3D Worlds
So I've made a couple of hundred building models in SketchUp Pro over the years, even a small town. It's awesome, but I want to take it to the next level: make an entire island, complete with mountains, rivers and the like. It's for a fictional story I'm writing that has scenes in a couple of towns and everywhere in between.
Are there any apps (that don't have a steep learning curve, hopefully) that can handle a model that is about 3500 square kilometers (a little smaller than Rhode Island), complete with mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes and lots of low-poly model buildings?
I've already created a scale map of the island in Illustrator, and have played with making it in SU, but there are pluses and minuses to this. One option is to break the island into regions and create files for each and then a more general one for the overall.
I'm looking at Vue, but haven't really used it much yet. Anything else? Of course, I'd like to be able to import my SketchUp models.
Are there any apps (that don't have a steep learning curve, hopefully) that can handle a model that is about 3500 square kilometers (a little smaller than Rhode Island), complete with mountains, volcanoes, rivers, lakes and lots of low-poly model buildings?
I've already created a scale map of the island in Illustrator, and have played with making it in SU, but there are pluses and minuses to this. One option is to break the island into regions and create files for each and then a more general one for the overall.
I'm looking at Vue, but haven't really used it much yet. Anything else? Of course, I'd like to be able to import my SketchUp models.
Comments
http://www.e-onsoftware.com/common/p...38&height=1600
There is a long list of 3D apps but Vue is setup for doing landscape rendering.
You will need to break up the model in parts though and use proxy objects or you'll run out of memory and your file sizes will be huge.
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Yeah, it looks like Vue is the one. Gotta get learnin'.
Thanks.
About Swift: I should have noted that I was asking abut it as a modeling app along the lines of SketchUp; the ability for animation is appealing (much of my pro work is in animation) and the plug in animator I found for SketchUp caused frequent crashes.
You can use apps like Wings3D (free), Blender (free), Modo, Mudbox, ZBrush etc for modelling. Swift3D is basically a tool for making 3D Flash animations but I don't think it does subdivision modelling. It's certainly not an equivalent for Sketchup, which does solid modelling.
Mudbox and Zbrush are high poly sculpt tools and they work differently from the others - they allow you to use millions of polygons with ease. This is handy if you need to have control over very highly detailed models - it's mostly for high detail characters - but you could use it to sculpt a mountain. They require a very different way of modelling though and the learning curve is steep.
If you go with Vue for animation and rendering (which is a good idea as it does micropolygon rendering), Modo or Wings3D would be good companion apps. Modo is actually a very good app with a nice interface.