Feb 12, 2026, 10:28:47 PM
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Sweet Home 3D Forum » List all forums » » Forum: Features use and tips » » » Thread: Generate terrain from a room in batch mode / Hijacking the “Generate 3D terrain from rooms…” plug-in » » » » Post: Re: Generate terrain from a room in batch mode / Hijacking the “Generate 3D terrain from rooms…” plug-in |
Print at Feb 12, 2026, 10:28:47 PM |
| Posted by Keet at Feb 1, 2026, 2:07:45 PM |
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Re: Generate terrain from a room in batch mode / Hijacking the “Generate 3D terrain from rooms…” plug-in This seems a pretty complex way to create a terrain and it may be my bad eye sight but I only see sharp edges, no gentle curves. I also don't see anyway to integrate paths that follow the elevations. -The use of the "generate 3D terrain" plug-in was not suitable as is (too large, too complex, unmanageable) That is easily solved by splitting your terrain into multiple, connected rooms. These rooms don't have to form a grid of square rooms, any shape will do. The only limit is that the terrain generator can handle 4 or 5 of the rooms together. You only select a few connected rooms and in the terrain generator make sure you don't elevate anything to the sides that connect with adjacent non-selected and yet un-elevated rooms. In the next step you select the rooms adjacent to the yet un-elevated rooms and the (un-elevated) rooms touching them. Start the room generator again and you can elevate the next part of your terrain. Rinse and repeat until you have done all of your terrain. During this you can remove the generated terrain objects, the elevation levels are stored in the Home.xml file as you have discovered. This method also allows you to add curved paths and rivers that elevate along with the rest of the terrain (see my manual How-To Create paths and rivers with the TerrainGenerator). When done you can select blocks of rooms to generate the final terrain parts, or if it is not too big all rooms to generate a single terrain. Note that the 1mm walls gap will be invisible in the final 3D Yes, you do see the gap depending on what is below the terrain. That is why you use a thick wall, not a 1mm wall. With the "Edit room points" function of the AdvancedEdit plugin you can easily close the gap: just two points to merge. With magnetism on the points of two adjacent rooms will snap together. The result is NO gap.This method can also be used if you have buildings on multiple levels or with different height. Just keep in mind that the terrain editor has a flaw where a terrain is always generated as if it is on the 0-level. I solve this by simply raising every level and after generation reverse that. If necessary I heighten some walls too to make them visible in the terrain generator. This way I have all walls of the building(s) in view at the correct level in relation to the terrain. And the main advantage: there is virtually no limit to how big your total terrain is! Just make sure that you cut out the room objects and save them in a separate project. For the final result you only need the generated terrain objects. The room objects cause the project to become huge because of all the elevation points. And these are only needed for generating the terrain object, after that they are useless. I usually generate a full terrain (in parts) below the 0 level and use a script to set all elevations to reach the 0 level. That gives me a room that can go both up and down. So far my biggest terrain (still in development) is 600x600 meters, divided in 8 'path rooms' and 17 'terrain rooms'. The lowest level in the project is at -800cm and the terrain starts at -50cm. But because I elevated all points with 50 it is level with the 0-level. I saved all rooms in a separate project. I have 'sculpted' several terrains but I'm still not happy with the result. The backup project allows me to reset with the prepared rooms and try again. What might be a useful plugin for terrains is one that takes a heightmap image or geo-object and converts it to a room with elevation points. The main advantage is that in most cases you also you can get a texture for that terrain which is better than anything you can create with the terrain editor and separate textures. ---------------------------------------- Dodecagon.nl 1300+ 3D models, manuals, and projects |
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