I’ve found ways to get building heights from GIS data and OpenStreetMap using add-ons on more animation-oriented modeling programs like Blendr. Examples:
I typically would prefer to just go directly into Rhino. I’ve seen some ways to do this using Grasshopper but haven’t had much success yet. Does anyone know of a plugin or a way to do this I might be overlooking?
You can also use Gismo grasshopper plugin.
One needs to define address (or latitude+longitude) and radius - Gismo will automatically generate the 2D and 3D geometry for that input.
For 3D, supported are buildings/structures, roads and trees:
Also, something to watch in coming months (hopefully) is the possibility to integrate Google Earth Photorealistic 3D Tile Data Sets into GIS applications.
In Google Developer they now have the Map Tiles API and you can integrate that with Cesium.js, Unreal Engine, and Unity.
I tested in UE and it works great and I did manage to export it to Rhino via .fbx but it was a fairly laborious process.
Perhaps a smart forum user or Rhino/GH developer can see if there’s a way to access the tile data from Rhino/GH as, in my opinion, its a great solution to get 3D site context for animation, rendering, and even more accurate view studies and such (within reason).
Combined with “hard lines” data like OSM it could be a really great workflow addition.