Dismiss

Shapefile import
domlysz edited this page on Jan 6, 2019on Jan 6, 2019
·
2 revisions

Remember BlenderGIS is building with the mind of a 2 step workflow :

1. Explore and manage your data in your favourite GIS software

Following this paradigm BlenderGIS always make the assumption you have a good knowledge on what
you are trying to import, if it's not the case please go to step 1.

You must also read carefully how BlenderGIS handle georeferencing informations.

This tool can import in Blender most of shapefile feature type including geometry with z value. However
multipatch feature are not supported.

Separate objects
By default all features will be merged into one unique mesh. However it's also possible to import each into
separate objects. But keep in mind, Blender is not designed to handle thousands of objects. Importing into
separate objects can be very slow with lot of features.
When importing into separate objects it's possible to define a field whose values will be used to name
each features. Newly created objects are imported into a new Blender collection.

Importing into separate objects also offers the ability to handle attributes data into Blender. For each
newly created object, feature's attributes data will be assigned as new custom properties. Then, when re-
exporting this collection of objects into a new shapefile, theses custom properties are well taken into
account.

Importing all features into one unique mesh does not allows to handle attributes data, but it's the best
approach for importing large shapefile. There is an option in BlenderGIS's preferences that allows merging
automatically duplicate vertices while importing. This option is usefull to reduce the mesh size in memory
when the imported features share lot of vertices.

Elevation and extrusion

Geometry : for 3d shapefile only, this option will use the z coordinates of each vertices
Field : peek up feature's elevation an attribute data fields
Object : select a ground object that will be used as reference for vertices z coordinates
None : flat import

An extrusion value can also be setup from a specified attribute field

Typical import workflow assumes 2 mains conditions:

all your data must be already in the same projection

Once again use a GIS software to explore and manage your data (reprojection, clip ...) before trying to
import them in Blender. Each contry have a set of commonly used projections, if you really don't know if
the projection of your data is suitable for your location you can consider transforming them into the right
UTM zone. However, this topic is out of scope of BlenderGIS wiki.

Most of shapefile define the CRS in a .prj file witch contains the definition of the projection in Well-know
text (wkt) format. However, BlenderGIS store map projection as SRID unique identifier and unfortunately
discover the right SRID from WKT definition is not an easy task. Futhermore, the prj file is optional and
may be missing. That's why for now the user must explicit the input/file SRS.

Fortunately, BlenderGIS handle a list of predefinate CRS witch help to quickly specify the projection of
your input data.

If the CRS of your input file is not in the list, you can quickly add a new one with + operator.

You can find more information on how to manage this list of predefinate CRS in geoscene addon
documentation.

Warning :

You must avoid as much as possible importing a shapefile stored as longitude/latitude in degrees
otherwise you will lose data accuracy. One degree on the earth is equals to approx 111km so one meter is
approx 0.00001 degrees but Blender works with coordinates as single precision (float32) and a single float
value has actually about 7 significant digits of precision. You cannot expect an accuracy bellow 1 meter
when working in decimal degrees because closest points will be rounded and merged into one.
Futhermore, angulars units will be virtually unusable in Blender. In this case, you need to choose an
appropriate map projection (in linear units) for your location and transform your data into this reference
system.

Reprojection capabilities
Shapefile importer support minimal reprojection capabilities which can be usefull in some case. Please use
this functionnaly with caution and full background knowledge, BlenderGIS can't do magic alignment for
you...

Reprojection will be involved each time a shapefile must be transformed to match the scene CRS.

The scene CRS is the destination CRS so it leads all reprojection tasks. If the scene is not yet
georeferenced, then it will be not possible to perform a reprojection task.

Georeferencing informations of the scene will be automatically initialized according to the first shapefile
import. But, it's possible to define the scene CRS before importing any shapefile and thus ensure
reprojection of each subsequent imports. To do this use the geoscene manager panel available in 3dview
tool sheft.
Troubles
This tool depends on pyshp library that is in beta version, so sometimes it cannot process the
shapefile. Typically, if you got "Unable to read shapefile", "Unable to extract geometry" or "Unable to
read DBF table" error, these are pyShp issues. In this case:

Try to check if there is any update of pyshp lib.

If there is no update available or if update doesn't correct the problem, try to open and re-
export the shapefile with any GIS software. You can also try to clean/repair geometry, delete
unnecessary fields...

For polygons import, if you see faces which seem to be strangely filled try to remove duplicate vertex
on the mesh (modify tolerance distance if necessary)

The script can handle multipart geometry but actually if the part defines a polygon hole, a face will
still be created.

Because the scene can be very large, don’t forget to configure camera clipping distance according to
the scene. If you still see black faces error on render image after setting clip end distance try to set
the clip start distance closer to the scene, it will help Blender to improve vertex position according to
the Z depth of the camera.