• 130 GeoTIFF tiles from the Norwegian Mapping Authority (Høydedata)
• Total source data: 1.64 GB
• Terrain area exported: 3000 × 3000 meters
• Terrain export: 6.2 seconds
• Total time from Terrain2Sketch to SketchUp: 40 seconds
Terrain in SketchUp has never been easier or faster.
sure, but unless you provide al ink where people can try it, or a beta plugin, or something, all we have is your word.
I’m half tempted to move this thread to the SketchUp > Gallery right now 
out of curiosity, where do you grab these ? I assume it’s a country-by-country situation right ?
So far we have tested GeoTIFF from Norway, USA, Canada, Sweden, Denmark.
So You have to download GeoTiffs from where you want in advance.
I have made a short video of how it works you can see it here:
Take a look and see what you think
I am very interested in finding people that would test a beta version so I can get their opinion .
I think this app solves a friction in working with terrain. That’s why I made it.. I was tired of Cloudcompare and other GIS software.. This is more Sketchup like.. Easy and quick.
Please don´t move it away from here..
Hello everyone,
I thought I’d share another progress update on Terrain2Sketch, my macOS application for importing GeoTIFF terrain directly into SketchUp.
The project has now reached a point where I use it in real architectural projects, and during the last weeks several important improvements have been added.
The original goal has never changed:
Bring accurate terrain into SketchUp — fast, accurate and easy.
The workflow is now very straightforward.
The entire process usually takes only a few seconds for a normal building site.
Terrain2Sketch has now been successfully tested with several different terrain datasets.
USGS 1-meter DEM
Successfully tested with:
LZW decoding is now implemented directly inside Terrain2Sketch.
Instead of exporting every raster point directly, Terrain2Sketch creates an adaptive terrain mesh.
The result is:
while still preserving the terrain detail where it actually matters.
One feature that has become extremely useful is cropping before mesh generation.
Instead of exporting an entire GeoTIFF tile, only the required area is processed.
Benefits include:
Each export now generates a small information file containing:
This makes it easy to relocate or document exported terrain models later.
While testing Norwegian terrain data I discovered something that may be useful for others working with GeoTIFF files.
When ordering data from the Norwegian Mapping Authority, there is an enormous difference between downloading the complete source dataset and requesting a clipped export.
For one recent test:
Complete dataset
≈ 900 MB
Clipped to the order polygon
≈ 640 KB
Both datasets represented exactly the same project area.
The difference was simply that one contained a huge amount of unnecessary surrounding raster data.
Processing times became dramatically faster when using clipped datasets.
It was one of those “why didn’t I discover this earlier?” moments.
Terrain2Sketch exports directly to GLB.
A small SketchUp extension imports the latest export automatically.
No OBJ conversion.
No intermediate software.
No manual file browsing.
Just one menu command inside SketchUp.
The application can now also generate animated orbit videos directly from the terrain.
Both formats are supported:
This has turned out to be surprisingly useful when creating presentations and promotional material.
Implemented
Multi-tile GeoTIFF support
DTM
DOM
LZW compressed GeoTIFF
Adaptive mesh optimization
Multiple export resolutions
Crop before export
Terrain skirts
GLB export
Automatic SketchUp import
Coordinate information export
Standard orbit video
Transparent orbit video
There are still plenty of ideas for future development.
Some possibilities currently being explored are:
Terrain2Sketch originally started as a small personal project because I was spending far too much time preparing terrain for SketchUp.
It has gradually evolved into a complete workflow that I now use almost daily in my own architectural work.
The amount of repetitive work it removes is honestly much larger than I expected when I started the project.
I’m looking forward to sharing more progress in the coming weeks.
As always, feedback, suggestions and testing ideas are very welcome.
Thanks for reading!
PS: I have also started creating short YouTube videos demonstrating the workflow. The first videos are already online, and I’ll continue adding more as the project evolves.
I´m preparing a closed Beta for you now..
A video about Speed
