Cost-Effective Visualization Techniques with Autodesk® Civil 3D® · 2011-08-25 · Cost-Effective...

Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin ResortOrlando, Florida

11/30/2005 - 8:00 am - 9:30 am Room:Osprey 1 [Lab] (Swan)

Cost-Effective Visualization Techniques with Autodesk® Civil 3D®

This hands-on session will introduce users to visualization techniques available right out of the box in Civil 3D and VIZ Render. 3D design and modeling have now become an integral part of the everyday design process in Civil 3D. We'll learn how to take advantage of the 3D model in Civil 3D to easily create visualizations which can be beneficial for internal design review as well as for presentation to project stakeholders, authorities, and public review boards. This session will take a practical approach and introduce techniques which allow the Civil 3D user to incorporate visualization as part of the standard project workflow.

CV31-1L

About the Speaker:

Natan Elsberg - RDV SystemsDavid Blanchette (Assistant); Jessica Montoya (Assistant)and

Natan is the cofounder and CEO of RDV Systems, and is a recognized industry expert in 3D modeling and visualization for civil engineering and infrastructure projects. Natan holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Penn State University and has over 14 years of experience incorporating visualization techniques with civil engineering design projects. He has extensive background with DCA, Land Desktop, MX, 3D Studio Viz and Max, and has been involved with the Civil 3D team as a consultant in Europe for over 3 years. Natan has been an Autodesk Authorized Training Consultant for over 5 years, and is the professional services manager of Academia, an Israel-based Autodesk Authorized Training [email protected]

Cost Effective Visualization Techniques with Autodesk® Civil 3D®

2

Discussion: How to be cost effective

What does it mean to be cost-effective?

Who is the professional doing the visualization?

What is the level of skill required?

Is it part of the design / change process workflow – or exterior to that process?

What are the stated objectives of the work?

What are the secondary or residual benefits?

How can we measure the effectiveness of our efforts?

Do we evaluate the fitness of the produced product according to the objectives we have set? Often not – usually “Wow that looks good!” – but does it really serve the purpose that we had set out to fulfill or not?

What is the real value of a drive through at design speed down a road? Depends what are you trying to achieve - a stunning presentation or a detailed visual analysis of sight distances?

Better to spend precious animation time on dynamic views that give a good general overview of the proposed project from a changing perspective for people to get a good picture of the project.

Are we only interested in photo-realism? Or are there other benefits involved in the process?

What is the production time?

What is the change / reproduction time?

Are there elements in the process that can be streamlined?

- texture vs. model - LOD - level of detail - you don’t have to model everything to achieve a good visual result - for animations – what is your polygon count, what is your frame production time, how many frames do you

need, how many animations do you need? - How closely linked is your design / modeling to your visualization? - What changes require a rerun of the processes and from what point?

What features of Civil 3D can we harness to be cost effective with regards to the above discussion?


3

Preparation:

We can set up our ACAD environment to show us more graphics dynamically than you are probably used to:

Right click in any blank drawing area and select options.

Go to the system tab, in the 3D Graphics Display frame select the Properties button. In the render option on the right side make sure that enable materials and enable textures are selected.

Exercise 1: Modeling for Visualization

Lightweight Trees

Samples folder C:\datasets\CV31-1L\EX1

Open ex1-1.dwg

Pic.1

Notice there are two 3D tree blocks inserted on the terrain. Let’s hit the shade button and see what we get.

Now let’s render using the ACAD render functions.

---- Factors to consider: Realism, FaceCount, Render Time for one, Render Time for animations…

Change the layer to Tree 1 – and let’s insert block named Tree 1 on snap it to the ground and scale by 10.

Copy the block, multiple copy snap to surface points distribute around the surface.

(Open ex1-2.dwg)

Use the ACAD render function – not too impressive is it?


4

pic.2

Let’s use a material from the ACAD render functions – type RMAT to get to the Materials Dialogue

Choose Tree 1 press the By layer button and choose tree1 from the layer list – then click attach

pic.3

Now let’s re-render and see the results!

More realistic, Low Face count – quicker render times?


5

pic.4

(Open ex1-3.dwg)

Now let’s see how we make our own materials. We’ll add a different type of tree.

Enter RMAT in command line – make a new material – we’ll call it T2 for brevity’s sake.

