How to make single mesh copying the form of many separate meshes

[Ivkolya]

Hello all! I'm working on global map for my Crimean war mod. I want to make the map accurate, so I downloaded 3d mesh of Sevastopol area from Google maps to use it as global map. But the Google's mesh consists of many separate rectangles (each of which also consists of 4 separate rectangles), which can't be combined in one mesh perfectly, most of vertices of adjacent rectangles don't match. Here is an example:

Spoiler: Here is an example, area of the Malakoff tower

So my question is, is there a way or to combine all those meshes into one without losing much of shape (and which can be seen by the game's engine as global map), or to make another mesh on top of these rectangles, which will in general replicate the form of all those meshes?

 

[Mark7]

Yes, you need to combine all meshes if it separated. And need merge vertices, using the distance threshold.
For example in 3D Maya, select your meshes,
mesh -> combine
select combined mesh
edit mesh -> merge (adjust threshold)
select all nodes in the outliner
edit -> delete by type -> history

For make another mesh on these rectangles, you need to do previously described actions and export the mesh result to obj, load it for example in zbrush as obj subtool and gaeometry -> ZRemesh

 

[Ivkolya]

Thank you for a quick reply, but in this way much of the shape will be lost, besides in this way often wrong vertices are combined. i'm looking now into sculpting in Blender, maybe this could help to merge separate parts of the mesh, but still maybe someone knows how to do it in a better way.

 

[NPC99]

Alternatively, you could download a NASA height map in hgt file format and use an add on to import specific coordinates into Blender as a mesh.
Go to http://viewfinderpanoramas.org/Coverage map viewfinderpanoramas_org3.htm
Select the correct box for the crimea to download L36.zip. Inside this zip file you’ll find N44E033.hgt.
Go to
https://github.com/vvoovv/blender-terrain/wiki/Documentation and download the Blender terrain add on.
Warning - you need to be quite specific about the minimum and maximum latitudes and longitudes you set for import to avoid creating too large a mesh.

 

[Ivkolya]

Thank you, but in this case it will be too difficult (or impossible even) to cover this terrain made from a height map with a high-res satellite photo of needed area, I tried already several ways to make the global map from height maps - there is no way to make mesh and texture better than in Google maps (I need high-res satellite image exactly on the mesh, because quite a lot of buildings are preserved from the Crimean war time, and there are a lot of evidences of other buildings, so I want to place these buildings exactly on their historical place)

 

[Ivkolya]

But maybe I'll try your way, thanks