Making a road /UVing them

[ThePriest909]

Guys there's a major difference between a game engine editor and the game engine itself. When I refer to CE I'm not talking about its editor.

[frozenfire2]

guys thanks for all the feedback, i THINK i've finally got an idea of how to make this work and a very neat innovation on this. I'll post something in WIP as soon as I got some time on my hands

[jaLAlaBA]

Now... On topic... Especially for the gravel kind of roads, I would strongly recommend using the base-terrain for the job. Give it the right shape and paint it.

How does this method works exaclty, could you explain a bit

[BloodReyvyn]

I think he means to just paint an asphalt/concrete/road texture on the terrain, which is what I would suggest.

For the lines, you could have various masked materials (Straight, Curved 90, Curved 45, etc.) and either Decal them onto the terrain or make them static mesh planes and set them 1 UU up off of the terrain so that they can be culled for performance.

[ali rafaty]

cryengine 2 it's the best in making fps game and when cryengine 3 coming....

[ali rafaty]

cryengine 2 it's the best for making fps game and when cryengine 3 coming....

[Xendance]

No rebuilding levels for any little change.(WYSIWYG).

Now that is completely false, or haven't you ever built ground textures/sky accessibility in Cry Engine 2 editor?
High quality build takes hours.

[KazeoHin]

For pete's sake, Stop this Cry/Unreal bickering.

Also:

Use Spline-loft actors on a road Static mesh then build blocking volumes. Simple as that.

[Xendance]

Btw, does the spine-loft actor bend the static meshes too? Or do you have to use short road smeshes so that the road can bend without any noticeable corners?

[KazeoHin]

I'm sure Spline-loft actors are designed to bend static meshes. So long as your road mesh has enough verts, the bend should be smooth.

[Havoc89]

I've made a fairly complex dirt road with lots of twists turns and forks using decals. Only really 3 decals (fade at one end, middle, fade at the other end) Works pretty well though it is a pain staking solution. It does have some fairly good results. Although I dont think it would be a good idea to use them for paved roads, for that I think it would be best to create the geometery in a 3d app, UV it and then export it into the engine.

Here is what my decal roads look like, I've emphasized them a little bit so you can see them. Hope it helps.

[SHOT]http://i47.tinypic.com/16lgww6.jpg[/SHOT]

[Fartuess]

I guess you can create roads with base straight road model (with more edge rings across model) and spline tool (look creeper branches on building in GDC map)

[frozenfire2]

ahh took me a while before I got back doing this road thingy. I've found to make very nice road , and good performance, totally without any imported mesh. Not sure if anybody might find this useful, but it sure would help me if someone would have taught me this earlier.

I'm not aware of any easier way to do this. So if there is, please advise. So here's my way.

Fully BSP-based


Easy to UV. Lines seamlessly continues


Nice and Smooth Curves




So how to make the road?
Use the Curved Stairs as builder brush.
Set Step height to 0 ( this is important so the road won't rise )
Set Add to First Step, this would determine the thickness of your road
To adjust how SHARP You want your road corner to be adjust the 'Inner Radius'. More values means a less sharp corner. 0 Means a 90 degree turn.

Normally for roads, I find it nice if you use subtract BSP to cut into the shape of the ground, making the side higher and becomes a sidewalk automatically. Alternatively you can add static mesh on the sides as well.

So there you go.

[danimal']

If you're going to do flat roads, I don't think that's a very good solution both in terms of quality/control and performance. I agree with the original responses. If that's the kind of track you want, you can just make a straight piece and a bent piece, UV and texture, and then just instance it everywhere. It will perform much, much better. It also has the benefit of allowing you to hand draw/customize it, allowing you to get a much nicer piece of road than using BSP.

The real issue is if you want to do a fully 3d, twisting track (e.g., Wipeout), which makes doing "stock pieces" much, much more difficult. But if you primarily just want largely flat roads, definitely do it via meshes and instancing. Taking the cryengine bait, all you ever really have to ask a cryfanboy is this: if cryengine really is better, why do studios keep licensing unreal over crysis, it's not like they don't know about crytek... do you really think that people who do this for a living haven't investigated both engines in detail, the tools, etc, and are consistently choosing an inferior product at such a high price? If you do think that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell to you.

[Hboybowen]

ahh took me a while before I got back doing this road thingy. I've found to make very nice road , and good performance, totally without any imported mesh. Not sure if anybody might find this useful, but it sure would help me if someone would have taught me this earlier.

I'm not aware of any easier way to do this. So if there is, please advise. So here's my way.

Fully BSP-based


Easy to UV. Lines seamlessly continues


Nice and Smooth Curves




So how to make the road?
Use the Curved Stairs as builder brush.
Set Step height to 0 ( this is important so the road won't rise )
Set Add to First Step, this would determine the thickness of your road
To adjust how SHARP You want your road corner to be adjust the 'Inner Radius'. More values means a less sharp corner. 0 Means a 90 degree turn.

Normally for roads, I find it nice if you use subtract BSP to cut into the shape of the ground, making the side higher and becomes a sidewalk automatically. Alternatively you can add static mesh on the sides as well.

So there you go.

visually it works dunno about performance we shall see though thnx for sharing this