Terrain surface editing tool

[KPerison]

A new tool aimed at editing the interface between terrain surfaces edges is required. 

The projects I work on are primarily outside the US. Thus the Model Builder function generates it terrain surface from SRTM 90m DEM data.  The 30m data is available for use if you want to go retrieve it yourself.  Even with the 30m DEM data, once I import LIDAR or any higher resolution surveyed surface data, the interface between the surface edges always generates large elevation differences. Especially in steep forested areas.

A tool that can smooth or fuzz the surface edges would be very useful and make the interface look more natural. 

My initial thoughts were the tool could:

1. Hold edge of surface A and blend into surface B by distance
2. Hold edge of surface A and blend into surface B by slope
3. Average both sides of interface over a buffer width
4. Ability to apply blending criteria to different ranges or areas

Alternately provide a similar tool to Photoshop's "Heal" brush to be able to "Paint" over the affected areas  <---Not sure about this one, but somehow act like sandpaper or filler depending on which surface you were trying to edit.

Anyhow, see the attached PDF for an example.

[C3D_TomR]

Is it possible to raise/lower surface data? That might help when working with surfaces from different sources and potentially different datums. Being able to adjust a surface globally could help with the issue that you are seeing where the surfaces are merging.

--Tom

[KPerison]

Tom,

Yes, the configure dialog provides the ability to raise/lower any of the surfaces, but the issue is both surfaces are as accurate as it gets for the data set.  I cant just raise or lower one or the other to match at the edges (elev differences are not consistent) as it would adjust the entire surface not just those on the edges.  As I mentioned in the post the effect is worse in hilly/wooded terrain and less so in flatter solid areas as the SRTM data is more accurate, thus the varying elevation differences.

[JamesMaeding]

We deal with your situation by pulling in points for some buffer area to add to the civil3d surface.

Then we display points as acad points and trim and tweak as needed.

Then we add those to the c3d surface so they trim out the transition zone data.

Your request is very tricky, when you think about it.

Should IW be making a new surface for those transition zones?

The way you describe a terrain paint type function, which most gaming engines seem to have, that would be portions of areas, not even one continuous strip.

So it would have to have multiple tweak zones, which is not something I have seen done in IW.

I guess they would have to do "patches" which start by inheriting the surface for some closed shape area, then allow editing like you say.

I would say this kind of feature is FAR FAR FAR more valuable than traffic, drainage design, and many other whistles they are adding.

This would be an actual customer requested feature for the core use of displaying a model, the real specialty of IW.

You can tell I am not too happy about so many far fetched things being added when basics are being left out.

[KPerison]

"I would say this kind of feature is FAR FAR FAR more valuable than traffic, drainage design, and many other whistles they are adding.

This would be an actual customer requested feature for the core use of displaying a model, the real specialty of IW."

James,

I agree.  There are plenty of basic tools that should get a focused effort to fix, improve and create before any more glitter is sprinkled on.

In fact I posted a whole list dedicated to that too. 

http://forums.autodesk.com/t5/infraworks-360-general/wish-list-for-infraworks/td-p/5538856

In fairness, some have been dealt with already since posting.

[JamesMaeding]

One of the things I have noticed about Autodesk these days is they think foundational issues will go away if you just develope the heck out of features already chosen.

How can they call IW BIM, when there is no way to pull in linework and have it show?

You will need that linework to draw features and see if they fit within right of way and so on.

I really do not care how difficult that is, it MUST be done if they expect anyone to consider IW a design tool.

By delaying that feature, they reveal more about their understanding of our industry than anything else.

If they do solve that in a useful way, not something dumb like things you cannot select or use, I argue we will not have IW anymore.

Then I wonder why they thought IW was a good place to do design in the first place, given C3D's abilities.

Its because they never fixed the sharing mechanisms of C3D and made things external database.

So things are heavy and slow, so lets find a new lightweight design platform - IW, and ruin it.

Things are on their way.

[KPerison]

Ok, I finally got around to trying Autodesk Memento today and I think those folks might have the answer to the terrain eding tools.

In Memento they have tools for:

• Sculpt surface by Push/Pull with Rounded/Flat brush with strength and brush size control
• Smooth surface with strength and brush size control
• Filling holes
• Smoothing hole edges
• Bridging large mesh gaps
• Extrude selection
• Subdivide selected mesh region
• Decimate model by face count or decimation percentage
• Slice and Fill

If these same type of tools for Mesh editing could be applied to Terrain editing in InfraWorks then we'd be a long way to achieving my original idea's purpose.

Check out the screencast I made that demonstrates these mesh editing tools.

http://autode.sk/1Mt9CxJ

[JamesMaeding]

that momento is indeed a neat tool.

The thing about that workflow is you would have already had to have pulled in points from the USGS DEM into your project surface using C3D.

If you did that already, why not just edit them right in civil3d?

For me, that process is generally erasing some of the USGS points close to the project, so it tin's to the points further away.

That is easy, and I think a lot of people out there use that method to solve the cliff problem.

