Camera Posts in Rhino 4

Hi guys. Today I am going to be doing a quick tutorial on making rhino camera shots. Its quick and dirty. I am Helping out a friend tomorrow on this subject and just wanted to make sure I can still do it so here we go.

First I've set up a basic land form that you may want to camera shot different angles of.

This first thing you want to do is make some "camera posts". Now usually if you want a specific view you are trying to get a view of a human at your site. So I've made my camera posts 5.5 feet tall and put them at several corners of the landscape. You can put these posts anywhere you wish. Its easiest to put them at corners, edges, intersections, etc because then you can snap the end of your line to one of those objects, just make sure your snaps aren't disabled at the bottom of your screen.

This is the landscape in perspective view after the posts have been added. Also when you are drawing your post lines make sure you are holding shift on the vertical scale so that your posts are strait. make sure you draw them in them first in the top view then finishing them in the front or right view to ensure that you aren't flying off into space.

So now you want to first double click the perspective title in the perspective viewport. Then right click that and hover over "set camera" then on the next menu click "set camera and target". Then with click the top of the post you wish to be the source of your first view. Then with the second click on where you want the view to be looking. You will probably get something like this. pretty narrow viewport.

So here I wanted to get a slightly more panoramic view so double click the perspective title again to go back to your four viewport screen. Then in top view click release then click and drag slowly the edge point of the camera box to widen the view. If you cannot see your camera outline thus are not able to manipulate it right hit F6 or right click the perspective title >>> set camera >>> show camera. now you should have a more desirable view.

Now to save your view you want to click and hold the little car icon at the top of your screen. and click the grey car with the floppy disc icon next to it. The command bar is going to request a name but be sure that when you name your view you DO NOT include any spaces in the title. You pressing space bar will end the titling and start new commands. Once your view is saved you can always access/manage it by pressing and holdign the red car again but this time clicking on the grey car with the pointing finger above it. Click the title of the view you want and your set! These views will exist regardless of what new modeling is added or old modeling is manipulated, You can even delete or hide your camera posts for rendering. Hope this helps!

Until next time!

When the Rhino Terrain Trial Expires.

If your design program is anything like the Landscape Architecture Program at UW then you have run into this dilemma, or one similar. It's this. Some software is free to students, software like autocad, or pretty much any Autodesk software, some is deeply discounted, such as Rhino 4.0, Adobe Suite, and well pretty much everthing. The issue? Sometimes even though the original software is deeply discounted the plugins (ad-ons that make the software a whole lot more helpful) can cost just as much if not more than the software's original price, even when discounted. I've found myself in this very situation when redoing a project last quarter where we used the Rhino Terrain plugin for Rhino 4.0 to import GIS data directly into the model in 3D. BUT now my Rhino Terrain trial has expired...what to do? Well here is a work around that is MUCH more work but gets the same thing accomplished more or less.
First thing you want to do is to get your GIS data properly clipped, oh and if you take any GIS course you can most likely get a year license for free. If not, you might be stuck using a school PC or you are just SOL.

Next thing you want to do is download the trial plugin of Rhino Resurf. Now what Resurf more or less allows you to do in this case is to fit a NURBS surface to a point cloud....something not built into the naked Rhino. Now what I did here most likely isn't the most efficient way but its a way nonetheless that I arrived at through trial and error! I then opened my data set in ArcScene and turned the contour lines into a 3d model and exported the scene as a VRML file. Luckly Rhino cad import this file type, the only issue is that everything comes in unaligned, but with a little tweaking its not that big of a deal. You can then have the 3D contour lines exported form arcscene, using the point tool to make a point cloud, then use the Rhino Resurf plugin to make your nurbs surface! Viola!

Downside? Well with this data I had to raise the buildings manually which can take a while if they are on a slope as shown here but there is another way if you know your way around 3DS Max outlined here where I got some of my help from. Hopes this helps people in the same boat. There is always a work around!
Until I have unlimited funds for software!