Terrain Tin Shading

[Anonymous]

I'm currently working through improving my Civil 3D and Infraworks data transfer process to generate models quicker without alot of rework. One item I'm having issues with is nearly vertical surfaces and how they look in infraworks. The terrain comes in correctly from the Civil 3D drawing, but different triangles are super bright for some reason while others look like they are in a shadow. I've noticed this doesn't happen all the time though because some other models I've done with walls in them don't have this problem.

I've tried turning on the terrain simplification and while this helps some most of the time the problem just spreads out more and isn't as defined. I've also run through all the graphics settings turning them on and off to see if anything helped. Anyone have any ideas on what might be going on with this?

[bcarriere]

I had a similar problem, but solved it in the Application Options, 3D Graphics, uncheck Shadows.

[Karsten.Saenger]

Hi @Anonymous

vertical terrain faces are actually very difficult to be built in InfraWorks - as in many other programs too.

How about using "Land Areas" for the regions with vertical walls. Land areas will refine the TIN mesh a the edges in order to avoid the effects you are describing.
In order to be able to use land areas you will need to switch on the "Land Areas & Grading Behaviors"" Preview on the InfraWorks start page.

See also:

InfraWorks 360 Help: To add or modify land areas (preview)

Regards,

Karsten.

[Anonymous]

This particular grading is finished grading created in Civil 3D and imported several different ways to test if the shading was different for other import methods. The vertical faces in Civil 3D are the typical 2 feature lines close together to create a near vertical face. I understand the limits of TIN surface types and that there can never be true vertical faces. I have also used the Land Areas in Infraworks and set a slope of 0.1:1 to get vertical faces when a project was in the conceptual phase but the intent of bring in the Civil 3D surface is to provide a more intuitive design review visualization of the interaction between finished grading, utilities, etc. I can still do this with how it currently is but was just trying to figure out why the shading was coming out like that.

I've also tried turning on and off the shadows and but it didn't really help in my particular case.

[John_DeLeeuw]

@Anonymous, try drawing some Coverage Areas around the top of your pit. This will pull the strange triangles back to normal again. Just drape them on your terrain and maybe use the Shape Terrain option to correct terrain heights. You can also add some directly in your pit to adjust triangulations. Also set the material of these Coverage Areas to Transparent if you want the Arial draping to lead.

[Karsten.Saenger · Accepted solution]

Hello @Anonymous,

the shadows on the terrain even in flat areas are created by the render engine of InfraWorks and there is no setting available to change this.

It looks smoother for some objects with few faces only, but of course it does not look correct on the terrain near edges or breaklines.

I have tested a few things and got best results with adding a coverage area in InfraWorks for flat areas, as @John_DeLeeuw already mentioned.

In Civil 3D you could use a contourline style, select the surface and extract the contours. Edit the desired contour line to represend a polygon and export it as shape file. Then add the shape in InfraWorks as coverage.

Hope that helps,

Karsten.

[Karsten.Saenger]

Example:

[Anonymous]

Thanks for looking into this and I agree with you and @John_DeLeeuw that a combination of strategical placed land areas and coverages do hide those issues somewhat but hopefully this issue can be ironed out in the render engine at some point in the future. These are internal use models but I'll just know for any presentation stuff I do I'll need to watch for that for now.

[Karsten.Saenger]

Hi @Anonymous

there is one other option you can try: Change the Date and Time settings in InfraWorks.

With other sun position and light intensity the shading is calculated differently.

Regards,

Karsten.

[John_DeLeeuw]

@Anonymous, great that my answer worked for you. Please also mark that as solution