I hope you guys don't mind a show and tell.
I wanted to share a work project I did for work several years ago. It's a combination of Autocad, 3D Max, Bryce and Photoshop. Rendering and texturing was done in Bryce. Modelling in Autocad and Max. Postwork in Photoshop.

I wrote some technical detail about it, but the explorer crashed and I lost my first post, so if you're interested in hearing more about the approach to the project, I'll gladly re-write it in a new post when I get home. I'm out of time at the moment. (sorry)

Image is posted in my gallery

Thanks, Connie

Wow......  It must be amazing to see it in its original size......   I would like it if you talked about the the steps "more than general" that took to do this . I would like to know what parts of this image you found difficult to do and why.....  was it the typography and precision....?  can you give us an enlargement of the houses and terrain??   am i asking for too much???

Tom

Oukay, I’m home now and waiting for my overheated microwave dinner to cool down ...

Just a tad of background, I'm a civil engineer and a land surveyor by schooling and career. Over last 10 years I've been punching and nagging and kicking and screaming and yelling about 3D, and every now and then I would get to do some of it. Right now, I work at a civil engineering and geology firm doing 3d modeling of terrains and various engineering designs. I managed to talk the company into creating a data visualization department, and they made me a 'director'....

I've also done a fair amount of GIS (Geographic Information systems) and GPS (global positioning) work.

I'd like to show some of the newer things, but I'm limited by copyright and proprietary data issues on current projects... Plus a lot of it is raw modeling, and not that many 'petty pictures' yet.

Back to the posted project….

Initial data ws given to me in various formats. Engineering drawings come in AutoCAD, in 2D, with a lot of elevations annotated in a form of text, and some by symbols, and the rest I filled in on my own, using my grading design experience. Lot of keying in of numbers. Some information with respect to environmental constraints came in different GIS formats, and was imported in CAD. Existing ground is a mix of higher precision aerial survey (giving me 1-foot contours and about a million and a half of triangles to handle) and less detailed stuff beyond that came from USGS DEM’s (digital elevation models)

The idea was to make a precise model. When I say precise, I'm talking everything is in calculated place, to within couple of tenths of a foot. No eyeballing and approximations.

This enabled us to do some of the engineering analysis on the project. For example, check street gradients and utility locations, estimate volume of soil to be moved and shuffled around. Determine precisely which trees can be saved which will have to be removed… On this project the client had to pay a $10,000 environmental impact mitigation fee per each mature oak tree to be removed. There were 3000 (three thousand) trees on the site that were inventoried!

Most of the initial calculations and input of 3D line work was done in AutoCAD with help of some of AutoCAD add-ons and few minor scripts and routines I wrote. Then I created TIN type meshes representing existing ground and a proposed grading. On the meshes I delineated locations of existing trees, tree rows t be planted, some utility locations, constructed curbs, gutters, building pads…

After Autocad I took he meshes into 3D max and 3D Viz. This is where I made few rudimentary house models (the client didn’t want to spend the time and money building more detailed house models, which was a bummer. They wanted ‘boxes’. I couldn’t talk them into more detail. In Max I also planed the new trees. It was important to mimic the treeline sizes and coloring f the actual trees to be planted, so the planning commission gets a ‘feel’ for the colorfulness of the
planting on site, but on a site of this size (700 acres) and over a 1000 lots, it was cost prohibitive to do realistic trees.

Mind you this was in the days Photoshop just came out with version 5, AutoCAD was a version 14, Max was a 3.1, Bryce was still 4. I had a computer at the office that had a dual processor, a ‘screaming’ 1 gigahertz each, and 1 gig of ram. If I remember right, the year was 2001, there abouts.

So, in max I planted the houses and the trees, then took the model into Bryce for texturing and rendering.  I liked Bryce scene and material setups better then max.

The original image was 6000x4000 pixels, or larger. I had to render things in pieces. It was too much for the computer to render trees and the houses and the terrain etc all at once, so I ended up rendering trees separate from the terrain, separate from the houses/roofs etc, rendering each layer on a bluescreen background. Then I assembled all the layers in Photoshop and did post work. Adding some drop shadows, doing some smudging and brush-stroking in the areas where we wanted things softened up, adjusting coloring and the usual things.

