How to Import USGS Heightmaps into Lumion

[@alexxur]

Man...you are the man...tnx...a simple thing, with big imagination, turns to a superb presentation

[@CWelton6]

+alex xur Thanks a lot! The sky's the limit with Lumion and an imagination!

[@Erwin150857]

Gracias amigo, está excelente este tutorial. Finger up y me suscribo.

[@RogerChavez-j3f]

Hello! that link or web doesn't work for the maps , any idea what going on?

[@nomodoquarters1119]

hEY THERE, @cweltondesign Just watched your video, super helpful, i have a question/observation .. at one point in your video you noted the scale in the bottom left as 2.0km, it actually said 20km, so were you actually grabbing a square of approx 20km in fact or did you actually try to grab a small 2km section?... Thanks a bunch in advance, keep up the great vids... Aaron

[@satori1312]

Great tutorial!

[@CWelton6]

THanks!

[@mayner17]

Helpful video, are there any other options for terrain maps in lumion 9?

[@CWelton6]

As for terrain generation by height maps this is it, but plenty of other options for terrain importing from skp, infraworks or others. Working on a tutorial now right after I finish all of the L9 tutorials.

[@danielkovac2425]

how to reduce the number of 3d points in the created terrain. Thanks

[@CWelton6]

Prooptimizer in max or remesh in blender for a free option. Skp Artisan tools has something too

[@zacharyvoelker6943]

Can you do this in Lumion 7 as well? It looks like the tools are set up a little different.

[@CWelton6]

You could do this since Lumion 3 at least. This was recorded using 7.

[@АртемБаранов-е8ф]

Thank you fot this tutorial!

[@markarq857]

Thanks men it was very helpful. i just dont know how to make the terrain imported more bigger in scale? i tired making the image bigger in photoshop, it stayed the same. help ´please.

[@CWelton6]

Lumion will only import that 2km x 2km square with the terrain importer. If you want full scale you could use SketchUp to grab all of it, or Infraworks. You could also use blender or 3ds max to create a plane (with lots of segments) at the scale you want and then use the displacement modifier with these b+w images to create the terrain to import. I'll do more videos using these methods in the future.

[@markarq857]

thanks men. i always enjoy you're videos. I'll be wating more. thanks!!!!

[@CWelton6]

MARCOS MATIAS MARTIN glad you like them. 2 more are coming soon.

[@TheUkuleleXD]

I would like to try make some real materials in Lumion 8 Pro (from Poliigon, Substance player and Quixel Megascans) I only managed to learn in Photoshop Mix: 1) Albedo with Ambient Occlusion 2) Normal map + Gloss map ... What about the other ones: Bump, Cavity, Specular, Roughness. How Can I add them through Photoshop to Lumion, please? It would be a nice tutorial! By the way, Is Lumion 8 Pro able to read Displacement map as an texture? I saw, than it could only do terrain....

[@CWelton6]

Ok so Bump=worthless Cavity is like AO, Specular is old school but can be loaded into the alpha of normal or diffuse, and Roughness and glossiness are the same but inverted. I have some more material tutorials coming out clearing a lot of this up. Displacement maps can come into Lumion through max, but are not supported inside of Lumion at this time.

[@dorianshehu4868]

Its a really good work,but i've come to a problem. How to determine the exact scale or dimension of the terrain?

[@CWelton6]

Dorian Shehu This will never be exact scale. This works best just for a quick backdrop for your scene. I will be making some more tutorials on other ways to get more accurate terrain into Lumion.

[@dorotaorlowska8669]

This is great but how to get this for Norway country? When i tried download USGS data for some area in Norway it came info: "There are no datasets in the selected area, please select another one". // Than i tried few other areas, but it looks like nothing work for Norway. Help someone if you can? :-/

[@CWelton6]

Interesting...there are other DEM sites where you might be able to find heightmap info for Norway, but you could also just import terrain from sketchup (only if you have pro now apparently). I use Infraworks most of the time nowadays for imported terrain as well, it's just really heavy geometry. I used that imported terrain in this animation for example. kzbin.info/www/bejne/roawnnqmZt59Z7s

[@maleksellami1571]

the USGS Website is no more in use, any alternatives please?

[@CWelton6]

There's a bunch now. Try terrain.party

[@maleksellami1571]

@@CWelton6 thank you.

