Infraworks export FBX terrain creates lines around outside of each tile

[neilcooper33]

Hi

I have a problem when exporting from infraworks to 3DS max, here is my process....

1. Import terrain imx file into IW
2. Import aerial photography into IW (1km aerial photos)
3. Export as FBX file to visualise in Max

This process is great and automatically creates 512m gridsquares in the FBX file which works really well in the viewport in Max.

However there are some very small lines around the sides of all of the terrain tiles in Max, these are really noticable in the renders unfortunately, it's as if the FBX export process has removed 1 or 2 pixels from the edges of the aerial photos, or not created the UVW coordinates correctly.

Do you know if this has been fixed on more recent versions? Was wondering if an upgrade would help, see image attached....

Hope i've explained this well enough 🙂

thanks

Neil

[John_DeLeeuw]

@neilcooper33, I have also seen this behaviour in the past when bringing the AIW360 FBX in other applications like CL3VER. Sometimes the UVW mapping even gets mixed up between tiles. I don't think the 2017 versions of Max and InfraWorks will give better results but you can always test that.

My other suggestions to you:

1. Use the Civil View extension in 3DS Max to get the Surface in using AutoCAD Civil 3D by exporting out a VSP3D file containing the Surface. 3DS Max then uses a Global Shift to bring the Surface close to the origin in Max. After this you can drape the arials using wordfiles on the exact coordinates. Check this page for more info on that workflow. Use mapping channel 31 for the arials.

2. If you happen to also have Autodesk Navisworks, you could try and import the AIW360 FBX in there and then export again to FBX from Navisworks. Sometimes, this gives you better mapping results in other applications and maybe also 3DS Max.

Let me know if these tips help you?

Best regards,

[neilcooper33]

Thanks John! 

i had a quick look at the Civil View import options this morning and saw that guide.  At initial glance i thought i could only bring in 1 aerial photo, i will give it another go, i have loads of aerial photos to import and want to keep them small (1km) if possible as this helps in the viewport.

I will give the Navisworks options a try too... and report back, thanks again...

Neil

[neilcooper33]

Hi John,

I tired with Navisworks but same problems unfortunately....

I had another go with CivilView too, my install was actually crashing when I tried to do this for some reason (error when creating the material ID which a few others seem to have).

I could place one image in the correct location using the world file, but I would still have to import the images individually wouldn't I? 

I have around 100 so would take a while.

Thanks

Neil

[John_DeLeeuw]

@neilcooper33, I'm thinking about a new workflow in that you first merge all your arials into one image (including one world file) using AutoCAD Raster Design. Then you can use that one arial image to put in the arial channel mapping in Civil View. It will take some time to merge all images into one but this can give you better rendering results in 3DS Max.

There is also an option to split your Civil 3D Surface into tiles according your arials of 1km and then have the correct arials drape on the corresponding surface tile. However, I think the first option will cost you less time.

Let me know if these ideas work for you? 

[neilcooper33]

Thanks John

I've already tried to combine the aerials into larger sizes.... instead of 4000 pixel images, i combined them so each was 12000 pixels...

When i added these images to my terrain, it was going to take 3 hours to Refresh in infraworks, compared to 8 minutes with the smaller files.  I think infraworks splits the files into individual dds files anyway and i think it's that process which takes a long time.

I may see if i can raise this as a fault with Autodesk as it seems to be an error during the IW export process.

thanks 🙂

Neil

[neilcooper33]

I've managed to suss this out....

It turns out because IW creates much smaller terrain tiles than we normally use... the default blur value in Max on all the textures creates this line around all of the tiles.

basically i needed to set the blur on all of the textures to 0.01

i did this automatically by running this maxscript...

for bmp in getClassInstances bitmapTexture do (
bmp.coords.blur = 0.01
)

thanks

Neil