Grand Canyon

[Oleg S.]

And so the model appears Grand Canyon, created by the method described by me above. The model I built in FotoSkan not the highest resolution, as it would have taken away a lot more time, but for the sake of experiment, I'll try to do it, leaving the processing of the night. And I can not get rid of the bright white gloss on the edge of the model at rendering in Terragen. Maybe someone knows how to get rid of it. Thanks for looking!

[Dune]

Uncheck 'unpremultiply' or see if any texture file has an alpha layer, which is not used.

[Oleg S.]

Thank you, Ulcho, I'll try.

[bigben]

Alternatively, just export a JPEG texture from Photoscan.

This process generally works quite well given the limitations of the original draped texture and resolution of the elevation data. Not sure what res the US is in Google Earth but it's pretty low in Australai. If you get a particularly tricky terrain I sometimes batch 2 align images steps to start with.

[bigben]

If you want a challenge:
Load a 10m DEM into TG, export it as an OBJ.
Use PS to model the same area and export an OBJ
Align the TG export to the PS model
Import the aligned TG model in PS
Generate a texture map and then export the textured model for rendering.

Just one word of warning though... the satellite imagery is covered by copyright and I wouldn't use any of this on a commercial project

[TheBadger]

the satellite imagery is covered by copyright

Umm, what?! I thought all the stuff available to the public was ours to use?! 

[Oleg S.]

Thank you, I understand you. And for commercial purposes, I would not use it, I was just wondering to consider this technique.