Creating architectural sites in 3dsmax ?

[bernhard]

Hello friends !

I just wanted to ask you, if someone has any experience in creacting sites in 3dsamx, not just flat, also inclduding the heights, and depth, streets, curbes, etc....

I usually get AUTOCAD files, inlcuding these datas as splines.
I've never tried to build that in 3dsmax, so if anyone has experience with that, I would appreciate every little help and suggestion.

thx a lot,
bernhard

[glorybound]

Sites

Do you want to be exact or approximate? I use a plane turned into a poly and I subdivide it. I use polyboost to push and pull the plane. For roads and curbs I use shapemerge and lofts/

[bernhard]

accurate

Hello glorybound and thank you for your post.

Well, we need to be very accurate. I could see some videos from polyboost - is this a big advantage for you using it on the plane ?

Is it just for pushing and pulling it to get the right shape - in your case ?

Also, it's to 90% sure, that we always have sharp and clean edges in our topo-surface.... to get a better overview, here is one typical .dwg file, it comes with splines in 3dsmax...



@roads and curbs:
shapemerge ? what exatly do you mean with that ?
would be great to explain me a little bit.

I also could find out, that even if we use ZForm, we have many triangulations and sometimes the mesh is messing up. My goal is to get a clean mesh with a nice topology what is in fact much better for rendering too.


Thank you very much for your ideas,
bernhard

[glorybound]

Sites

I have used EasySite in the past, but it has been many years. If I have to be accurate I use the topo, usually from Autocad, and move the splines to the correct Z. (If they are not already). In MAX I use the Compound Objects Terrian. I then use the Compound Object ShapeMerge in MAX for the roads. Atfer the ShapeMerge I turn it into a polymesh and select poly, which will already have the ShapeMerge seleted. With the ShapeMerge selected I detach, move down, and use the same pline I used for the ShapeMerge as my loft path, which creates the curb.

I hope this makes sense.

[dlparisi]

Same as glorybound but the mesh you get from the topo lines and terrain is usually really shitty so I conform a high density plane to the terrain mesh and use that for my shapemerges, etc. For your areas where the topo has a straight edge there's definitely a retaining wall or similar there so you can most likely disguise the bad topology behind the retaining wall.

[sea2stars]

Hrmm. I've found that the Terrain creation tool in Max does a very poor job with sharp edges, such as retaining wall areas; end up having to fix them or hide them.

A couple of people have posted about using the Conform modifier to drape a plane object over the created Terrain object and then delete the Terrain object. It creates a MUCH better model to work from and it's what I've been doing since I came across the technique. If you do a search for "Terrain Plane Conform", you'll probably come up with a few threads.

[glorybound]

site

How do you form the high density plane?

[dlparisi]

Just make a regular plane with a high number of length and width segments and conform it to the terrain mesh.

[glorybound]

Site

But how do you conform it to the terrain mesh?

[sea2stars]

Um.. I have a render going on the background.. off the top of my head. Move the plane over the terrain mesh. Apply a Conform modifier to the Plane object. Using your top viewport, make sure that the Conform modifier has "Use current viewport to apply Conform" checked. Pick the terrain mesh and then wait.

Oh yeah. If you're terrain model isn't square you'll get something of a bathtub effect. I usually trim the Plane with Shapemerge first.

[bernhard]

hmmm

thank you for your idead, well i've made a test with the conform solution, but it's really not to use....

my mesh looks terrible, and it's far far away from being accurate...

hmmm...

[glorybound]

Conform

Hi,

I have a site and I would like to conform my curb to the site. It just isn't conforming. Does anyone successfully practice this procedure?

[sea2stars]

Would it be practical to try and conform a curb? Wouldn't it be easier to just shapemerge out your road, create a poly from the open edges, clean the poly and then loft your curb profile?

[glorybound]

loft

Perfect... work smart and not hard! I new I had accomplished this before some other way other than conform. Thanks!

[jozef_chvojka]

I'm facing this problem too from time to time.
Starting to think about autodesk civil 3d engineering software, maybe this provides parametric infrastructure modelling...
Nowadays I start modelling non-flat terraint with roads - usually just edge extruding and conforming the shape from top view. After roads are modelled correctly I have the splines needed for all other objects like pavements, curbs etc.
Kind of exact method but not that fast

Is here anyone experienced with using civil 3d from autodesk or CityEngine from Procedural ?

regards
.j