Hope you can fill me in on this. I'm draping a photo onto a surface from InRoads and my problem is that it gets more "blurry" then the original when draped. I'm using the dcdrape palette. I've even tried whit a complete flat surface with same result. So I'm trying to do the same in 3D studio max but I'm a complete beginner on that one to.
What is your experience on draping terrain with microstation? Is it a "dead end".
Usually I work (well I used to work because now our subsidy is being closed and I'm unemployed
) with something we call "photo simulation" like the images I've uploaded on the forum with the bridge. So I get the design drawings from the other departments and model the "whatever is to be modeled" in MS. Then I take the photos on site ,photomatch them and render the shot.
For terrain draping I used this method once :
http://communities.bentley.com/Wiki/view.aspx/Draping_photos_over_MicroStation_modelsAnother method I've been using is importing the terrain from Google Earth.
I usually use this method more often since I do this kind of work for the biding documentation and we don't have a surveyed model of that area.
When Microstation imports the terrain it captures the image overlay in gray shades(probably copyright stuff) so it's quite useless...but
when you import the terrain in MS you must capture the same area from within GE and then replace the black & white image with that captured from GE. It works very well. The picture "1VAR2mic.jpg" in the thread is made with this method.
The problem about the blurring is that when you render (raytrace or particle trace or whatever kind of rendering that uses illumination - it doesn't happen when you use the simple smooth rendering) a shot, the surface gets an "extra" portion of illumination so this changes the appearance of the image overlay. so you must set the properties of the draped material (in this case the aerial photo) so that it's light neutral (doesn't receive, reflect or refract light).
One more tip is to never try to modify the terrain imported from GE ! MS makes the draping automatically and if you modify the terrain mesh (or bspline surface) the association will be broken and you'll get the image applied on each face of the mesh...quite messy
I could send you an example but it's bigger than the upload limit on the forum so I must email it to you if you want.