This was an acceptable number, and their being separated by material was helpful for scene management. When I imported building.fbx, there were 47 objects. Once I had the terrain fixed up, it was time to bring in the buildings. I then had 1 object with 1 material and a single texture, definitely more real-time friendly! The texture fit perfectly on the terrain. I applied a UVW Map on the terrain object, chose Planar and pressed Fit. Then I saved the image as a JPG.īack in 3ds Max, I created a new material and used the terrain texture in the Diffuse Color slot. I also added a black layer under the terrain texture in Photoshop to avoid possible white edges in the final texture. I cropped the image so it would fit perfectly on the terrain in 3ds Max. Once the render image opened in Photoshop, I selected the layer transparency (Select – Load Selection, Channel Layer 0 Transparency).
I saved the image in PNG file format with transparency so I could crop the image in an image editing software I used Adobe Photoshop. I defined the render’s output size by first selecting the top view (keyboard shortcut t), and then opening the Render Setup dialog (keyboard shortcut F10). It was a big terrain so the render had to be big too, mine was 10 k x 10 k pixels. I made a top view rendering of the entire terrain in 3ds Max and used the render as a texture. Then it was time to fix the material issue, since I couldn’t have 300 different textures for the terrain. Note: You might want to chose the "Exclude Borders" option during the optimization process, this will make a more precise mesh but on the other-hand the mesh will be heavier. I optimized them first in batches of 40-60 objects, and then attached them together using the Editable Mesh – Attach tool. I tried and it failed, there were far too many polygons to process them all at the same time. My first reflex was to attach all the mesh and use the ProOptimizer modifier. This meant I needed to attach all the segments and optimize the geometry. This left me with more than 300 objects with their own materials-definitely problematic, as it’s important to have minimal objects and materials to achieve the best possible performance in a real-time game engine. The terrain, however, was divided in segments of 420 m x 420 m. It was useful that all the water surfaces were combined, as I could easily put them in a layer. In 3ds Max, I imported the ground.fbx file first. I exported two files: ground.fbx and building.fbx. It’s a good idea to export the 3d model in multiple files (ground and buildings) to better to manage the project. While it is possible to import all that geometry, whether you do or not depends on the project’s purpose. Actually, the roads themselves don’t cause problems, it’s the sidewalks, pavement markings, barriers, etc. Roads and railways added a lot of polys and may be a problem later in Stingray. Open Street Map generated 3d models of all the information available in its database. Since my goal was to have terrain and buildings, I turned off some layers. Some cities may have more accurate results than others, it really depends on the Open Street Map data. The terrain’s topology was quite good, some buildings needed more detail, but overall it still gave me a good idea of the surroundings. When the model was ready, I got an email notification. InfraWorks generates models using data from Open Street Map in a cloud service it’s fully automated.
It’s possible to do this even in InfraWork’s trial mode. The maximum area you can generate in Model Builder is 200 km 2, but I used a smaller area for testing purposes. I’ve generated a city block around the office using the InfraWorks Model Builder. In a real-time game engine, or maybe the Model Builder capabilities could be used to generate a surrounding around an architectural project. Stingray can be used to see an InfraWorks project There is also an interesting tool called Model Builder, which generates 3d models of a city (building, roads, terrain…). It’s a powerful tool to generate road, bridge and drainage proposals. InfraWorks is mainly used for transportation planning and design by civil engineers. Can Stingray import an InfraWorks model of the streets surrounding the Autodesk Montreal office? Let’s find out! I was curious to test the limits of Stingray with a very large scale model. I’ve been a 3d visualisation specialist for many years and yet I’m still new to real-time technology.