TerraScoop

Some issues on 3ds Max 2024:

If your 3ds Max crashes please send me bug report it Bug Tracker tab with details from files:

%LOCALAPPDATA%\TerraScoop\logs\

Files:

crash-max2024.log
terrascoop-max2024.log

TerraScoop brings a piece of the real world into 3ds Max. Pick an area on an interactive map, choose what to build, and get textured terrain, OpenStreetMap buildings, road and water surfaces, splines with scatter masks, and Google Earth photogrammetry, correctly scaled and placed in your scene.

Everything works for free and without API keys. Downloads are kept in a cache folder you choose, so building the same place again is fast.

What Makes It Different

• Water that meets the shore. A lot of work went into coastlines: the terrain is shaped along the OpenStreetMap shoreline so the water edge follows the real coast, seas and lakes stay flat, small ponds never spill down a slope, and roads along the shore keep their shape.
• Rebuilt 3D scan buildings. Raw photogrammetry is overlapping tiles with holes, shreds and debris. TerraScoop remeshes the buildings into clean, continuous surfaces with even, mostly quad topology and projects the scan's own texture onto them.
• Rebuilt 3D scan ground. The scan's ground becomes a clean, regular grid without pits, spikes or tree crowns standing up as columns. Everything that is not ground stays as scan geometry.
• Fewer glitches overall. Debris and stray triangles are removed, buildings are cut exactly along their outlines, and road junctions become clean polygons lying on the terrain.
• Textures that travel with your project. Collect Textures copies an import's textures into the project's maps folder next to your scene and relinks them, so the scene can be archived or moved in one piece.
• A strong starting point. You get a real place at true scale in minutes: a base to model on, a backdrop for your project, or a 3D draft to render and then push to a photoreal look with AI image enhancement tools.

Pick Only What You Need

You do not have to tick every box or download every mesh. Each layer is built only when you choose it, and the estimate shows its cost before you build. Different tasks need different layers:

• Landscape or background: Terrain and Map texture.
• Clean, light city geometry: OSM buildings, Road surfaces and Water surfaces on the terrain.
• The real look of a real place: the Google 3D mesh (Photogrammetry), with Rebuilt buildings and Rebuilt ground for cleaner geometry.
• Vegetation and scattering: Splines with scatter masks for Forest Pack or Chaos Scatter.

Key Features

• Interactive map with search by place name, coordinates in common formats, or a pasted Google Maps or OpenStreetMap link
• Rectangle or polygon selection up to 100 × 100 km, with move, resize, exact size input and bookmarks
• Terrain from open elevation data with a satellite or map texture (Esri World Imagery, Google, CARTO)
• OpenStreetMap buildings standing on the terrain
• Road and path surfaces with clean junctions, laid exactly on the terrain, with UVs along the road for asphalt and marking textures
• Flat water surfaces from OpenStreetMap lakes, rivers and seas, with the terrain shaped to meet them
• Splines for roads, paths, rails, rivers, water, forests and grass, plus scatter masks for Forest Pack and Chaos Scatter
• Optional Google Earth photogrammetry: cleaned of debris, packed into texture atlases and split into Ground, Buildings and Trees + objects, with buildings cut along their OpenStreetMap outlines
• Geometry presets (Fast, Balanced, Max) and texture sizes (2K, 4K, 8K); large areas are split into parts that keep full detail
• An estimate before every build: polygons, download size, disk space, memory and time, with a warning for large builds
• Correct scale in any scene units, with Earth curvature and height datums handled so every layer lines up
• Materials for the active renderer: V-Ray, Corona or Physical Material
• Builds run in the background, so you can keep working in 3ds Max
• In scene panel to show or hide imported layers, select the last import, open its folder or remove it
• Themes, an adjustable interface size for 2K and 4K screens, and built-in help for every panel section

Installation

Typical maxpkg installation process, more info in Install tab.

Quick Start

1. Click the TerraScoop button on the toolbar.
2. On the first start, choose a cache folder for downloaded data.
3. Find your place: type its name, paste coordinates or a Google Maps link.
4. Drag a rectangle on the map, or click the points of a polygon.
5. Under What to build, tick the layers you need, then choose Geometry and Texture size.
6. Check the estimate and click Build in Scene.
7. When the build is done, use Show Layers or the In scene panel to show and hide the imported layers.

Map Controls

What to Build

Extra options shape the result: Flat terrain for the meshes; for photogrammetry, a flat scan without Earth curvature, rebuilt buildings, rebuilt ground and flat water from OpenStreetMap outlines. Options marked (Slow) make the build noticeably longer. Click the round ? beside any section for a short explanation.

Data Sources

TerraScoop downloads map data from public services while you build: elevation from AWS Terrain Tiles, imagery from Esri, Google or CARTO, OpenStreetMap data through OpenFreeMap vector tiles, and place search through Nominatim and Photon. Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.

The Google 3D mesh comes from unofficial Google Earth endpoints, and the data belongs to Google and its providers. It is off by default, and TerraScoop asks you to accept a disclaimer before the first download. You are responsible for using downloaded data within the providers' terms.

Developer

TerraScoop is developed by Vasyl Lukianenko. It is free to use; if it saves you time, you can support its development with the Donate button.