Hi guys, newbie here.
I tried so many UE plugins, Blender addons, QGIS plugins, still can’t find a good solution, so here I am.
I am trying to create an offline animation. The location has very rough GIS data. My goal is to detach a section of 1km x 1km from Cesium landscape, convert it into standard UE landscape, so that I can smooth it, process its height map in terrain generator software like Gaea and photoshop, to add some details to the low res height map, and remove some cars and stuff from the satellite imagery layer, then add some grass, rocks and PCG in UE to finish the project.
My animation doesn’t require any interactions, maybe I can even crop 100x100 km region for the animation to be rendered offline.
I looked into the clipping function, but still don’t know if it’s what I need.
Please point me to a direction, deeply appreciated!
@Onyx_Lee Clip and Ship will let you obtain a downloadable 3D model of the terrain, but it looks like you’re looking to obtain a heightmap? If that’s the case, you’re in luck, because heightmaps are much easier to get your hands on than 3D data! For example, you can use the NASA Earthdata Search tool to look up an elevation data set (like the ASTER Global Digital Elevation Model dataset) and use the box tool on the right hand side to select the region of the earth you’re looking for. This will give you a set of heightmaps you can download of the elevation in this region. Specific countries often have their own datasets that might be in a higher resolution than this that you can take a look at, like the US The National Map dataset. If you’re looking for something easier, there’s tools like Tangram Heightmapper that can give you a heightmap pretty quickly, though they might not be as high quality as other sources. Hope this helps!
Thank you so much for your reply. Actually my goal is to handcraft the area around my target, because the heightmap there is very low res and inaccurate. I have to clip the area, import into 3DSMax, tesselate and sculpt the terrain, photoshop the existing satellite imagery to remove unwanted objects and relace with higher quality textures, then combine this with the surrounding regular Cesium landscape.
So my question is, is it possible to turn the clipped area into regular 3D mesh to allow me to do my own things?
I tried to get height map and satellite imagery from other sources like you mentioned above, but it turned out to be extremely difficult to align them together, that’s why I am thinking about getting them from the same Cesium source.
Thanks again for your help!
@Onyx_Lee Yes, using ion’s Clip and Ship feature you can export the result as a glTF model. I’m unsure if 3DSMax supports importing glTF models but if not, you could try importing it into Blender and reexporting as an FBX.
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Thank you so much for your help, Ashley.
I just tried Ion, it generates mesh with really bad topology, almost unusable, with very low resolution satellite imagery. I had to give up and use Blender Blosm to get a usable mesh and texture.
Thanks again for your great help.