In the attribute box choose Color/Pattern - then click on the find file button and choose: ex1-3l.tga

pic.5

In the attribute box choose Transparency - then click on the find file button and choose: ex1-3o.tga and then set the value slider all the way to the right (1.0).


6

pic.6

Now let’s assign the new material (T2) to layer Tree 2. (see pic. 3)

Go ahead and render and look at the beautiful palm trees dotting our landscape.

pic.7


7

Not just trees!

Open ex1-5.dwg

This is an example of an “Over” modeled drawing file.

Let’s hit the ACAD render function and see how long it takes to get one frame rendered (on our machine 18 secs).

pic.8

Open ex1-6.dwg – this is the same general model but utlilizing simplified blocks with a material to compensate for the lost modeling detail.

Let’s hit the ACAD render function and see how long it takes to get one frame rendered. Considerably faster – (6 secs). – about 3 times as fast. Maybe not too important for a 12 second difference, but considering rendering a few thousand frames for an animation.

How did we do that?

Open ex1-7.dwg

Here we have the basic building block for the acoustic wall.

Select shaded view and rotate in 3D.

pic.9

Now open ex1-8.dwg and see how we’ve simplified the block.


8

Now use the render function and see the results. We’ve taken the “over” modeled wall and materialized it.

pic.10

We’ve gone from appx 660 faces down to less than 10!


9

Exercise 2

Multi-View Blocks


Open file ex2-1.dwg

Use 3D orbit to rotate the viewpoint.

See the difference between 2D and 3D. Note this is the same basic technology used in surface display.

pic.11

Open ex2-2.dwg

Here we’ll add a multi-view block to the surface.

Hit I (insert), browse to the C:\CV31-1L\EX2\landscape subfolder and pick the apple.dwg.

Pick a 3d point with osnap to any contour set the scale factor to 10. Rotate to 3D view and zoom in on the tree!

pic.12


10

Creating the new Multi-View block

Open ex2-3.dwg

We have in the drawing 2 lamp posts – one in 2D the other in 3D.

pic.13

Go to the insert menu and pick the second entry (Multi-View Blocks) – Definitions

Give it a name – ex2-3 for instance. In the dialogue select 2D view blocks click the plus button and select pole-plan. Then choose the 3d view blocks button click plus and choose the Pole-3D block.

pic.14

Now add the new multi-view block to the drawing using the Multi-View blocks -> Add command. Insert the ex2-3 block at 0,0,0.


11

Now erase the original blocks from the drawing. Save the drawing.

Re-open ex2-2.dwg. Choose insert command, browse to our ex2-3.dwg file and choose it.

Insert it by osnapping to the terrain.

Switch between plan and 3D views to see the results.

Let’s make a forest of 3D trees with multi-view blocks.

Open ex2-4.dwg

Use the create points toolbar from Civil 3D, and choose the on-grid option from Surface points flyout.

pic.15

Choose the surface, pick a basepoint on the drawing, select 0 for rotation, spacing x: 20, y: 20, select upper right corner somewhere on the surface and press enter. Press esc to finish the command.( ex2-5.dwg)

Change view to 3D – and see the results – right now we are using Standard style so not very impressive.

pic.16

In the prospector select the all points point group – right click and choose properties. On the information tab for point style change to apple, bare or pine. See the results! .( ex2-6.dwg)


12

pic.17

pic.18


13

Exercise 3

Merging Finished Ground into Existing Ground Model


Open file ex3-1.dwg

We have a planned road partially in cut and partially in fill.

pic.19

Let’s make a simple corridor. Menu CORRIDORS->CREATE SIMPLE CORRIDOR

Use Alignment – (1) as the alignment, Design as the profile and Assembly – (1) as the typical xsection.

Choose the ground (NOTE:not ground (1)) surface for setting all the logical names and create the corridor model.

Now we’ll make a surface from the corridor. Select the corridor open the surfaces tab, click the leftmost button (create a corridor surface) ,choose Links as data type and Top as code ,then click the plus symbol. Set the surface style to Road.

Pic.20

Now go to the boundaries tab, right click on the surface and select Add Automatically and choose Daylight.


14

pic.21

Press OK to generate the corridor surface.

Go shade the drawing and notice the problems with the overlapping surfaces (note – if the road was entirely in fill we’d get away with it!)

pic.22

Go back to wireframe view.

