Creating Landscapes from pre made contours (Made in AutoCAD)

Started by CarmaViolet, October 30, 2012, 10:09:03 AM

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CarmaViolet

I would normally browse a forum for answers first, but this is particularly specific.

Basically I work for a Water Feature Specialists, and we are looking to branch into producing 3D renders of childrens water play parks for prospective clients. I have been playing with 3D Studio Max but have really come up against a wall when it comes to one specific (and VERY important) part of the process. The main target for us it to produce 'insitu' renders showing the features within the existing terrain (Including the levels) so the client can get a real feel. Obviously, this has proved VERY difficult for me to produce in Max, and a friend pointed me toward Terragen. I am fully able to produce my own contour drawings within AutoCAD (Infact I am FAR more able to understand and build contour drawings than I ever am at making the landscapes in 3ds Max). I was wondering how easy it would be to import this kind of information into Terragen to produce a model for me to work on in Max. How does Terragen handle level/contour input?

Thanks in advance!
A very stressed Emma

red_planet

Emma..

If I remember correctly there is a way to convert contours into a mesh in Max. You could then export the mesh as an obj to be used in TG.

Check out the following

http://populate3d.com/products/terrain/

I'm fairly sure I used it once, it takes a bit of fiddling with parameters to get the desired result, but it works.

Hope this helps

Chris

Oshyan

Terragen does not currently handle contour data natively (or at least it cannot convert it into a 3D terrain, though you could use a contour map as a simple 2D texture). So you would want to convert it into either a 3D model as Chris suggests, or an elevation/heightmap. There are freely available as well as commercial applications that can convert contours to heightmaps. Examples include Landserf (free) and Global Mapper (commercial). Once the data is in a heightfield format, save as GeoTIFF or, if possible, TER (Terragen proprietary heightfield format, supported by a number of 3rd party applications), and you can use it easily in Terragen.

- Oshyan