Thanks.
I have not commited to doing the project yet, this is experimental at this point. I have come close with Bryce, but find some resolution problems (animating a fly-over of the property, when the camera approaches parts of the terrain, the enlargement causes some real rough detail, even with elevation greyscale maps at 1024x1024, or larger).

No, I do not have all the numerical elevations.
I am working with aerial photos and some previous sketches showing placement of shrubbery. I am painting the greyscale height map image in PhotoShop by eyeballing the scant reference material that I have - an impossible task in itself.

Your "what you see" images above are helpful, and I know about dropping the trees, etc. to the object below (Bryce does this as well). The problem is, as shown in your images, #3, specifically, is positioning the shrubbery without benefit of seeing the rendered terrain, only the wireframe image. Thus placing the shrubbery is a trial and error process of dropping the plants, rendering and moving the plants around again and again. I pretty much solved this particular issue in Bryce, and had hoped that Vue offered a similar process.

I agree, it is a crazy project without DEMS, Topo maps or anything of that sort... but after 20+ years, I've never accused clients of being sane or rational.

I appreciate your input, and it does help... perhaps when it is all added up, the answer will appear... or I can go do something better with my time.

thanks much for the efforts

On-line portfolio / Making figurines in China / Gallery  / Video Demos