A Civil View from Your Seat
During the “suites” era, many companies upgraded from a single license of Autodesk® Civil 3D® or another vertical product because the upgrade was offered for free. However, not many used the products offered in the suites.
Now that 2016 has come and gone (and so have the suites) we have the Autodesk Collections. These Collections offer much more than the suites did.
This article will take you through a workflow for using your collection (or suite), to bring your Civil project from a bland, 2D visual to a realistic 3D animated model. You will need a good understanding of InfraWorks® and Civil 3D to follow these instructions.
The software used for this workflow is Civil 3D, InfraWorks, and Civil View, which is a plug-in inside of 3ds Max®. You don’t have to be a 3ds Max expert to do this. In fact, you don’t need to know how to use 3ds Max at all.
Starting in InfraWorks
This year, InfraWorks 360 was rebranded to drop the “360” and is now simply InfraWorks. With all the new features housed within InfraWorks, you can do 40 to 50 percent of your design work before you even open Civil 3D.
First, you will start by creating a Design Road in InfraWorks. You can lay out your horizontal road design using AASHTO (American Association of State Highway and Transportation) standards. You can then edit the vertical alignment by going to the Profile View under the Design, Review and Engineer Roads button, then clicking the Review and Modify Road Designs button.
Figure 1
If you are satisfied with how the road looks horizontally and vertically, you can then export it out as an IMX file. You will select the area you want to export by polygon or box selection. Make sure you have a target coordinate system set before you click the Export button. This file will be the base for more precise tweaking and corridor creation within Civil 3D.
Tweaking and Prepping in Civil 3D
Open Civil 3D and start a new drawing. Make sure you do NOT have a coordinate system set. If you are using a template file with a coordinate system set in it, then go to the Drawing Settings and replace the coordinate system code with a period (.). When you import the IMX file, you will be prompted to assign a coordinate system.
In the 2018 version of Civil 3D, the InfraWorks importation has been revamped. The previous way to import was from the Insert tab, clicking on InfraWorks 360 and then opening InfraWorks 360 Model. Now there is a tab exclusively for InfraWorks.
Figure 2
Click Open Model. There is also an option in 2018 to Import IMX, but I recommend using the Open Model option. The difference between the two options is that with the Open Model option, you can pick and choose what to import into Civil 3D (roads, water areas, coverage areas, etc.). The Import IMX option does not give you any choices—it simply imports everything from the IMX file.
Design roads automatically create an alignment and have a profile associated with it. The profile view, once created, will show several vertical alignments:
The proposed vertical alignment will be a random number assigned from InfraWorks (mine is 14)
- AIW_Existing_Ground
- AIW_Existing_Transportation
- AIW_Proposed_Ground
Now you will create a corridor from the design road’s horizontal and vertical alignment. For this article, I have used the Basic Assembly, located in the Assemblies tab of the Tool Palette. Make sure to use the AIW_Existing_Ground as the target surface.
Now build a Corridor Surface using the Specify Code as Top.
Figure 3
We are now finished with Civil 3D and can export it out to 3ds Max. To do this, click on the Output tab of the ribbon. In the Export panel, click Export to 3ds Max.
In the dialog box, uncheck your alignment, and make sure your corridor is checked. For surfaces, you only need to check the box for the corridor surface. Alternatively, you can also export the AIW_Existing_Ground, and in 3ds Max you can assign that existing ground an image. For this article, I’m opting out of that option.
Click Export.
This will create a .vsp3d file. We are finished with Civil 3D. Go ahead and close it.
3ds Max and Civil View
Open 3ds Max.
Importing Your Road Design
During installation of 3ds Max, there is a check box to install Civil View. You will need this installed before you can go any further. If you did not check the option to install it, you can do so by following the directions below:
- Run the software installer and follow the on-screen instructions
- On the screen where you check the box to include 3ds Max in the install, check 3ds Max for install
- Click the drop-down triangle beneath the 3ds Max checkbox to open the options section
- Scroll to locate and select the Civil View option
- Close the Options section
- Install
Once you’re ready, click Civil View in the menu. This will initiate the plug-in. Everything we will do from here on will be done inside of the Civil View pull-down menu.
Click Civil View>Geometry Import>Civil 3D (VSP3D) file. Click the Open button, then browse to the file you exported out of Civil 3D (.vsp3d).
Once the dialog box appears, right-click on Corridors [1], and choose Select All.
Figure 4
Click OK.
3ds Max has a Global Import Shift because it doesn’t know coordinate zones. It cannot function too far away from the 0,0 coordinate, so it shifts it. This is not important unless you wanted to import it back into InfraWorks.
Click Yes, then click Yes again.
You will now see your road with the daylighting features attached to it.
Creating Your Scene: Adding Lamp Posts
Click on Civil View>Civil View>Object Placement Style Editor
This will bring up the Object Placement Style (OPS) Editor dialog box. From this dialog box, you will create your scene and animation.
The first thing you need to do is select the Parent Shape button.
Figure 5
When you move the cursor over the corridor, you will see the different lines that highlight. For this workflow, you are going to place everything off the centerline of road.