The idea of having IW do it is a question of how to contain the tweaked data, and the IW team is not going to invent new objects at a whim.

I still think its a great idea though 🙂

[JamesMaeding]

btw, That process of pulling in points from a DEM goes like this:

1) in your project surface drawing, draw a pline of the area you want to pull in, maybe 300' from the edge of your surface.

2) make a new C3D surface, and set that pline as a data clip boundary

3) set your drawing coord system to whatever you are using, we use CA83-VIF usually, and the USGS DEMs are on UTM27-11 system.

4) add the DEM to the surface, setting coord system to UTM27-11, you will only get data for the area in the pline, so not some huge set of points

5) display the points using the style

6) extract the points to the dwg

7) erase out the points inside the project surface area

8) add the points to your project surface 

9) orbit the dwg and erase any points that "stick up" close to the project, rebuild the surface until happy

[Anonymous]

I would prefer terrain editing brush tools not 3D object editing tools. Same kind of tools shown in Momento, but not for 3D objects..
Typically i "bake"  terrains of disparate resolutions in Global Mapper prior to bringing into Infraworks.

Thats fine for a base (as would be editing in Civil3D albeit clunky) but once you use terrain editing tools such as brushes found in UNITY, CryEngine,  EON VUE (even Sketchup Sandbox)  and other programs, you will be left wanting in IW.

Why not mold and shape on the fly (push, pull, swales, etc)? Coverages in IW dont really cut it either.

[KPerison]

Agreed!

[Anonymous]

all the code for all the tools you mention exist for Momento to work on 3d mesh, its not like they would be starting from scratch to bring those tools over into IW. As jmaeding points out they are implemting all sorts of tools, some seemingly non- essential in terms of priorities. I logged in to submit this idea and found yours. Thank-you thank-you thank-you!

[Eric_Chappell]

I have asked the product team for additional information on this idea...Stay tuned.

[Eric_Chappell]

Great idea! We’re putting it on the list for consideration but currently there’s no indication if and when it will be developed. We identify that there is a need for direct surface manipulation tools but at this time we don't know what form they'll take (brush tool, etc.) Keep watching for comments and status updates.

[JamesMaeding]

I just got emailed this was accepted, but the team does not know what form it will take.

Given that IW has multiple surfaces that combine into one, I would imagine you would make a tool to paint on existing surfaces, and create a new surface as it goes. Then the result is just another surface on top level.

The problem is IW has had many bugs with merging surfaces that have highly irregular boundaries.

The thing being proposed would have the ultimate in irregularity, with many islands going on.

I would not bother to make it dynamic such that it reacts to surface changes.

[KPerison]

Great to know it's being considered.
Thanks for all the feedback and support!
Kelly

[aminson]

Yes, when you bring in detailed survey topo alongside 1rc second (30m) contextural topo, the difference can be massive, see below, like 3DS MAX, you need a paint push pull tools, so you can manupulate the context terrain so it at least the detailes survey topography meets seamleasly with the surrounding topographical information. 

I was hoping to use Infraworks to perform 3D anlaysis for this site and its context in the mountains, but this is prety much unusable in this state. 

[JamesMaeding]

So Its accepted now.

I will say this is not a clear cut feature to implement.

Given that IW is a "merge the stack of available surfaces" program, the question of what contains the smoothed surface area arises.

Also, is the smoothed area meant to be dynamic? and if so, what if the boundaries of the surfaces change so a given area is no longer between or even overlapping the two surfaces it originally did?

One thought here is to not make the smoothed surfaces dynamic. Once they are done by whatever interface, maybe a brush you smear with, they no longer care about the original surfaces, they become thier own surface in the stack.

I think that approach could make the feature fairly easy to implement, as IW must maintain some "final composited" TIN, so now you make an interface to smooth areas and that makes a surface to add.

I would like the ability to export those surfaces to imx or an API to get at the triangles for other uses too.

[KPerison]

@Eric_Chappell Any progress towards this type of functionality?

[Anonymous]

The discussion is about 2 year's old but still it would be a great tool to have it implemented easily in a brush-kind type.

I second the motion! 🙂

[srksphillips]

I see this was accepted 3 years ago so wondering if there are any updates on this feature request yet?

In Global Mapper (by Blue Marble), you can resolve the sharp transitions between surfaces by feathering the edges via a dedicated tab. If the surface is not rectangular you can select a polygon and use it to control the feathering. In a nutshell it simply blends the edges to transparent.

In fact this is my workaround when combining 30m SRTM and survey data for use in InfraWorks. Essentially I offset the boundary of my survey data by 100m and use it to crop the underlying SRTM. I then feather the edges of the survey data and then export the hybrid terrain as a new raster. When imported into InfraWorks it sits above the existing 30m SRTM and removes any unsightly transitions. The existing survey data is removed as it is no longer required.

The whole process is very quick so if you have Global Mapper this might be a useful workaround to look into.

Feathering OptionsFeathered to remove hard transitionsBefore and After

No observable transitions