[@julianaraujo2321]

@@CWelton6 Ive tried terrain.party and cadmapper... no help because my site is more remote. Can you provide a few more alternatives. Thanks

[@CWelton6]

There is another one. Terrain2stl. It will give you a topo with a base for printing...I'll take a look for more options because i know there are a ton of others now.

[@julianaraujo2321]

@@CWelton6 Ok i can access terrain2stl. If you could assist me (privately) in exporting the topo from terrain2stl to Lumion i would appreciate it!

[@vaai_ltd_design-build]

Great help

[@rivanaji2304]

How about scale of that terrain?

[@CWelton6]

In the video i explain how you need to scale it yourself first, but dont have to be accurate since lumions terrain is limited on max size

[@rivanaji2304]

@@CWelton6 whoa okay thanks for explain

[@karlitavelazco2051]

can't open the USGS WEBSITE :(

[@CWelton6]

Use this one. Terrain.party. much better

[@karlitavelazco2051]

CWeltonDesign thank u ! It is just for USA terrain ? I want to get a terrain from Lillesand In Norway . But it just cast me a tekst . Not a heightmaps image 😔

[@CWelton6]

Ironically terrain.party starts the map in finland actually. It pulls the same data as nasa. Whole world. Thank some city skylines modders haha. I use it to create 3d prints of mtns and topography now.

[@LLAACountyJail]

HOw did you get so many trees on the model? You cant group create trees on a model.

[@CWelton6]

Patience and Mass Placement.....

[@CWelton6]

Honestly I look at forests now and wonder how nature can compute so many trees lol.

[@LLAACountyJail]

Mass p;acement will look for model surfaces???

[@CWelton6]

Yes. There is a little toggle that says place in terrain. It can even read imported model terrain of you Mark the model as terrain.

[@LLAACountyJail]

Cool.... Ill check it out after my arma3 games. Are you gettin v7 tommorow?

[@jehindmand]

Anyone know how to get this to the right scale in lumion??

[@CWelton6]

4:03. That's about as close as you can get. If you want accuracy I would go with infraworks or sketchup. You could also take the height map into 3ds max and scale it in there.

[@jehindmand]

i mean is lumion going to insert this to the correct overall scale or do i need to change the size of the picture in photoshop?

[@CWelton6]

Lumion will always import a height map at 1.2 x 1.2 miles. You would have to grab your area as close to that as possible to get the scale just right. If perfect scale is what you are aiming for then this method isn't worth it. It's more of a quick generic add. Like I used it to produce a quick landscape as a backdrop like I did in the end of this video.

[@orkunsevengil336]

Couldnt download the color image of it.

[@CWelton6]

The website offers heightmaps for terrain. For color images of terrain try nearmap, or exporting from google earth pro (free now).

[@lukasfischer5350]

After a lot of trial and error i found a way to increase the size above 600m. I used the NVIDIA dds Format Plugin for Photoshop and saved as: 32f R 32 bpp ¦ floating point. That way you can increase 32-bit RGB values to more than 1 and you get higher mountains.

[@CWelton6]

Very cool. I didn't think about going 32bit to increase the max height. Thx for sharing.

[@jampierroblesprieto1530]

Hola disculpe .. no me sale nada aun u.U ... seria bueno si pudiera aportar en un tutorial .. igual de todas maneras mucha gracias :) ..

[@CWelton6]

Que no te sale? El idioma o el terreno?

[@jampierroblesprieto1530]

el terreno .. en el idioma seria .. exportar arista ... cuando lo abro en lumion no me sale el plano

[@CWelton6]

el imagen que decargas es jpg o tiff? solamente jpg funciona creo. Cualquier imagen que tiene blanco y negro deberia importar en Lumion y crear algo...

[@jampierroblesprieto1530]

Yo lo exporte en Collade (dae) y en opciones esta exportar por arista lo marque y lo exporte y no aparece nada en lumion ... o era por jpg ? disculpe.

[@hiddenpein]

thank you!

[@xcnewbie2580]

great tutorials! keep it up man. helped me a lot! thanks..

[@CWelton6]

Glad to hear it!

[@tripios]

how i didnt know that thank you

[@mr.unitato7955]

is lumion free?

[@CWelton6]

There is a free version, but it is limited in duration. Lumion is a professional software.

[@glenn3646]

dope

[@katarinazilova9844]

22984 trees :-)

[@CWelton6]

Yeah it was a heavy scene..

[@rasyaanandita5423]

Thank you fot this tutorial!

[@CWelton6]

Glad it helped.