TopoMiller - 3D Topographical Carving

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I have a 3 sets of test screen shots, two failures and one success.
I started at 9.9, then 7.0, and then 3.7 km boxes.

Failed

Failed

Success

I do not want to clog up the C3D forum with data.
What is a better location for test data ?

Win 11, Dell G5 15, nVidia 2070
Graphics set to nVidia gpu

Edit

I suggest you clear the message dialog after any user interactions

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@jtclose thanks so much. This is helpful.

Yeah you can submit in the feedback mechanism with more feedback / data / details at Feedback - TopoMiller

All the best
Mitch
TopoMiller

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

Can I attach files to that link ?

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@jtclose , ah, you cannot. Feel free to message me personally here in Carbide community.

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

That would still be using the C3D resources.
Messages are not a problem, but if I send zip files, to me that is different.
I assume the examples were enough info

[Elmojo (Mike Piantanida)]

Such an awesome tool, thanks Mitch for the hard work thus far!

Q: In the new release, I notice that the options for vertical scaling are gone, and when I preview the 3D model, it appears to be quite exaggerated in the vertical. Is there a way to control this?
I see the limit of 20 exports at the top, so I don’t want to test too much and run out of ‘credits’, or whatever your plan is there.

BTW, Thanks so much for adding the 1m DEMs! This makes it really useful for smaller areas, which is most likely what I’d be interested in.

EDIT: Okay, I’ve confirmed that it’s also exporting greatly distorted models. The following are screenshots of an export I did of my hometown, which has maybe 15-20’ of elevation change from one side to the other. The model makes it look like I live in the mountains. lol
Also, there’s no closed base. I chose the 5mm base when I did the export. Did I do something wrong? The overhead view looks great, though!

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I was wondering the same about elevation scaling.

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@Elmojo,

Wow. Great feedback, questions, and images. Thank you so much.

“I notice that the options for vertical scaling are gone”

• So, there are a couple things that I should point out.

1. With the 1m data selections (regions under 10km that support 1m data), the amount of vertices is in the tens of millions, even possibly reaching 100 million vertices. So, I had to move the processing of this to the server side. Because of this, the height control setting doesn’t do anything to the 3D Model in TopoMiller because we already fetched that data and cannot manipulate 100 million vertices in a 3D preview without crashing your browser. However, if you were to select about 10km and get the 10m data, using the height setting on the left does change the 3D Preview.
2. What I found with those two settings (carve height and vertical exaggeration) that existed prior was that they were doing the exact same thing, as far as I could tell. You would increase one, and decreasing the other, and it would just undo what you did. I could be wrong on this. But, that was why I removed it. It seemed like a duplication of settings, two settings that did the same thing. Although, one was the total height of the piece and the other was the vertical exaggeration, I saw no difference. Open to correction here!

“Okay, I’ve confirmed that it’s also exporting greatly distorted models” and “The model makes it look like I live in the mountains.”

So, you just learned me something… The reason I went with “baselessness” or an “open mesh” for the 3D preview for the 1m data was to attempt to cut down the amount of rendering power needed for these extremely detailed region selections. I was unaware that this actually carried over to some CAD software! I also was not aware that the height settings could be carried over into some CAD software. I have only been testing with Carbide Create. So, in Carbide Create:

1. Those height settings do literally nothing to my export each time. Or, maybe more accurately (with the golden knowledge you have given me), I thought that the height settings did nothing because Carbide Create probably ignores them and sets a default when you import an STL.
2. The baselesness is automatically filled in. I had no idea that this wasn’t the case across the board!
   