After the first review the client and the landscape architect decided that it looks little too sterile without cars in the streets, so I found some simplistic cars and rendered 4-5 basic models in 5-6 colors each – again on a blue screen at relatively high resolution – bigger then the flea size you see on the image. Then I made use of Painter (I think it was Painter 4 – before Corel bought it), and used the are images to build a few image nozzles (hoses) to draw them around the site. When drawing the cars, I had to pay close attention to the right mix of colors, if you look out in the street, after a while you’ll notice most cars are white, then there is a specific mix of which colors are more predominant from others. Also, you want to be careful about the density of cars. You don’t want to communicate that your project will create a traffic jam, and you don’t want to have it look deserted.

I opted against placing cars in 3D and rendering against another blue screen, but at the moment I don’t remember the reason why.

In addition to this image, called the illustrative plan, I had to do a few dozen renderings and a couple animations to answer planning commission and public hearing questions like… If I drive down this street on my bicycle about 15 mph, will I still see ‘nature’ or will I be staring at stark houses and concrete? If I stand on this intersection across the freeway from the project, will I be looking at a bare, 70-foot high wall, or will it be vegetated. How far will my line of sight be approaching a specific intersection, do I have enough time to stop if a kid runs out on the street, or do we need to lower a speed limit. Will we see nothing but rooftops instead of a quaint valley from out next-door high dollar horse property?

What we were able to offer, in addition to pretty pictures answering these questions is a numerical proof that they’re not looking at an ‘artistic interpretation’ – which in their minds never ends up looking that way when actually built - but that they are looking at a graphic representation of an accurate mathematical model. In the minds of public and city planners, it really adds to the believability of the presentation.

If I remember right the whole project took about 5-6 weeks worth of man-hours to produce, from modeling to rendering to post-work to assembling presentations, animations and printed materials.

I’m not sure what else to day about it. If you have specific questions, please ask away. I’m off to dig up few more images from the project, so you can see some details, and some WIP shots and experiments, and wireframes.   
Heh, I think my dinner is plenty cold by now....  :m_laugh:

Thnks for reading! Hugz, Connie

Reminds me of the topographical maps, I used to plan canoe trips  ( but back then there were no houses ). Only thing missing is the river. Nice work...

I found this inset, labeled as 1/4 resolution test... Some of the cars are in (but way too many in the parking lot), and not all of the postwork is in yet. That was a hallenge, getting the right mix and spacing and alignment of cars with ainter nozzles. I don't reember what I ended up doing to randomize the spacing.

Looking at it I'm remembering having to do about 3 or 4 layers of bluescreen trees, so I can get the effect of different tree heights when I add them to photoshop.

Also, I had to make sure that the correct roof configuration for ech house was put on each lot, as the mix of house sizes was going to be scrutinized to. Showing 6 or so, or even two or identical houses in a row was a "sure way for the project to get rejected" by the planning comission.

Native trees had do look different from plante tree, and had to show that a good portion of the stret and lots was going to end up in tree shade. (when the trees mature) Good amount of trees had to show as taller then the houses, and cast some shadow on the rooftops.

Thats an incredible responsibilty to render it presentable enough so the sponsors will feel confident and keep their pants on..........    lol    and monies rolling in the project....

It makes sense that things in reality are different from a picture or "artist" render.....

that was quite a description and it only brings up more question but I'll hold off on those...

too bad you could not talk them into making more detailed houses and tress.... but you guys did not have the computer nor the memory power back then......   could'nt you have made a separate render of a real close up of the neighborhood, you know a "cu desa"  .....  what ever......   anyway that was some time ago......  real job real work render.......

Tom

You downloaded while I was writting.... great details..... 

Tom

I still have the models, I suppose I could do it on my own... Lot of my 'on my own' work ends to relate to keeping a step haead with skills and experiments of what I'll be needing at work.

