rendering Contour lines from CAD

[kamikaze]

Hi! i am currently using R2 in the office now(soon to be upgraded at last!)

 

but id like to know if anyone knows how to render contour lines of a site which i imported from CAD.

 

the object is an editable spline(hollow at the top when you try to extrude it). i have no idea how to render and make it solid.(unless i trace the whole set of lines which would take too much time to do).

 

*one way i know is to export it to revit....make it solid there, then back to cad....then viz...but i want to avoid that and try to render the contour lines of the site directly from viz.

 

any help would be much appreciated!! thanks!!

[spyder2411]

Import the mesh, select the contours, modify, terrain, choose what sub-option you need ofr your project. Or just look @ http://www.cadtutor.net/dd/studio/terrain/terrain.html

[3dway]

I've had mixed success with the terrain modifier. It produces messy, and expensive meshes which don't often make for nice renderable surfaces. The fault comes from the way the contours were drawn in CAD in the first place.

 

You may get a better result by painting a displacement map and using the displacement modifier. Just put the surface that your're displacing into the same scene with the contours and paint the displacement map up to the right height. It may take longer than you like, and it involves looking at in Viz, then going and tweaking in PS, then come back in to Viz and reload the map, then go back and tweak.... It depends on how much time you have, how nice the result has to be, What style you're rendering.

 

I've found if you're emulating white Mayfair card models where the contours are made of built up layers of cardstock (or balsa ply for that matter) that some of the options in the terrain modifier work well.