Lumion Support Center

Support for unlicensed users => Post here if you can't find your License Key => Topic started by: peterm on January 13, 2012, 02:39:46 am

Title: Road Making Tools
Post by: peterm on January 13, 2012, 02:39:46 am
Just wondering what others use to make roads and highways, maybe bridges, ramps etc.

Do you have a favourite specialist tool or do you make things as you go & if so in what DCC?

If it's a specialist tool does it also do conforming to terrain/terrain to road etc?

Many thanks.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1514 on January 14, 2012, 08:37:44 am
IMHO main problem is that different groups of users demand different qualities of Lumion. Developers can not select right main direction because they have roots from game an 3d modelling industry.  Main groups of users who paid for program are architects - they are most solvent and determinate content of wish list. Conceptual designers and architects and environment designers are the groups that need most of all in Lumion's editable landscape (road instruments including), but they now prefer Vue+Max because of high pliability and quality of presentation. So their voices are not heard on the forum. New group of interior designers, who need in quick and easy presentation does not need in good landscape at all. So I afraid we shall see roads along slopes and seeding trees and flowers far not soon.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member7815 on January 15, 2012, 06:21:36 am
peterm,
I model my sites in Max using Max's poly tools. I'd sure like to learn if there is a quicker way, although I doubt it. Autodesk released a trial version of City Engine with their 3ds Max 2011 Subcription Pack...it made creating roads look pretty easy. I'd love to learn if City Engine Vue is any good for Arch Viz work.

David
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1924 on January 15, 2012, 04:19:06 pm
peterm,
I model my sites in Max using Max's poly tools. I'd sure like to learn if there is a quicker way, although I doubt it. Autodesk released a trial version of City Engine with their 3ds Max 2011 Subcription Pack...it made creating roads look pretty easy. I'd love to learn if City Engine Vue is any good for Arch Viz work.

David

Hi David it isn't CityEngine it's CityScape if my mind don't fails me
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: BMcIsaac on January 15, 2012, 06:07:27 pm
On the Sketchup side of the modeling world there are many Rubies that will assist in this and if you are willing to pay some good developing products for road building. I suggest you sign up at the Sketchucation Forums.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member21365 on January 15, 2012, 07:07:59 pm
An alternative is to use pre made road sections from someone like dosch. If you want to just add tracks and dirt roads then export the terrain map and adjust it in photoshop by drawing solid grey lines on the image (different shades = different height).

Of course if you draw a cross section road surface in sketch up (gutters, road surface etc) then you can use poly lines and use follow me to create a complete road.

Just some suggestions.

cheers

p.s. there are also plenty of free models of clover leafs and highway intersections.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member7815 on January 15, 2012, 09:01:15 pm
Hi David it isn't CityEngine it's CityScape if my mind don't fails me

There might be a CityScape product...I'll look into, but this is the product I was referencing: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/?page=PRIndex&date=December%20%2009,%202010 (http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/?page=PRIndex&date=December%20%2009,%202010).

If I understand it correctly, it's a plugin for Vue, which necessitates having Vue.

David
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: BMcIsaac on January 15, 2012, 09:56:04 pm
Quote
If you want to just add tracks and dirt roads then export the terrain map and adjust it in photoshop by drawing solid grey lines on the image (different shades = different height).

I believe I am demonstrating the idea that JimBob put forward.

I am using a google mesh cause it was easy to get to.
The original GE snapshot is 800 pixels...I mapped it to my model that way but then I blew the image up to 5 times that size...just over 4500 pixels and reloaded the larger snapshot in Lumion. This gives me many more pixels to work with whan I start to paint.

Depending on your project, by the time you get everytning else into place the roads look pretty good.

Further...depending on your modeler you can make some simple modifications to the road mesh, following the image as a guide and then reload that mesh in lumion to give you more road contour or maybe to flatten it in some spots.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1739 on January 15, 2012, 10:07:09 pm
bingo!
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: BMcIsaac on January 15, 2012, 10:22:45 pm
Here you can see I have modified the underlying mesh to make a bridge. The painted image stays mapped of course. This is all collada by the way.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: peterm on January 15, 2012, 11:15:51 pm
Hi, thanks for comments so far, please keep them coming as its interesting to see whats really being used, thanks also to modelhead for your tut.