Here's a closeup quick test render. Notice no shadows from trees or much of anything else. In Max, I had to render with shadows turned off.  Something was wrong with the way I textured the buildings in this render. I was expreimenting with ambient and diffusion inside the house... didn't look right, and I never got to play with it more.

Give it a go... if you are in the mood.........  Would you know the type of house they are planning on using..

is this project a done deal?

I bet you guys can even name the Bryce textures I used on this one. I got lucky, the landscape architect whom got to call some of the shots on 'artistic presentation' fell in love wit one of Bryce's out of the box textures.  It is kind of a pain when someone else gets to call the shots on how things should look.... I wish I had more requests for more realistic look too.

After dealing with all this detail at work all day, when I come home I like to stare at a few pretty spheres on water (SOW) and render parodies  :m_laugh:   This should shed a bit more light on my 'kalifornia' parody render... (in my gallery)  After having to put all the little things in their 'right' place, I like to render something that doesn't have a single thing in it's right place.

I want to give you a big warm tahnk you for reading this far. I hope at least a couple of people found it worth some interest.

I learned AutoCad back when it was version 9 and in DOS (on a 486) 1992 and graduated with a degree in Design. I used to save my files on a 5 1/4 floppies. We started working on 3D which was mainly Phong shading. I only worked doing that for like a year and found I could make the big bucks fixing the computers I worked on. I always fiddled with it in the background until I met Bryce back in like 96 OMG 10 years ago! Since we were throwing around numbers and such... Oh and if you like you can look over there an the left and see when I got here I was the 1900th or so to sign up here hehe.

Well a big warm hug to you from Manhattan for writting it all.........  you are a great bubble and sphere maker as well...  and I know these things are not in their place they are right where you placed them...  did I make any sense.......    As you can see I'm not always where am supposed to be mentally...  as you can see by my avatar I can should be logical.....  

I certainly found your work very interesting.......

Tom

Tom are you talking to me or Connie? Have I been drinking too much or have you?

And yes connie I was giving you are hard time cause turn about is fair play!

Quote -
And yes connie I was giving you are hard time cause turn about is fair play!

Yes dear, you win, yours is certainly bigger then mine :tt2:
You might wanna be careful waving that big thing 'round here, you're gonna hurt someone with it :m_bouncy:

Are you saying you want to settle out of court? hehe

dId I miss something.... 

No Vile I was certailly talking to connie and yes i was drinking......

have we establish size already......   and erh...capacity.......

yes keep lawyers out of this......do settle.......

Guess I stepepd on people's toes sharing this. Oh well...  :m_thoughtful:

After reviewing the data and with due consideration of ConnieKat8's outstanding CV, I hereby nominate said ConnieKat8 to be elevated to the status of RENDERGOD for her exceptional attention to detail under the harshest of circumstances (the real world) and wholesome use of THE Application (Bryce).

All those in favour?................

BTW: The Cardinals grant forgiveness to ConnieKat8 for her use of heretical apps.

Um my toes are fine. Not sure about Tom’s but I bet they are fine too. I thought this was a show and tell thread and I got a kick out of how you were talking about "way" back in 2001 which in computer years can be a long time. Anyhow I thought I would share that I too had some experience with Autocad back in an even more archaic time.

As far as my statement “Settle out of court and hehe” it was intended as a joke if it was not taken as such it should have been. Nor was I bragging in the least bit. I think you are a wonderfully talented artist Connie; I was only sharing my work with CAD.

One reason I hate email and text is you are never certain of tone of voice unless you add little smileys or by overtly stating it.

No worries.  I also forgot in the first post was to say hey great work! And as far as mine being bigger that is all done with mirrors…

Thanks Vile :)  I wasn't sure... I was worrying that perhaps I was coming across as bragging too much or sumthin... I really get into these projects, and think that perhaps they're as interesting to others as they are to me... And get accused of being arrogant and stuff, where that's not my intention at all... Especially when it comes to writing about things, it's not my strong suite...