Open ex3-2.dwg

Choose the Corridor feature line as polyline option from the Corridor -> Export menu.

Choose each daylight line, now we have an open 3D polyline running along each of the corridor.

We’ll use the map cleanup options to join them.

Type 3Dpoly and add a new 3dpolyline connecting the endpoints on the north side of the corridor.


15

From the drawing cleanup tools in the map menu (Map->Tools->Drawing Cleanup) choose the select manual button, and select one of the 3dpolylines and the segment that you made in the previous step. Press next and choose Dissolve Pseudo Nodes and click the ADD> button, then Finish. Repeat this process once more to join up the other side of the corridor with the 3dpolyline which has been connected so far.

pic.23

Open the prospector and choose the Ground (1) surface, note this is a copy of the ground surface we’ve prepared ahead of time. If you don’t make a copy, you are liable to cause errors in the corridor as it relates to the logical surfaces for its definition.


16

Open the definition tab, go to breaklines and add the new 3D polyline as a standard breakline to the surface.

Now go to the boundaries, and add the same 3D polyine as a hide boundary making sure to select the non-destructive breakline option.

pic.24

Now re-shade your drawing and examine the results! (ex3-3.dwg)

pic.25


17

Exercise 4

Working with Render Material Styles


Open ex4-1.dwg.

From the View menu choose shade and select Gourad Shaded – view the results. You can the ground surface rendered with a simple color.

Select the ground surface, right click and select the surface properties. In the render material style dropdown list choose ground. Press OK – and view the results. We now have an aerial photograph mapped onto the ground surface.

pic.26

Now let’s take a look at the process involved in making a render material style:

Open ex4-2.dwg

First we will make a material using the standard ACAD render interface to define materials.

At the command line type: RMAT (menu View->Render->Materials)

Click the NEW button in the material name type in ex4, click the find file button and choose the ex4 folder the ex4.jpg – press OK and close the Render Materials dialogue box.

Now select the surface and go to its properties. In the render material style pulldown select the down arrow to the right and pick create new from the flyout menu.


18

pic.27

In the information tab give the style a name – let’s call it gravel, go to the definition tab and select ex4 from the material name pulldown list. Click OK and close the dialogues.

pic.28

Now let’s render the view. Examine the results. Possibly the bitmap is not sized well or proportionately for the surface.

We can now go back to the render material style – we’ll access through the settings tab of the project toolspace. You will find the gravel style under the Multipurpose Styles category – subcategory Render Material Styles (They are found here because they have applicability to a number of different objects in the Civil 3D object structure).

Select the gravel material style, right click and choose edit. Change the scale to 20. Now go back and re-render the view. Notice the bitmap is now much larger (probably not well sized – but good enough to illustrate here the impact of changing the scale size). We’ll leave it as an exercise on your own, but you should try as well changing the rotation angle to see what different results you may obtain by changing the values.

pic.29

Using Render Material Styles on a corridor surface model.

Open file ex4-4.dwg


19

This drawing includes a surface, a corridor and a single corridor surface which already has 5 boundaries defined, each with a separate render material style.

Shade the view to get an idea of where we are starting from.

pic.30

Select the corridor, right click and choose corridor properties. Go to the boundaries tab. Notice there are 5 boundaries defined at this time.

Right click Corridor – (1) Surface – (1) and choose add interactively.

pic.31

Now in the drawing choose the 2 feature lines which are bound the left part of the roadway. You can continue this process or press enter a second time to escape. Notice you have now added Boundary(6) to the list.

Click on the definitions for Boundary(6) and check the reverse direction check box for the second feature line selected. You may use the tools on the lower right of the interface to temporarily view the boundary definition and even check if it is legally defined. Press OK and in the Render Material Styles column choose Paving – Asphalt for the style.


20

pic.32

Now go back to the main interface and re-render the view. Notice how we now have asphalt defined for the left roadway surface. You can repeat this process on your own to finish defining the remaining areas.

pic.33

Open ex4-5.dwg to see the results.

Let’s continue on from here and making a simple fly around, as if we were looking over the site from a helicopter.

From the general menu select Camera – and Add Camera. To place the camera, just select 2 arbitrary points on the surface.

Now – in the Camera menu choose Create Video.

In the camera path frame click on the pick path button and choose the big circle. Name the path helicopter.

