Stitching together multiple unaligned planes

# 1 20-01-2015 , 01:26 PM

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Join Date: Jan 2015

Posts: 4

Stitching together multiple unaligned planes

Hello!

I've exported a section of real world topology from Google maps and Sketchup.
Sadly you aren't allowed to export an area as large as you'd like, but you can export multiple tiles in succession, but due to the imprecise nature of the program you end up with overlapping tiles.

I did my best to line them up and clear up most of the edges, but they still overlap. Upon trying to stitch together these bumpy planes I've ran into a problem; due to the above mentioned application problems the edges/vertexes never, ever line up between different tiles, but the topology is roughly similar, but not exactly.

How can i clean up and then merge these polygons together with as much automation as possible? Keep in mind there are ~160k tris and 5x8 tiles overlapping with each other.

As illustrated on the left side of the image you can see how they overlap. On the right side you can see a cleaned up connection, along with the tiny gaps between the two tiles. The green lines are where additional vertexes/edges would need to be present in order to level out the surface.

Thanks for any help you guys might provide!

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# 2 21-01-2015 , 12:39 AM

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Join Date: Mar 2012

Posts: 31

Hi

You could highlight all the vertex for the object once they are lined up close enough, then choose Merge tool from the edit mesh menu, adjust the the threshold by clicking the square icon beside it and change as needed.

If they are real close or close enough, anything between 0.0100 to 0.0010 should do, use lower the closer they are to one another.

Judging by the screenshot, 0.0030 or lower should do you.

Unfortunately though, this will only sole the issue for vertex that align with one another.

You could try mesh-cleanup, to fix the extra edges left over not properly connected to anything.

Hope this helps

Ever Try, Ever Fail, No Matter. Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better.

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# 3 21-01-2015 , 07:34 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2015

Posts: 4

Hi

You could highlight all the vertex for the object once they are lined up close enough, then choose Merge tool from the edit mesh menu, adjust the the threshold by clicking the square icon beside it and change as needed.

If they are real close or close enough, anything between 0.0100 to 0.0010 should do, use lower the closer they are to one another.

Judging by the screenshot, 0.0030 or lower should do you.

Unfortunately though, this will only sole the issue for vertex that align with one another.

You could try mesh-cleanup, to fix the extra edges left over not properly connected to anything.

Hope this helps

Originally Posted by mendosa69

Thanks for the tip, i'm familiar with the methods you mentioned, but i think what I'd need was something that added the extra polygons. The problem with the merge by distance thing is that it would not create new polygons, just move existing ones, and it would probably merge with it's neighbor polygons in many places. I was looking at meshlab because it has many things in it, including generating new meshes from existing ones, but i'm really not sure which option to use.
I've spent my day cleaning up the edges of the segments on the model so that there is no overlapping, so most of the holes on it are in the Y axis, while there is a tiny gap on X and Z.

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# 4 21-01-2015 , 02:40 PM

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Join Date: Mar 2012

Posts: 31

Well if you don't mind editing the mesh in regards what its topology is, you could try zremesher in zbrush which is good for recalculating a mesh.

If the issue you face seems to be just along one side of each mesh, meaning the middle is fine, can you not delete the line of effected faces, then duplicate a line of faces that are good to take their place, then merge them together?

Or have you tried this already?

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Ever Try, Ever Fail, No Matter. Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better.

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# 5 26-01-2015 , 09:22 AM

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Join Date: Jan 2015

Posts: 4

Yeah I've done something similar. I used interactive split to split the borders between the chunks accurately and get rid of overlapping surfaces. After that i've spent an hour or two testing different features in Meshlab. I can't remember what features i've used but it had to do with surface reconstruction, smoothing and closing holes mostly. It's a good free alternative to doing the same thing in zbrush!

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Stitching together multiple unaligned planes

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