Seems all but one of the specialised tools for auto-generation type city and road tools have been bought up.  Did a little more research;  CityScape (PixelActive) of which Autodesk included a special copy for Max 2011, was bought out by NAVTEQ for gaming and seems gone and buried; CityEngine which is quite amazing was bought by ESRI and looks like to be integrated into their GIS line up so maybe we'll see it again in day light some time, although they still have a semi-active web site for CE.

So apart from UrbanPad, looks like its either do by hand or with help of some script tools for SketchUp.  There's tools for games such as Unity so still interested to hear if someone know of any others, stand-alone, integrated or game engine (with some scope to export of course).

Roads are a bit like terrains, all part of the picture but a pain to do as want instant draw a path and go sort of thing, so can focus on other parts of viz projects.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member7815 on January 16, 2012, 12:36:05 am
Did a little more research;  CityScape (PixelActive) of which Autodesk included a special copy for Max 2011, was bought out by NAVTEQ for gaming and seems gone and buried
Ah, yes...you and lofts are exactly right, my memory is now corrected and restored. I remember playing around with CityScape for a little why and then trying to find it only to discover it was snatched away by NAVTEQ. I really hate it when promisingly cool tools like that get taken away!
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member21144 on January 16, 2012, 07:03:17 am
Manually modeling it currently, all depend on our skills, toolset and model library.

It always the disastrous when we need to change terrain slopes and roads. Our model always being end up a mess.

Siteworks look great:
Creating Street Intersections - Siteworks for Revit (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m_ETAFXiYYo#ws)

But it cost $$$ and some based softwares like Revit, which seem unreasonable if you are not currently using it. And Revit scripts are quite slow, not possible for any real-time. But it do keep  original terrain infos and update autometically when you change roads, retaining walls, underground floor etc.

SiteOP is even more novelty and ideal software for architects, landscape architects :
SITEOPS Grading Overview (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BflJbmY_afY#)

Again, quite $$$. Quite standalone, but they even do export to SketchUp for vis in their demo!. Not reasonable if you are just going for environment, not doing a lot big site-planning.
Imagine some SiteOP or like plugin in Lumion. It will be super-niche software any architects want. I remembered I've read SiteOP interview that even Autodesk is not their threat. Mostly, we seem to needed just presentation functions from its without much datas. Quite simcity ;).

Thanks,
Ming
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1924 on January 16, 2012, 10:14:27 am
There might be a CityScape product...I'll look into, but this is the product I was referencing: http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/?page=PRIndex&date=December%20%2009,%202010 (http://www.e-onsoftware.com/about/?page=PRIndex&date=December%20%2009,%202010).

If I understand it correctly, it's a plugin for Vue, which necessitates having Vue.

David

Hi David

CityScape was developed by PixelActive, Then, last year, be sold to Navtec for Nokia's GPS maps and after this reached an agreement with Autodesk to be included as plugin in is products.

Vue is another platform developed by Eón Systems which have it own plugin to work with Max.

Are differents products with differents features.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member7815 on January 16, 2012, 03:33:21 pm
Hi David

CityScape was developed by PixelActive, Then, last year, be sold to Navtec for Nokia's GPS maps and after this reached an agreement with Autodesk to be included as plugin in is products.

Vue is another platform developed by Eón Systems which have it own plugin to work with Max.

Are differents products with differents features.
You're quite right; thanks for the correction!
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member7815 on January 16, 2012, 03:59:29 pm
Siteworks look great...But it cost $$$
I had looked into Siteworks as well...it could be a great tool, but yikes; it comes at a prohibitively high price! I would absolutely consider getting a site modeling plugin for Revit or Max if it were just a few hundred USD, but at 2K Eagle Point won't be making many sales.