In the target path frame we’ll just choose a single focal point – using osnap pick a point around the middle of the surface. In the Regen pull down select – As Displayed.

Choose 250 frames for the entire animation and a frame rate of 20, to ensure that we get smooth results.

pic.24

Select OK – and in the Camera Video File file dialog box name the output avi file. Lets call it – Helicopter1. Choose save. For compression choose Cinepak (you may choose a different compressor – but its not an issue for this example – it will however have an effect on final file size and quality that you can judge on your own). Have a quick cup of coffee until the animation is complete (On our machines it took about 2 to 3 minutes). Maybe


21

strike up a conversation with the person sitting next to you in the lab, Where are they from? Who do they work for? – How are they enjoying AU so far? etc…

When the video is completed you will be asked if you wish to play the video now. You might as well if we’ve waited this long already!


22

Exercise 5

Visualizing Underground Utilities using VizRender


Open file ex5-1.dwg

pic.25

This file contains a surface, corridor model with an associate corridor surface an underground utilities model and a feature line converted to a 2d polyline for use as a camera path. Let’s start by just doing a simple render in Autocad to see what we’ve got. All materials have been assigned through the render material styles interface, notice that we’ve given the roadway a semi-transparent value so that we can see the utilities underneath.

Link to VizRender

Before we link to VizRender we are going to make a new file, and insert the original file as an XREF. Go ahead and create a new blank drawing file, and xref in ex5-1.dwg at the following coordinates: x: -15900 y: -21600.

pic.26

We are doing this to ensure that out coordinates when going into VizRender are close down to the origin. VizRender does not work on the same level of precision that Autocad does and you will run into various problems if you try to use large coordinates, such as those you might in a GIS or Mapping System.


23

Open file ex5-2.dwg - This is the file up to date as per the above instructions.

From the menu file choose the Link to VizRender option.

From the tools menu in VizRender choose the Walkthrough Assistant.

pic.27

Click the Create New Camera button, you will see Walkthrough_Cam01 created. In the path control frame click on the pick path button and select the white polyline running down the corridor. Click on the large button labeled Click to Preview – the button will be replaced by a preview.

Use the time slider below the viewport and slide back and forth to see the animated camera run.

pic.28

In the viewport right click on the Perspective label go to the Views option and choose the walkthrough camera. Again move the time slider back and forth to get an idea of what we’ll be seeing in the final animation.


24

pic.29

Let’s now really get the most out of our link to VizRender and go back to our file ex5-2.dwg (which should still be open!). Create a circle encompassing the entire site. For the initial center point, use osnap to get a 3d elevation from the surface. Save the file and go back to VizRender.

In VizRender switch the viewport back to Top – you can do this by simply pressing the ‘T’ key on your keyboard.


25

pic.30

From the file menu select File Link Manager and click the reload button. You should now be able to see the

newly created circle. You can do a zoom extents to get a better view. Now let’s do another walkthrough camera with the assistant.

This time pick the circle as the path. Check the Move Path to Eye level option and set the eye level to 100 meters. In the Turn Head frame slide the head half way over to the left. Choose -20 for the tilt head angle. In the Camera Controls frame widen the field of view to 65 degrees. Switch the viewport to show the walkthrough 2 camera and move the time slider to get a preview of our expected animation.

pic.31


26

Finally let’s go render out the animation. From the render menu choose the first item – Render (or F10).

pic.32

In the time output frame select active time segment. In the Render Output frame click on the Files button and choose a filename – we’ll use a name like: utilities-fly. In the Save as Type pulldown choose avi. Click the save button and click OK to accept the default compressor and values. In the bottom of the Render panel click the render button. Notice as the animation is being created you will be updated on frame rendering times and estimated time remaining. Again get to know the person sitting next to you – if you haven’t already introduced yourselves from the previous exercises. Finally to view the output you can choose the View Image File option from the file menu. Select the file we just made and click the open button.

Course materials prepared by:

Arkady Ratnitsky ([email protected]) & Natan Elsberg ([email protected])

Cost-Effective Visualization Techniques with Autodesk® Civil 3D® · 2011-08-25 · Cost-Effective...

Documents

Transcript of Cost-Effective Visualization Techniques with Autodesk® Civil 3D® · 2011-08-25 · Cost-Effective...