I was thinking, he's joking, but then after not many other people responded, I was thinking, uh-oh, they're looking at this and thinking, oh, shut up, you're full of youself  / crap. I meant 'real work' as opposed to photos and SOW's that I posted in my gallery so far. Not meaning to say other people's stuff isn't real work...  Where did I put that foot out of mouth extractor, I think I need it - urgently!

Whew, I dummo, maybe I'm PMS-ing... It's that emotional female crap... Did I mention I tend to overthink things... :rolleyes:   A friend of mine, whom is a 'real artist' - unlike me, told me once, with an explanation that it is a compliment: "You're certainly neurotic enough to make a good artist"   I hafta laugh how I can work myself up... sheesh!

Waaaay back, I graduated in '87, and started using autocad after 2.7 came out, on an old 286, before that I got my first computer when was 11, in 1980.... That was 26 years ago... gaaaaawwwwd, I sound old!   
Im only 19... REALLY, I promise!  I can like act all blonde too, like you know!  [time to shut up, Kitty]

It's cool that you did cad stuff. You still doing any of it? I remember when R9 came out and it had 3D vector capabilities, I was experimenting making christmas trees and donuts out of revolved surfaces.

LMAO to all involved!!

THIS is the sort of of thing I LOVE to see in the Bryce forum!

Connie: Your images are great. I know diddly-squat about CAD etc, and I'm only interested in Bryce (and ahem Vue) for the landscape facilities it offers me, but I admire your use of it in a totally different arena to the one I use it for.

And I also appreciate the badinage that's going on in this thread. Made my day!

Cheers,
Diolma

(Who started in computers before they had University Courses for them, so missed out on all the good bits...)

Well I too don't know much about AutoCAD, but I'm about to find out on Monday when I start my AutoCAD course.

Funny that only now do people suddenly start talking about AutoCAD.

(P.S. I second the motion to give Connie a RENDERGODS badge - man, that's amazing stuff!)

Where the h*&$ is my F(^%ing badge? Grrr I hate hijacking threads and then not getting any props....

Ok Connie we kisssed and made up but serious TMI TMI! OMG TMI!

That said no I have not done any CAD since 14 although there are days when I would trade my Wacom in for a digitizer!

Thanks Vile :)
TMI on what, the project or the neurosos? I thought crazy was good around here

Can't you use wacom as a digitizer? That thing is awesome! I feel left footed withuot it.

Bryster, thanks for the, um, nomination. I'm not that good. I can do better though - at least I think.

That and the above portion LOL!

Ahhhahaha... Like I said, writing is not my strong suite ...
Here, you earned your prop!   http://www.cb-design.net/badge2.zip

LOL j/k

ROTFLMAO....   tooo funny!  You have me laughing to tears on this one.  
I'm saving that pic...  LOLOL  :lol::m_laugh::m_laugh::lol::m_laugh::m_laugh::lol:

Well good! You are not the one wearing it. You have no Idea how many people have stopped me and asked Who is this Connie?

I worked for many years as a hydrographic surveyor doing maritime research, deep ocean floor mapping and also reef and coastal seabed mapping. My work spanned the era from fully manual compilation of data through to the use of (at that time) powerful computers. As early as 1994 we had terrabyte array hard drives and gigabytes of RAM in use and were modelling complex 3D terrains. My laptop now is no doubt more capable than the large systems we had in place back then...  I know exactly how challenging it was to be at the limitations of technology at that time whilst tring to present vast amounts of completx data in a way that could be easily interpreted by anybody. The resultant data also made its way onto nautical charts used by mariners. 

Thanks for the insight into your work Conniekat8 :-)

Hi Steve, How interesting!
Did you guys use dome dyland survey methods, or did you use sonars?  I worked briefly on a project where we were staking out an underwater foundation for building a jetty, here in southern california. Pretty challenging keeping a precise location, while on a barge.

Right now I'm modelling some geologic surfaces, comparing them with the existing ground and designs... My norm is trying to model datasets containing 3-5 milion points at once.   I set up the dataset, let the computer crunch for an hour or two building a surface, and cross my fingers it doesn't crash, which it does about half the times.  The bigger the computers get, the more data we end up trying to jam in.

