Site Sun Study

[Stress Co_]

This is a bit hard to explain, but I'm looking for a simple way to model the "surveyed" horizon line (skyline) of a site, in order to run a more accurate sun study (i.e., has the sun set behind the mountain ridge or the building next door).

I built a cylindrical "mask" which follows the elevation of the skyline (from a site survey that graphs the angle and bering of the skyline). The elevation varies depending on the radius of the mask, but it's easy to figure out.

The best solution I've found is to use the mesh tool. Any better ideas?

Would it be difficult to create a GDL cylinder with nodes every 5 degrees, where one could dictate the elevation of each node?

Just wondering.
Marc

[Karl Ottenstein]

Finally, here's a view from space at the terrain for that Schweitzer project to illustrate non-contiquous terrain.

The red arrow points to roughly where the building site is in the Schweitzer south bowl area above the village. The north bowl is not included, since it is not visible from the home. The separate patch of hill to the lower right affects the view, and maybe insignificantly the sun on a couple winter mornings. The site has a view of Lake Pend Oreille, so a couple of patches of lake are included so that we can "see" them from inside the model and the deck that the guy is standing on in the last image.

(Note how the two lake patches to not blend perfectly - weird parallelograms. Just life with Google Earth capture.)

Rather than make all of the terrain be a single GDL object (from a single 3DS from SketchUp), I made two objects - so that I could turn the lake off just to get it out of the way when not needed.

For sun, the site is also affected by the Cabinet Mountains to the west, but they are far enough away, that it just delays morning sun, so was not bothered with. And, the client did not care about views to any particular peaks in that direction, so none were captured/included.

It really is a lot of fun ... and just beyond too cool that we can do this kind of stuff with the tools available today!

Cheers,
Karl

[vistasp]

Wow! Thank you so much for the mini-tutorial Karl.

When you get a chance, could you put this in the wiki?

[Stress Co_]

Very cool, Karl, Thanks for posting. I've some messing around to do.

Foster wrote:
Maybe we should head to Bozeman to ski?

Hiked and skied a fairly decent (South of Ketchum/North of Bellevue ) untracked bowl yesterday.

BTW: Are you working for J.W.?

[Anonymous]

Marc,

I've noticed in your profile that you know how to be very accurate with coordinates... So how about some coordinates for that bowl!!! If I were to replicate, I'd have to say that I work south of 3rd street and north of 1st street... I think I've finally managed to put that in my signature.

John

[Karl Ottenstein]

Stress wrote:
Hiked and skied a fairly decent (South of Ketchum/North of Bellevue ) untracked bowl yesterday.

Nice. Looks like no reason to head north if you have that much snow. Things are hardened up here - another week in the 40's. 😞 Weird winter. Big Sky seems to be doing OK:
http://www.bigskyresort.com/Photos-Videos/Webcam.asp

Cheers,
Karl

[Stress Co_]

Foster wrote:
I've noticed in your profile that you know how to be very accurate with coordinates... So how about some coordinates for that bowl!!!

ah, you make me laugh
The rendering you posted elsewhere (which was really nice design & presentation btw) looked like Jeff's work.


...and we could all use a little more snow.