Real world data. (SRTM Heightmaps)

One of the major shortcomings with the draft environment was the reliance on approximate eyeballing for the terrain modelling. In a architecture where millimeter accuracy is king these kind of approximations are just fundamentally blasphemous, especially, when there are alternatives. Enter SandBox2s height mapping capability. first established in GIS applications and a well worn concept in other gaming engines, Sandbox2 allows you use a pixel per unit greyscale bitmap to act as the reference for height data. An accurate enough heightmap can produce pretty stunning results.

After searching the moding forums I came across two old threads and a link to another outside forum each detailing methods for creating accurate heightmaps. Originally I thought I would be creating one from the contours I generated in sketchup previously, however I found there was a much better way for achieving the same result.

4K1R4’s tutorial on CryMod (http://crymod.com/thread.php?threadid=17539) Shows the method of using Google Earth, Google Sketchup and 3Dem (a GIS modelling program) to create heightmaps. Unfortunately the video tutorial is no longer in existence and 4K1R4 is no long and active member and has not responded to my request to re-post the tutorial, but reading through the thread I was able to glean some insight into how the process worked.

From what I can gather the preliminary stages are similar to those for making a 1:1 texture map of your area. First you bring your area into SketchUp from Google Earth, place a 2048 x 2048 square around the data you wish to map. Then, placing that square back into Google Earth as a reference, you can find the real world co-ordinates for each corner of your site.

Once those co-ordinates have been found you can download SRTM data from a source and the create a greyscale BMP for the area you need.

The best workflow I found was on the Transport Tycoon forums where MGSteve has posted a pretty comprehensive tutorial (http://www.tt-forums.net/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=27052) of how you can use a google earth add on to quickly download data for the area you need rather than trawl through the cryptic ftp sites that usually host such data. This approach uses a program called MicroDem for the data manipulation and is the one I used for my tests.

This first image shows the google earth plugin in action, once you’ve found the data set you need, you can download it and open it in MicroDEM.

This image shows the data set loaded in MicroDem.

The resulting greyscale bitmap for the Hyde Park area.

And the results in our map.

Unfortunately after several attempts, I am still unable to create a working heightmap, however I will keep trying some alternate methods.

Assignment One - Strengths and Weaknesses

Assingment One

Assignment One - Video One - Showing the draft building in it’s environment.
http://www.mediafire.com/?2nj2n5o0w2n

Assignment One - Video Two - Showing the draft building from above.
http://www.mediafire.com/?odbyzynggnl

Assignment One Contributions

For this assignment my contribution to the team effort was focused on the terrain and environment that the building was to be located in. This allowed me to work by myself while the rest of the team worked together on the model since my being in Perth hindered us from working effectively together on the building model. When the model was exported from 3D max as an object I was able to import it into the environment and place it in the desired location.

Breakdown of contribution:

• Location
• Created new level
• Created an aerial view of our area using images gathered from google earth
• Texturing of the terrain with the aerial images
• Height sculpturing based on reference images
• Placement of vegetation
• Placement of roads
• Placement of surrounding buildings
• Importing and placement of building object
• Image captures
• Video captures
• Contribution to 600 word team blog post

Assignment One Progress

After researching the background of the project, it was discovered that little is known about Boullée’s intentions for location. However, the subject of the building allowed the narrowing down of a suitable context. After his death Sir Issac Newton was buried in Westminster Abbey in London, where he still remains. Taking London as the base location, the project required a site that would be able to accommodate the 300m/sq cenotaph. After looking through google earth it became apparent that the area that is Hyde Park and neighbouring Kensington Gardens would be the most suitable location with enough space to place the building.

View Larger Map

Upon selecting that location, a high resolution texture map was created of a 2084m x 2084m area centered on the site using images stitched together after being taken from google earth. A base terrain was created in Sandbox 2 and was textured using this texture map.

By exporting the terrain from google earth into Sketchup a contour map was created by taking sections through the terrain. This assisted in modifying the terrain so that it reflected the real topography and in the placement of some of the major roads, paths, trees and buildings. Once the draft environment was ready the 3ds model was imported and placed.

Now that the draft environment has been put together it has allowed the team to see where the potential sticking points are in the modeling and associated work-flows are. The map itself appears bare until the perimeter buildings are added, which in turn are hard to place an manipulate in SandBox. This most likely calls for them to be modeled outside SandBox and imported. Trying to model the terrain accurately in SandBox can be a little tricky. Exploring the possibility of a height map might help. Accurate placement of roads and paths is also an issue. Creating a hight detail guide which can be placed as a texture map might also be considered.

Week 2 - Collaboration Topic [Context]

Context

The context of this post is confusion. How am I supposed to write 200+ words on such a broad topic with only one resource? How do I chose that one source from the apparent tens of thousands of scholarly articles out there which merely use the term rather than defining it? A lot of my research has come up with many books about something IN context, but not OF context. Have I missed something? Clearly not, Roy Dilley in his introduction to The Problem of Context, a collection of essays giving focus to the concept of context in regards to social anthropology seems to agree with me.

“Despite the importance of context to social anthropology - and the fact that it has been so central for so long - it is surprising to find how little attention has been given to the topic over the history of the discipline.” - R. Dilley 1992 pp.2 (http://books.google.com.au/books?id=CSP7Wd53WQgC)

Dilley continues by looking at how the concept has been defined in other fields such as linguistics and philosophy as well as adding his own ideas that context is about making a “connection” and “by implication, disconnection” (Dilley pp.x) between things to help define the object of contextualisation, this idea fits well with the words Latin origin; contextus, which means to join together. This joining in term helps create meaning, so we could say that an object IN context is that which is connected to something else in meaning.

Placing context in context helped to create meaning for itself in this case, and hopefully placing my other collaboration topics in context will help me investigate those as well.

Week 2 - Research

The Chosen Architecture

The team...