select the segements that need more vertices, and hit Divide a few times until it looks good. The Normalize Spline modifier also adds vertices to splines, but I've found it doesn't respect corners and tends to round things off too much.

 

Here's a screencast that might show it a little better: http://autode.sk/1NicitJ

[dorapapp]

Finally, I've made it, I divided my site into parts (~horizontal levels and some separate slope areas) and this way 'terrain' parts came out quite good (retriangulated, 4*interpolated), I just had to clean up the edges when converted to editable poly, and It looks good now (even without populate terrain)!

This last little video is very helpful, I will try to make another one with this method. Thanks!

for those who are interested: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7OtXa1kwA6dWHhTSnB6bXhtUkU/view?usp=sharing

[Francisco Penaloza]

That look pretty good Dora.

 

 

Great tip Scott!!!

[Qingyuan chen]

I think you will like this terrain landscape modeling toolkit

 

http://www.flyingcfx.com/wordpress/?p=648

Edited January 15, 2016 by qingyuanchen