roadwork?

[ronnie42]

Hi all, been testing several different techniques on roadwork but was wondering is there any way people like to make them?

I'm wondering because in the past I have looked at BSP, it tends to look too blocky while in 3ds Max it can get a bit confusing, hard to tell if the collision are right (ucx) then it gets harder to tell if the proportations are correct before reimporting them.

Been thinking about terrain editor but I don't see how that would work with flat roads.

[Hellclown]

I would do a combination of BSP and Meshes. Maybe a procbuilding or spline if it was going to be super complex.

[Mougli]

Last time I played with SplineLoftActors, it wasn't possible to tile meshes (and according to the documentation it still isn't.)

If you're making an urban road network, you'd want to use a set of static meshes (a la Trackmania).

Otherwise I would go with terrain, but it won't be easy to make nice looking roads unless you're using an external terrain generator (e.g. World Machine).

[Beastenator]

I know a friend of mine made a road system a while back. He basicly modeled a square road piece in 3dsmax, UVW mapped it, and then applied transformations to it (twist etc). Could give it a shot.

[Xenobite]

if you are making terrain roads - you can start with making a road mesh inside some 3d program - add needed elevations to it - best way would be using path extrusion
then apply some "side view" texture projection and apply grayscale gradient
render image with alpha (top view) and you will have your road in form of heighthmap
next - open rendered image in photoshop, blur your layer with road heightmap a little and on bottom layer add some kind of fractal or whatever you want





you can also add your "extruded road mesh" on top of the terrain and tweak terrain a bit until it fits with your road mesh

[6Maverick6]

Thank you just what im after. Thank you search button.
Although my road is going to be over a huge area so i might just make parts like.
Straight bit, an intersection some different radius curves and it should work.
Thank you again.

[perlyman]

Thanks for the tutorial Xenobite.

[ronnie42]

Finally got back into the forums, this seems good for races courses but was hoping more for open environments, sorry of like this:



Basically modlar road but I'm concerned about the collision since been trying to plan/design a big environment, its a pain trying to make each road piece.

While the splines seems designed more for splines.

[HavocInferno]

In a city environment you could (instead of Xenobite's great solution) use a set of modular meshes and then adjust the terrain below the road as that's how it's made in reality in urban areas (kind of, the other way around actually)

[Ferrus126]

Hello All,

I have been attempting to create a large road network using a series of modular static road meshes. But when creating a long straight road out of multiple straight road meshes I get allot of vertex/Z fighting at the point the two static meshes meet (when viewed from a distance). Is there a way to solve vertex fighting without welding the vertices together? I would rather not have one extremely long road mesh (because of light mapping reasons) See screenshot.
https://plus.google.com/photos/10775...59202768723474
Any help would be much appreciated.

[Mougli]

It should be fine if your road section has a size that fits the grid (i.e. a power of 2 long) and you snap your objects to the grid (set to the appropriate resolution).

[Ferrus126]

I will triple check my road meshes but that is one of the first things I checked.. The vertex fighting only seems to happen at a distance.
Thanks for the response Mougli.

Just checked and My grid in Maya and UDK are set to the exact same size and the mesh follows the power of 2 rule. I double checked that all the points where correctly snapped before exporting. They line up perfectly.
This looks exactly like a Z fighting issue (the lines flash in the distance) and its driving me crazy.

[Ferrus126]

Just found a great thread on this problem here: http://www.polycount.com/forum/archi...p/t-76476.html
It looks like there really isn't a solution to this problem other than using a larger StaticMesh or BSP... All the professional maps I have dissected use BSP sheets to avoid this problem. =/

[Lankavfx]

it was really healpfull. thanks