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Rendering a terrain


Paola

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Anyone knows how to render contour lines? I mean a terrain?

I am just hitting rendering with shadows and of course only renders the lines of the contours making it look really funny. Is there any way to render the terrain as a solid object? instead of contour by contour when it doesn't even render the ones interpolated?

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi Peaola

Make sure that the terrain model has Mesh Solid as its 3D option - then it will appear as a solid object when you render with OpenGL. After that, you select the model and apply a texture if you wish using the Render tab on the Object Info palette.

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Mitchell,

I am using a "terrain" created from 3d polys, value to "z" and then applied the "create site model tool".

Do I still needing to create a Digital Terrain Model on top of those?

Where is that tool? I am using the VW that has everything (architect, landscape, etc), but I can't find that (DTM) tool.

Thank you!

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Paola,

The site model you have created is the DTM.

You select the 3D Mesh option when you create or edit the DTM. Select the DTM, and then in the Object Info Palette, select Site Model Settings, you will see on the right side of that dialog box the 3D options.

You have to know that the site model actually has a dual personality - it is for both proposed and existing site information so be careful which you select. If you modify the DTM at all with site modifiers, those changes will only show up in the proposed, and will have to be updated.

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Mitchell,

Thank you again, this is really helping me a lot to understand VW...

As sad as I know it looks...I am attaching a little piece of that "terrain" I have been trying to do, to show you how is rendering after I added the fill from the "site model settings" and a texture ... I am doing something really wrong here..

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That kind of looks like what happens when a Vectorworks object, or the source geometry used to create the object, is a long way from the drawing origin. Contours from imported dwg/dxf files are often hundreds of miles from the drawing origin.

May not be the problem here, but worth checking. Navigate to the layer containing the contours or points used to create the DTM, select one, and look at its location coordinates the OIP. If the location number is large - eg many thousands of feet, copy all the contours/points. Paste them into a new Vectorworks file and create a DTM. See if it renders better.

Whatever the problem, keep posting back until you get a solution.

-B

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Hi Paola

Your model is fine - but there are two things I notice:

1) The 3D element is still set to show 3D contours instead of Mesh Solid. Change that and all will be fine.

2) When creating your Site Model, you left the box checked to Retain Source Data. This means that you have both the original 3D Polys AND the Site model showing when you render in OpenGL.

You can remove those 3D Polygons - they are not necessary anymore as the information is now all stored inside the site model. So, delete them all. If you need to refer back to them, you can right-click and choose Edit Source Data. (Better still, just put the 3D polys in a separate class and then hide that class - just in case you DO need them for anything else.

Hope that helps, and do watch my webinar on Site Modelling on Thursday.

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Paola,

OK the terrain model itself is fine. You have just left the 3D polygons (from which you created the DTM, I am guessing) in place and they are showing up in the rendering, overlapping with the DTM.

They are white fill, white lines so they are hard to see but you can select them, 5 or so, and move them to another layer.

When you create the DTM in the first place you have the choice of putting the DTM on layer different from the source and you should probably do that as a default.

One other thing I noticed is that the contours are set for 1" which is unusual. Is that on purpose? Pretty flat site really in that case.

I opened your file in 2011 so there is no point sending you the file back. It's an easy fix in any case.

HTH

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