[Qgis-developer] Fwd: Re: QGIS 3D processing

[Andreas Plesch]

Let me share a side conversation here, with permission.


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: "Andreas Plesch" <andreasplesch at gmail.com>
Date: Mar 29, 2017 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: QGIS 3D processing
To: "Hillers Heather" <Heather.Hillers at erftverband.de>

Hello Heather,

thank you for your interest and offer to participate in the development of
3d capabilities in QGis. You may have looked up my proof of concept github
project https://github.com/andreasplesch/QGIS-X3D-Processing which will
give you a good sense of where my interest is. Please feel free to submit
issues (or PRs!) there.

I encourage you to give the processing scripts and models a try, and then
perhaps fork the project and see if you can modify some of the python
scripts or just create a new processing model. For example it would be
straightforward to add automatic reprojection of the DEM to WGS84
geographic coordinates in a model. That could be good first mini-project.

I plan on slow, deliberate development emphasizing robustness and doing one
thing well before adding features. Any help is of course very welcome.
Would you be able to contribute under an open source license ?

The processing framework allows for very modular development which may be
helpful for adding or customizing functionality.

I took the liberty to extract your list of requirements here and offer some
responses:

1) Load 3d shapefiles  or database stored shapes (we use Oracle)  and DEMs
and have a very easy to use and navigate 3d viewer

Here the idea would be to use qgis as an abstraction layer and just use the
qgis vector and raster layer API. I did this for DEMs. How large in terms
of data size are the DEMs you need to view and navigate ? For large scenes
it will be necessary to use a LOD or tile based concept which is also
possible.
What kind of 3d vector data do you have ? The QGIS2Threejs plugin has some
good ideas for representing points and polylines. TINs have a direct
equivalent in X3D and would be also very doable.
Currently, the idea is to use a web browser as viewer and interface which
has a lot of advantages. With QT5 and Qgis3 it may be possible to couple a
html/js webkit viewer more tightly with Qgis3.

2) Get x, y, z from clicked points and nearest neighbor vertices to the
clicked points.

x3dom has built in picking. Nearest neighbor (snapping) should also be
possible but probably outside of QGis using js on the web client.

3) Allow editing of z coordinate of vertices in a 3d shapefile or other
vector

Editing is another category altogether which I am not targeting at this
point. The way I can see editing Z values is by using the 2d map Qgis
interface and attribute editing capabilities and have an automatically
updating 3d display of the adjustments. Editing directly in 3d will require
a lot more development. The GEarthview plugin allows for digitizing in
Google Earth.

4) Get 3d distance along a line or polygon boundary between 2 vertices.

Following and measuring a line in 3d should be pretty easy outside of the
3d display just as a regular plugin. There may well be existing
functionality.

5) Pin coordinates, feature ids, vertex ids of selected feature vertices in
order to query distances between them or for editing.

Not sure but does this collapse to labelling individual vertices so they
are easy to find/identify with other tools?

Hope this helps,

Andreas

On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 3:10 AM, Hillers Heather <
Heather.Hillers at erftverband.de> wrote:

>
>
>
>
> Hello,
>
>
>
> My users are increasingly interested in visualizing and querying 3D
> Shapefiles and DEMs in QGIS.  We want to apply this to groundwater
> modelling and monitoring as well as profiling river beds.  I would be
> interested in working on this project and I am certain I can get permission
> to allocate some of my work time to it.  At the moment I do a lot of pyqgis
> development.  I haven’t done any QGIS C++ development, although I am
> familiar with the qgis source code and I have done C++ programming in the
> distant past.  I am working on a 3D sidecar plugin this week, so I’ve got
> the qgis 3d api stuck up my nose at the moment anyway.
>
>
>
> Grüße,
>
>
>
> Heather
>
>
>
> Heather Hillers
> Bereich: Personal und Verwaltung
> Abteilung: Informationstechnologie
> Erftverband, *Am Erftverband 6*, D 50126 Bergheim
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> <+49%202271%20881210>
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>
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>



-- 
Andreas Plesch
39 Barbara Rd.
Waltham, MA 02453
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