One thing I think this discussion does is expose how futile it would be to add road/terrain modeling within Lumion, which is a frequently requested new feature. Site modeling is complex enough in 3d modeling programs, such as 3ds Max and Sketchup that I doubt any road/terrain functionality inside Lumion would be sufficiently capable enough to model a civil engineer/landscape architect's site plan to an acceptable level.

David
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member6983 on January 16, 2012, 05:55:09 pm
AMEN!  This is a huge market!  Everyone who does what we do will all say the same thing, terrain modeling and detailing is extremely difficult and time consuming!!
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1739 on January 16, 2012, 08:46:02 pm
Terrain modeling is easy if you know how to grade.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member6983 on January 16, 2012, 08:48:51 pm
I certianly understand how to grade... Or, perhaps I dont...... 

Since we dont have private messaging Ill ask in the thread.....

Do you freelance or consult?  abillet(at)abSketches(dot)(com).  Shoot me an email I wouldnt mind sending out any terrain modeling if its something that will take me forever.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: BMcIsaac on January 16, 2012, 09:50:26 pm
Quote
I doubt any road/terrain functionality inside Lumion would be sufficiently capable enough to model a civil engineer/landscape architect's site plan to an acceptable level.

This is what I have found. The roads I build have detail drawings with the road profile   adjoining land/drainage/sidewalk/innerisland/curb/blvd/road/curb/culvert/...etc...etc.

I wish it was easier but "by hand" gets it done faster than most other things at the moment......I wish I could name the other things... :-D
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1505 on January 16, 2012, 09:56:20 pm
Very glad this topic keeps coming up. I am always looking for better alternatives.

Im using a combination of google terrains, sandbox terrain from contours and manual generation of faces then draping.

What has greatly improved my abilities is the purchase of Artisan for Sketchup. www.artisan4sketchup.com (http://www.artisan4sketchup.com)

It is a life saver and bridges the gap for mesh manipulation within sketchup for me for now. I am still looking into other options though. It is very tedious for complicated sitework that needs to have some parts very precise.

bob
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: BMcIsaac on January 16, 2012, 10:01:56 pm
Quote
Terrain modeling is easy if you know how to grade.
I think he is just "kidding" you....
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member1739 on January 17, 2012, 12:46:32 am
Sorry, easy does not mean it can't be time consuming.
Which it can be.
Especially figuring it out.  
If you don't understand how to grade it makes it that much harder.
If you do it makes it that much easier (for real world stuff)
Didn't mean easy like "Staples".  Sorry.

Freelance is good.  Some people call it a recession, I call it the greatest depression.

They took away the PM's?  That is weird.
Cuz the Lumion team added fake people to the forum.  :(
Didn't know they disliked me that much. jk.
  
An old image out of Vue some 8 or 9 years ago.  
Melted my old PC down!
The benefits of being able to assign trees and plants as materials is evident in this image.
A request of mine that would save everyone time.
Terrain was modeled with real world contour data in everyone's favorite programs off real world project data - imported into Vue.  At the toe of a mountain ridge, about 19 meters of grade change across the site with steep embankments up to 2:1 slopes.  This is simply a step in construction documentation manipulated to a 3D image.

One day I hope to get this in Lumion  -  Would like to have the waterfall material for this one, but I think I've got some just ok work arounds.

LandCad and ArchiCAD have nice terrain modeling tools I think.  All of it takes tinkering with to get your system down pat.  Then it is easy.  :)
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member21694 on January 17, 2012, 04:22:30 am
Hi,

Just downloaded the free version of Lumion and am very impressed so far.  If you're using SketchUp to model, there is a very good ruby script for roads available called Instant Road http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts (http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts). Hope this helps.

Thanks
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Morten on January 17, 2012, 01:19:07 pm
They took away the PM's?  That is weird.

This is obviously unintentional. The topic has been raised by Billet and others in a number of threads, but I guess Remko hasn't had time to investigate the problem.
Title: Re: Road Making Tools
Post by: Member22107 on January 20, 2012, 11:01:50 am
For sketchup users, it's relatively easy. For 25$ there's a great plugin that creates roads in a few clicks.
http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts/instant-road (http://www.valiarchitects.com/sketchup_scripts/instant-road)