Click the centerline of the road.
Notice the Shape Name populates as a C3DfeatLine (a Civil 3D feature line).
Now you can add the elements. Start with adding light poles.
Click on the Add New Element button at the top of the dialog box.
Figure 6
There are six tabs at the bottom of the dialog box: Vehicles, Furniture, Trees and Plants, Signs, Cameras, and Primitives. Click the Furniture tab, then highlight Lamp Columns. To the right, pick a style of lamp column (i.e., 45’ Single Column).
Under the Longitudinal Placement, toggle the radio button for Multiple (Regular Interval). The default interval is 200’. Leave it at 200.0.
Add a Horiz Offset. Start with 15.0. Click Apply and check to see if this is where you want the lamp posts. If not, change the Horiz Offset value, then click Apply to check it. Your dialog box should look something like Figure 7.
Figure 7
At the top, under the Object Definition column, right-click on the lamp post and choose Copy. Right-click again, and choose Paste.
Change the Horiz Offset to -15.0 and the Rotation to 180.
Click Apply.
If you are satisfied with the way it looks, click Ok. You do not have to save the style, so select No.
Adding Street Signs
You are going to perform the same steps as before, but you will place signs instead of lamp posts.
Open the Object Placement Style (OPS) Editor by click Civil View>Civil View>Object Placement Style Editor.
Click the Parent Shape button, then select the center line of the road.
Click the Add New Element button at the top. Click the Signs tab at the bottom. On the left, click Miscellaneous (15).
Under Longitudinal Placement, toggle the radio button for Multiple (Random Station). Change the Count to a lower number, something like 10.
To the right, under Other Options, check the box for Use Random Object(s) from the Selected Category.
Now set your Horiz Offset. Start with 30. Click Apply.
Your dialog box should look something like Figure 8.
Figure 8
At the top, under the Object Definition column, right-click on the Random [Miscellaneous] and choose Copy. Right-click again, and choose Paste.
Change the Horiz Offset to -30.0 and the Rotation to 180.
Click Apply.
If you are satisfied with the way it looks, click Ok. You do not have to save the style, so select No.
The signs have sort of a transparency to them. They will not look like this with the final result.
Adding Vehicles
Once again, you are going to perform the same steps as before, but you will place vehicles instead of signs.
Open the Object Placement Style (OPS) Editor by click Civil View>Civil View>Object Placement Style Editor.
Click the Parent Shape button, then select the centerline of the road.
Click the Add New Element button at the top. Click the Vehicles tab at the bottom. On the left, click Cars (16).
Under Longitudinal Placement, toggle the radio button for Multiple (Random Station). Change the Count to a lower number, something like 8.
To the right, under Other Options, check the box for Use Random Object(s) from the Selected Category.
Under Animation Options, set your miles/hr to 65.
Now set your Horiz Offset. Start with 5.5. Click Apply.
Move the “scrubber” bar at the bottom to make sure your vehicles are moving in the correct direction.
Figure 9
Your dialog box should look something like Figure 10.
Figure 10
Note: If you want to use miles/hr instead of km/hr, then navigate to Civil View>Civil View>Preferences. Under the Localization tab, you can change the Distance Units to miles. Also, if you click the Resource Kit Paths tab, you can change the Active Country Resource Kit to US IMPERIAL.
At the top, under the Object Definition column, right-click on the Audi A3 and choose Copy. Right-click again, and choose Paste.
Change the miles/hr to a -65, the Horz Offset to -5.5 and the Rotation to 180.
Click Apply.
Move the scrubber bar to make sure your vehicles are moving correctly on both sides of the road.
If you are satisfied with the way it looks, click Ok. You do not have to save the style, so select No.
Adding a Camera Path
Click on Civil View>Civil View>Object Placement Style Editor.
Select the Parent Shape button, then pick the centerline of the road.
Click on the Add New Element button at the top of the dialog box.
At the bottom of the dialog box, click the Cameras tab. Select the Wide Angle Lenses (5) on the left. On the right side, choose the 035mm Lens.
Under the Animation Options, change the miles/hr to a value slower than the vehicles. For example, 40, since the cars are moving at 65 miles/hr. This will cause the cars to pass the camera and seem like a more realistic scene.
Add a Horiz Offset of 5.5, and a Vert Offset of 10.
Click OK and then click No.
Animating Your Scene
For the final touch, you will animate your scene. Locate the in-canvas visual style selector.
Figure 11
Click the word Perspective. Under Cameras, choose the Came-035mm Lens-001. Once the scene jumps to the location, press the play button down toward the bottom right.
Figure 12
If you want to make a more realistic scene, you can add plants and trees. Also, you can look up how to create a sky with clouds to add to the scene to make it more realistic.
Conclusion
As you can see from this tutorial, there are many different ways to perform the same procedure in placing objects in your scene. There are also many other features in 3ds Max that will allow you to really bring your project to life.
I would love to hear your feedback on this article and see the projects for which you would like to use this workflow. Please feel free to call or email me anytime.