   
   
   
   

Needless to say, i have some work to do. I cannot thank you enough. This is invaluable feedback. I am going to be addressing these problems as soon as possible

All the best,
Mitch TopoMiller

[Elmojo (Mike Piantanida)]

Mitch, thank you so much for the quick and thoughtful responses!
It’s a privilege to have some small role in the refining of the really slick tool.
I discovered a couple more things while playing around in Bambu Slicer. BTW, I have no intention of 3D printing this, it just happens to be my default STL handler, and I don’t have CC Pro, so I dropped it in there to see what would happen.
Anyway, I discovered that I can just scale the Z-height to get things back to looking more realistic. It would still be great to have the option to export at “true” elevation (or some multiple thereof), since on occasion you may want to semi-accurately represent the topography of a place. I have a local area in mind that might like to have a custom carved model of their geographic feature, but they would immediately notice (and take issue) if it wasn’t at least reasonably to scale.
Also, thank you for explaining about the thin-sheet exporting and why I’m not seeing a solid model. That makes perfect sense, given the intended use case. I’m sure I’d be able to make it work without too much trouble when carving (I’m using Aspire). I think this was just an anomaly due to being imported into a slicer that was expecting a solid model.
I appreciate you explaining about the sliders also. I was seeing exactly what you describe. One seemed to fight or cancel out the other. I think we’re better off without them.
Please keep up the amazing work on this refining TopoMiller into a tool us carving nerds can really be excited about!

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

New Update dropped this morning!

What’s New:

Region Size Protection

• Added automatic warnings when your selected region exceeds safe limits (100km dimension or 10,000 km² area)

• Export and preview buttons are now disabled for oversized regions to prevent processing issues

Improved STL Exports

• Fixed closed mesh generation - all STL export files now include proper base surface for watertight models

• 5-10x faster export generation using client-side processing

• Better compatibility with CNC software and slicing tools

3D Preview Enhancements

• Optimized preview rendering for faster loading

• Improved mesh quality and accuracy

What is coming up next?

• Custom aspect ratio
• World Wide Data coverage with AW3D30 (30m resolution)

Thanks so much everyone for your support and feedback!

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

The performance is much quicker.

I am assuming that if I do not touch the relief height control, the Z height is the actual scale ?

The preview heights seem exaggerated versus the Fusion import heights.

Thanks, Jim

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@jtclose,

I have noticed this as well, the inconsistency. This is a bug that I am addressing as we speak. There needs to be consistency between what you see in the 3D Preview and what you bring into your CAD software.

Thanks for bringing this up!

All the best,
Mitch

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

To confirm the Relief slider usage and values.

I am assuming that if I do not touch the slider after the preview, then the Z height output scaling is 1:1 . It seems that way, but I wanted to confirm

Edit: Just re looking at the two images I noticed the base height is also exaggerated.
To me that means your data is ok, just a scalar along the way.

Good Luck !

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@jtclose ,

I just pushed a new release this morning.

This includes:

1. World wide data coverage with AWS 30m data.
2. What you see is what you get functionality; the 3D Preview, the baseheight, and the vertical exaggerating slider will reflect exactly when you export that STL and bring it into Fusion. Please confirm this works for you.

Thanks for the feedback!

All the best,
Mitch

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

Here you go. The subject matter is Lake Placid NY ADK area.

The Preview and the Export are now very similar.
Your changes seemed to alter the Export model, not the Preview display.

The data seems to portray the mountains with very sharp peaks.

Thanks for the effort

[mlembke1 (Mitch)]

@jtclose,

Thanks for those screenshots. That is helpful.

First of all, I’m glad that the 3D Preview and the exported STL are now matching, or at least are very close.

If you would like there not to be peaks there, you can use the slider to decrease the vertical exaggeration of the landscape.

Do you find that to be an acceptable solution to the peaks?

All the best,
Mitch

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

Here is a 1m test. This looks very good.

I would appreciate an explanation of the relief height settings.
I did not touch the default setting in either test.

I would like a “no touch” setting that does not scale the height,

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

I also noticed that the resulting 1m STL files in Fusion always are 100 inches square and 17 inches tall regardless of the map selection size.

Yes the starting empty Fusion model is using Units of inches.

You must be auto-scaling the results, I would have expects different extents of the STL files.

[jtclose (Jim Close)]

Just guessing …

I think you are filling a predetermined volume and the scale is changing based on the selection size. I would rather a fixed distance between each data point and let the extents float as needed.

Jim

[TheWoodworker (Scott Hampshire)]

Looking great Mitch, this seriously makes getting terrain 100x easier than I had to do it before and the 1m resolution is a welcome change! I would say being able to change the orientation of the selection box is high on my list of requests (eg 90 degree changes) but it seems like you’re already addressing that with custom aspect ratio.