Creative Communities of the World Forums

The peer to peer support community for media production professionals.

Activity Forums Maxon Cinema 4D looking for info about DEM formats or greyscale elevation map

  • looking for info about DEM formats or greyscale elevation map

    Posted by Tom Schmidt on September 2, 2008 at 8:09 pm

    I’m trying to track down useable DEM data for a model I’m building of the ocean floor, and surrounding above-water land.

    Cinema 4D imports DEM, but nothing seems to work. What kind of DEM is it looking for?

    I’m hitting the road block of the many DEM formats that are out there, and no clue about how to translate them. I have Polytrans, which is great for all formats of meshes. However not when it comes to DEMs.

    It just kinda shrugs its shoulders and gives the error message: contains binary data (many binary zeros) and hence cannot be in the USGS DEM ASCII file format (there are many different file formats with ‘.dem’ extensions). Aborting.

    I’m looking in all the usual spots like NGDC & GEBCO. They have tons of data, and no clear way to get it into a format I can use.

    Also, has anyone seen any greyscale elevation maps, like those for land found on Digimation, but for the ocean?

    Thanks.

    Greg Neumayer replied 13 years, 2 months ago 3 Members · 2 Replies
  • 2 Replies
  • Adam Trachtenberg

    September 3, 2008 at 2:51 pm

    Ugh, I run into the same problem any time I try to use DEM. There are so many different formats and so few clear explanations what they all mean. One time I downloaded and successfully used a DEM translation program, but unfortunately I don’t have it any more. You might try searching for something like that.

  • Greg Neumayer

    May 15, 2013 at 10:17 pm

    Tom,
    Did you end up finding a solution for this? I’ve got a client interested in having me build some “fly-over” scenes, but It’s been a rats-nest trying to find a usable DEM and matching satellite footage (Middle-East). At this point, I don’t even know what I’m looking for in the DEM, which is probably where you were.

    p.s. Do you still have/use PolyTrans? I need to convert a solidworks object, and have been told that’s the best solution. This is a one-off, so I’m looking for someone who can just do a couple objects for < $50.

    Antifreeze Design
    https://www.antifreezedesign.com

We use anonymous cookies to give you the best experience we can.
Our Privacy policy | GDPR Policy