oluv Posted March 19, 2005 Share Posted March 19, 2005 i am looking for a quick and efficient landscape-modelling tool. i need it for a hydraulic engineering project, where we have to build an artificial lake, and visualise the terrain-forming in 3d. i would need something similar to terragen, which is really intuitive because you can sculpt your terrain easily with simple tools, as well as control the water-level. the problem is, that it is not easy to import existing 3d-data into terragen, as there are no referenced coordinates. therefore all imported data, which has to be first converted from one format to the other loses it's exact coordinates. i had to import the dxf file into bryce, to export it as DEM, then import it into geofrac2000 and export it as terragen-terrain to finally get it into terragen, whereas all original coordinates got lost, as well as the exact terrain-heights... i already thought of using only bryce for sculpting the terrain, but i am missing the real-time water-level there. unfortunately there is no water available during terrain-editing. does anyone know if there are tools that can easily import "standard"-formats like 3ds or dxf, but which are similar to terragen regarding all the editing tools? it has to be as simple and realtime as possible. i already took a look at daylon leveller or landformer pro, but neither can import simple dxf-data and the sculpting was not that "nice" as in terragen. i would appreciate any tips and suggestions about other programs! thanks a lot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DennisHolland Posted March 19, 2005 Share Posted March 19, 2005 Hi Oluv, what I would do in a situation like this is the following and shouldn't take that much time but is the first thing I thought about. Just point out all dimensions of your model in a top-view, shoot a render of it and make a good displacementmap in Photoshop, pay some attention to the textures and think large, if you know what i mean. It's way less work than import/export it to a diversity of other tools (and decrease quality) don't you think? Good luck with it. I'm also interested in another, more efficient way to do this kinda work so I'll also stay focused on this thread. Dennis Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Posted March 19, 2005 Share Posted March 19, 2005 Olaf. You might look at E-on's Vue D' Esprit. Download an eval version and play with it. Price is extremely reasonable for what it does. Quality looks great too. http://www.e-onsoftware.com/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oluv Posted March 19, 2005 Author Share Posted March 19, 2005 Olaf. You might look at E-on's Vue D' Esprit. yeah, i was already thinking of it. with the new release with added GI etc, vue d'esprit really seems to be a promising package with very low-costs. i will download the demo-version and play with it. i already saw the terrain editor, which seems to be really flexible, but i am not sure if i can import existing 3d-data as "terrain"... i also downloaded a demo-version from mojoworld, but the interface is so weird, even weirder than bryce, i couldn't do anything with it... as for now, from all programs i have tested, i like leveller most. i can modify the 3d-terrain directly while seeing the effects on the water-level. but i didn't manage to import my existing data properly. what would be the best way to convert a 3d-terrain (TIN) into a DEM-file? i think ArcView 3d-analyst is able to do these conversions, but are there other "normal" programs available? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 First impression with Vue - this is awesome! I imported a pavillion that I had modeled in Lightwave - came in without ANY difficulties. Created a quick terrain, added plants, then added some 3-d people from Lightwave. I've included a quick rendering. I know it's small - didn't want to spend a lot of time rendering as I was just testing settings etc... BTW, It says it'll import DEMS, as well as other models for terrain. Can you export your terrain as OBJ or 3DS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oluv Posted March 20, 2005 Author Share Posted March 20, 2005 wow! not bad! did you render it with GI? how long did it take to render? did you have to tweak the GI-settings a lot? by the way, are the plants ready 3d-models, or are there parameters that you can tweak to get your own plant-variations? Can you export your terrain as OBJ or 3DS? sure, i can export to anything possible, except DEM and such, which i would need for all other terrain-editors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ernest Burden III Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 Last week I had to model a landscape, a large area. While I had a CAD file with contours for the 'local' portion, I needed DEM type data to do the rest. I got the USGS data in DDF format (a form of DEM) and was able to quickly convert it to a 3D format (VRML worked best, but DXF and 3DS worked also) using AccuTrans shareware . Look at the formats page, and also the landscapes page. Its not clear if it wil convert an existing polygon surface to a DEM however. It will write VistaPro DEMs but not USGS. Anyway, I hope that helps. My surface was about 12 miles by 6 miles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Allen Posted March 20, 2005 Share Posted March 20, 2005 wow! not bad! did you render it with GI? how long did it take to render? did you have to tweak the GI-settings a lot? by the way, are the plants ready 3d-models, or are there parameters that you can tweak to get your own plant-variations? Everything but the pavillion and people are straight from the trial version of vue. I didn't tweek much. I did use GI - took about 11 minutes Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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