Building a site plan for photo match

[Cesar R]

Folks,

 

I have a good maps image of a project site in which I am locating a point of interest I need to model in 3d (to scale) and look at from different angles (typical zoning visualization stuff).

 

In the past we would just use photoshop to fake everything. But today I am thinking that we can use 3dsmax to build some site elements, include the point of interest (model) and render some views from pre-determined locations usually to match a set of photos and some post integration.

 

In my mind I should be able to inset a site image form google maps and give it real scale and go form there.

Outside if doing this in autocad and trace some lines in hope to importing a full scale CAD background, can we bring a JPG into 3dsmax and scale it based on a know reference?

 

Thanks

 

[Cesar R]

Hi guys, I just wanted to see if anyone had any ideas. Thanks

[Jose Negrete]

you could scale it in autocad, then import the image rectangle into 3ds max and map the jpg to it in 3ds max.

[Francisco Penaloza]

Actually you could start modeling in Sketch up, and then refine and render in 3D Max.

Sketch up has a useful tool that let you insert terrain (satellite images) from google map, it is actually pretty accurate.

You can import it with elevations or flat, then you can start drawing using that satellite image as reference and get high from other data.

 

I use all the time and it get pretty darn close to a survey

[Cesar R]

Gentleman thank you. I thought of those workflows too. I was hoping they could be bypassed and the whole thing done directly in 3dsmax.

Edited May 28, 2016 by Cesar R

[Jose Negrete]

You can scale the plane w aerial mapped using a helper as the pivot by changing the reference coordinate system.

 

-while in scale mode w/ your object selected, use the "pick" option and click your helper (dummy, sphere, etc)

[Cesar R]

thanks, let me try

[Jesper Pedersen]

Hi Cesar,

We were trying to model existing buildings adjacnet to our development recently and hoping to find an alternative to the solutions suggested by the others above, so we looked at AutoCAD Recap360. Anyway, to make a long story short, we were careful getting good photos and even so the results we useless. I can't guarantee we tested it thoroughly but that was our experience. We'd also love to hear of alternatives, but for now we are manually modellings blocks from whatever drawigns we can get (maps, cad files etc) and then using photos to estimate the rest (obviously not for planning work). Slow but we get clean building models.

Regards

Jesper Pedersen

http://www.pedersenfocus.ie

[Cesar R]

Thanks for your reply. It all comes down to the project hours. In my case we are only hired to do a "photomontage".

There are time, were the scope is much larger and we have uses laserscan data and drove imagery.