I have two cmputers at my desk in the office... both as fast as they get. Whil one is crunching, I'm doing work on the other.. (or checking out laest renderosity gallery images).

Latest challenges have been making sense out of lidar scans....

The way it works, if I make mistakes, the likelyhood is really high that things will get built in a wrong location.... and communicating the data unambiguously. I like cartography, I get my little artsy fartsy outlet that way too.  :)

I was using echo sounders predominantly, hull mounted and towed side scan. Later I moved into laser airborne swath sounding - 50 measurements per second, 250 metre wide swath, travelling at 75 metres per second - a lot of data points! We were pioneers in the use of differential GPS back in the early 1990s.

Oh, yeah, early 90's, Commercial GPS was stillin diapers! Us surveyors were just learning it.
Pretty interesting stuff.

I bet the point clouds you guys were generating were in milions and milions...  Did you get to do any of the pst processing, or were you mainly on the data collection end?

I was always considered a 'compuer wiz' - at least at the time, so i'd get stuck doing post processing. They'd always promisse to get me out in the field more, as soon as I finish "this project", because noone else can do it... That would not happen often enough.

Looks like airborne laser (lidar) is getting more and more use nowdays. I've used it's product, but haven't gotten into asmuch detail as I used to with aerial photogrammetry (non digital, but steroscopic stuff).  I love playing with tehnology... all the neat gadgets :)  I get a kick out of doing real useful things with them. To me, that's' real entertainment'    [I know, I know, I'm odd]

I was involved from the survey planning, right through ground truthing field work and data collection (in the aircraft it was 7 hour low level flights at 1500 feet about 3 times a week), data processing and collation and final data collation into the formal survey reports and also the 3D visualisation. We had a real time 3D fly through system developed in the late 90s. That could cope with three months of data at once - serious mini-mainframe computer power there.  Some info about it here:
http://www.hydro.gov.au/aboutus/lads/lads-how.htm

I use to work as an electronics technician and I find all that stuff interesting as hell.....  I got to admid I can not understand some of the terminology you guys are using but its interesting no less.

Thanks for posting.  This is very interesting to me.  I used to do pen and pencil drafting back in the 70's designing cast in place concrete formwork.  I worked on the forms used to cast the EPCOT Center and monorail at Disney World, but most of my projects were alot less interesting.  Things like highway bridges, turbine pedestals, and fish ladders.  My computer at the time was a .... oh,  wait a minute,  there were no computers at that time.  :lol:
     Feel free to post some more real world 3d applications.  I am very interested in how you get real world elevation data into a 3d application.  I use Rhinoceros and Bryce.

I started with AutoCAD 1.5 on an 8086 in 1986. Last used it as version 10 to create a quick and dirty surface model of the EH101 in order to evaluate the blindzones for the sensors suites (surface search and weather radars, FLIR, MAWS, ESM and CMDS) we were looking at putting on her for the Canadian Forces.

Quote - ...I am very interested in how you get real world elevation data into a 3d application.  I use Rhinoceros and Bryce.

Bryce can import USGS DEM files as terrain objects, upto 4096x4096 resolution, I believe.
.DDF is listed in the file types for import, but I can't ever get them to work. SDTS has replaced DEM at the USGS as the format of choice; and most of the downloads I've seen are in SDTS format, but there is a translator from SDTS to DEM:
http://data.geocomm.com/dem/sdts2dem.html

Thanks for that link. I have wondered about that issue.

Thanks dvlenk6.

Most of my data comes as point or polyline infomation for autocad.  One of the civil engineering add-ons has a delaunay triangulation surface modelling, and imports a 3d mesh into autocad. Autocad has dxfout and 3dsout export.

For DEM's back then I used micro-dem program to convert the dems into a point cloud or a height map image. Last couple autocad versions with Land Development Desktop import DEM's directly.

Rhino will read dwg formats... I just turned in a purchase request for Rhino YAY  :D

Thanks, gotta love the Rhino.  When you get your Rhino, stop by the Rhino forum and say hello.