badu Posted October 12, 2012 Report Share Posted October 12, 2012 Hi! In my case, I am interested in 3D visualisation of landscapes and digital terrain modeling. I would put myself somewhere between a beginner and intermediate user, on the beginning of my career. I noticed that there is a "market gap" in my field when it comes to 3D GIS and interoperability with CAD, thats why I want to step towards it. I found the Esri trainings on 3D Analyst and a book called "Introduction to 3D data: Modeling with ArcGIS 3D Analyst and Google Earth". Although I'm wondering if there are more material available on this topic? Moreover, is ArcGIS sufficient at all, when it comes to: creating 3D landscape visualisations on local and regional scale, working with Sketchup or other 3D modelling software alongside ArcGIS (or others?), rendering from ArcScene (is it even possible?) Should I consider other sofwares as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lurker Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Im ArGIS user for couple years, and I found that 3D in ArcGIS is more analytical than visualization working in 3D visualization, I think better you grab software like City Engine (bought by ESRI now) or anykind of software that pointing on 3d visualization I have a tutorial how to work with Sketchup and ArcGIS Arcscene , but its indonesian language, but I translate it from another English tutorial , I will post it here the links Interoperability between CAD and GIS is a big problem until now, exchange data between those two platform really troublesome, and even the best interoperability software available (I use FME from Safe Software) still far from perfect, IMHO regards, 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rahmansunbeam Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Lurker is right, ArcGIS is for analysis rather than visualization. For 3d visualization you'll need finer model, light and camera properties to obtain something good out of rendering. Try Autodesk products for native support in all the cad and gis stuffs at one place so that you can have an easy access to standard 3d presentation in software like 3ds Max. You can also try SketchUp which support real time elevation extraction directly from Google map. SketchUp also support importing cad shapes and can render them with engines like Vray (personally I'm not a big fan of Vray, because it has such a confusing file system and always ready to throttle the processor... though fabulous rendering ). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badu Posted October 13, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Thank you Lurker and rahmansunbeam! Considering your answers I will look more towards 3d modelling software. By the way do you have experience with Blender? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rahmansunbeam Posted October 13, 2012 Report Share Posted October 13, 2012 Thank you Lurker and rahmansunbeam! Considering your answers I will look more towards 3d modelling software. By the way do you have experience with Blender? Not very much with blender, but do appreciate the speed on linux pcs. Blender is opensource and free, and easy for anyone to start anything from scratch and can even sell them afterwards. Blender is long been praised in the gaming, real estate and engineering industries and you'll find lots of tutorials, tips and help all around the internet. But just like most of the open source release, it follows frequent updates and backward incompatibilities. But for most of case it works fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badu Posted October 14, 2012 Author Report Share Posted October 14, 2012 I see, thank you! Once I had a crash course on 3d visualisation with Autocad Civil 3D (the outcome was a set of wind turbines placed on the terrain). Although that time I think I was convinced with the results, but for some reason I didn't continue with the software. Now that you reminded me, I took a look on the official website and read a couple of opinions on it. Yes, it still seems convincing. However, I was wondering: Is Civil 3D also able to handle large set of points, like ArcGIS/ArcScene? Somewhere was stated that if one has Civil 3D and a strong workstation, he doesn't really need ArcGIS (for visualisation). Then what happens with the data preparation? I didn't got to know that part of the software. I have a little experience with QGIS and even though it always crashed for me when handeling raster data (on Mac), I like the idea of open software. So, for example, as a landscape architect I don't need highly sophisticated GIS analysis, and I can prepare my data in an open source GIS, is it even possible to live without ArcGIS? Open source GIS + Civil 3D? It sounds a little bit unbelievable for me because "everyone" is talking about (and useing) ArcGIS. Its like, if you want a decent GIS, there is ArcGIS, period. Sorry, maybe it became a little bit off-topic at the end. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rahmansunbeam Posted October 14, 2012 Report Share Posted October 14, 2012 umm... not an engineer myself, i think most of the users here are more or less geographers and researchers and most of the cases ArcGIS is the best they got (including me). Mapping and spatial analysis is easy with AG but C3D is more focused at BIM. Both has their own facilities and drawbacks. I think it is safe to use a package for what it can do best. 1.I see that C3D can handle up to 2 billion point, will it do? 2. Stronger GPU/CPU is always an obvious issue for model building and batch operations. I guess the subjected person will know best what he is up to. 3. The perception of the phrase 'sophisticated GIS analysis' is still unclear. So far we couldn't find a reason to desert our beloved ArcGIS (except few 'minor' glitches ). Whenever we find one, believe me, I'll be the first to through it away. You had your experience already, so will not be difficult to understand what names stand for. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
group5e Posted October 23, 2012 Report Share Posted October 23, 2012 I see, thank you! Once I had a crash course on 3d visualisation with Autocad Civil 3D (the outcome was a set of wind turbines placed on the terrain). Although that time I think I was convinced with the results, but for some reason I didn't continue with the software. Now that you reminded me, I took a look on the official website and read a couple of opinions on it. Yes, it still seems convincing. However, I was wondering: Is Civil 3D also able to handle large set of points, like ArcGIS/ArcScene? Somewhere was stated that if one has Civil 3D and a strong workstation, he doesn't really need ArcGIS (for visualisation). Then what happens with the data preparation? I didn't got to know that part of the software. I have a little experience with QGIS and even though it always crashed for me when handeling raster data (on Mac), I like the idea of open software. So, for example, as a landscape architect I don't need highly sophisticated GIS analysis, and I can prepare my data in an open source GIS, is it even possible to live without ArcGIS? Open source GIS + Civil 3D? It sounds a little bit unbelievable for me because "everyone" is talking about (and useing) ArcGIS. Its like, if you want a decent GIS, there is ArcGIS, period. Sorry, maybe it became a little bit off-topic at the end. As far as data preparation goes, that depends largely on the type of data you will be using and the formats. Although ArcGIS with its Data Interoperability extension can handle lots of different formats, it can't handle data as well as other software. For example if you want a cheap solution, use global mapper! It can open just about anything and convert it to just about anything. The data can then be used in QGIS which is great software (or in global mapper) and visualized in Civil 3D. ArcGIS for visualization absolutely sucks. Its buggy and crashes consistently although 10.1 has improved on this somewhat. ArcGIS is a great luxury for those who can afford it, but you'll find that you'll have data preparation tasks that you'll want to go to other software for because it does a better job in my opinion. There are several 3d visualization landscape tools specific for your line of work that may serve your purpose too. Try 3D Nature as it seems geared to landscapes. Of course, Civil 3D will do a great job, but is more complicated. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
badu Posted March 6, 2013 Author Report Share Posted March 6, 2013 @group5e, thank you for the hint! The global mapper-QGIS-civil 3D/ 3D Nature workflow seems to be just what I was looking for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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