Large Terrain Cleanup/Painting

[jujubee]

I have a very large terrain file of a golf course with mountains. It's in Max format or DEM (which doesn't import.) I've tried optimizing it: have reduced vertices and ploys, welded vertices, crunched it, etc. however it still has hundreds of T faces. I've tried running Populate Terrain and even that doesn't work on this file. I'm thinking that I might be able to run a conform with a plane set over it but seems to hang.

On top of this, I can't seem to be able to paint it as well.

Does anyone have any suggestions on cleaning and optimizing this type of mesh?

Thanks!

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

Export to vray proxy ?

[pixelplume]

I once had DEM that I could not even edit. Through many hours of trial and error I wound up exporting as an OBJ, re-importing it and then it was editable. Not the same problem but thought maybe it might help.

[jujubee]

Worth giving the export a shot.
Vray proxy won't work for being able to manually paint it.
Any recommendations for painting apps?

[pixelplume]

clueless on painting apps....can you just rebuild parts of it?

[chriserskine]

if you need to deal with this stuff a bit, look into global mapper.

you'll be able to split it up into a grid and import those. or drop resolution or convert to contours. or do any number of things that can make it easier for 3dsmax to deal with.

also 3dsmax dosen't work too well at all with dem files.

from global mapper you can export dxf mesh files. these can take a long time to import if you have a large file, but they will work.

chris

[samuel_bubat]

Well there was an awesome DEM importer from Habware. But it ´s no longer available for newer max version.
But if you still have a max 2010 or 2011 installation this might work for. Get it here.
http://www.maxplugins.de/r2010_files...ax_Max2010.zip
The difference to the standard max DEM importer, you´ll get a procedural object where you can adjust resolution
and clipping after the import. Now you can import the file several times and by using the clipping "slice" it into smaller pieces
that fit together. See attached screenshot. Also this importer will only accept USGS ASCII DEM files and crashes with
other .dem formats. But you should be able to convert it with 3dem or global mapper.

[samuel_bubat]

Also this might be interesting for you. But I didn´t try it myself.
http://www.west-racing.com/mf/?page_id=2979

[Dariusz Makowski (Dadal)]

U could export is at proxy/ import back from proxy/ try editing. If that dont work import to max/ export obj/ import zbrush/mudbox/ paint edit/export back to max...

[jujubee]

That West Racing script looks pretty good.
My main issue is that the client has provided a modified terrain directly from an engineer, so I can't even use something found off of satellite imagery as the slope of certain places has changed.

[raymarcher]

You can ask if they can export with different settings?
I once had a terrain model from Mensura with a lot of problems that got resolved with other export options in Mensura.

Or you can extract the vertexes so you have a point cloud that you could mesh with Frost.

[mikeh]

I agree with raymarcher. Ask the engineer to give it to you in a different format. DWG would be likely.
mh

[alexyork]

Whatever you end up doing, please post back here to update us with the workflow.

[voltron7]

Hi, if you can get the contour lines (preferably in CAD) try to use Splineland. Yes, it has limits, but even if used in the early stages only, it is incredible. Sadly, the developer icube seems to have a hit or miss reputation for support, although I have not noticed it. Good luck, it sounds tough.

[sjmoir]

Try rendering it in Scanline as a displacement map? Depends how detailed you need it to be though I guess. www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6oAjbi-06Q