Two questions regarding creation of an own map

[Jet Li]

1. How do you guys create roads. Only ways I could think of were extruding from cube (though blah at turns, espesially the pavement). Or extruding splines, which would be easy though difficult on turns.

 

2. Texture merging. Like on the land ends there is sand, I know how to create a texture to melt the two textures (grass=>sand) but how do you apply it around an island? Cause I only know straigt polys going in aline, but when it turns, wont you have to create many textures for each poly? OR, do you use UVW mapping? like order the polys so it becomes a straight line? (as in player texturing)?

 

Any tuts perhaps?

 

Thanks in advanced.

[DexX]

 

OR, do you use UVW mapping?

You need to uvmap objects for the texturing to appear correctly. How have you done it before?

[Jet Li]

Well, uhm, in C4D I have done some simply ones. I mostly use like cubic mapping in that proggy, but it has the leading module Bodypaint which isnt that hard to use just for like flat stuff, though human faces are kinda hard for me, or rather time consuming since I havnt done that properly yet. Though I think I can easily do the mixture texture inbetween. Or is there an easier way you guys/ladies do it?

 

(anyone got an answer for the roads thingy?)

[Augh]

Loft the roads. As far as I know at least. That's probably the best way to get even width lanes etc.

Most of your ingame mapping problems can be tackled with a fistful of planar, cylindrical and box maps + uvw unwrap. Or if youre a fruity kink (or insane) then you might flirt with a spherical map or two.

 

Basically old fashioned "primitive map plus unwrap" is how ppl do it, or just "primitive map" if no unwrap is available. What can I say, cars have many planar surfaces

Avast

[illspirit]

The answer to both those questions would be Path Deform. At least that's what the modifier is called in 3DSudio. Basically you just make some simple straight roads out of a box with lots of segments, and use planar/cubic mapping to stick the textures on it. After that, draw a spline, and path deform/conform/attach/whatver-your-ap-calls-it the box to the spline. The same basic method works great for blending textures too.

[Jet Li]

cool, well the program has a path deformer and what you suggested works as well as your tip Augh, but how do I go about when it comes to a place where the road goes like forwards aswell as right/left/both? I could do it with boxmodelling, just extruding, though I though there mite be a more simple way perhaps?

 

And about using path deformer to the blending of two textures area, that sounds really interesting, though I dont fully understand how to. I got a feature which can create a spline from points, which I assume could be usefull here if I am gonna make a spline around, lets say an island where sand comes, but I dont get how I can do that and not get the plane I apply to the path deformer to come on some places like, bending wrong and showing the seperate object from the main island?

 

Thanks again!

[illspirit]

Best bet is to plan the roads well in advance with splines, and lay it all out so all the intersections are at start and end points of splines. Then model any road types you need as boxes/planes, and pre-model any intersections you might need for various combinations of road. Now, whenever you lay a section of road down, make a copy of the road you're working with, and the intersection that goe at the start of its spline. Attach the road to the intersection, so the axis is like this:

 

 

Next weld them together, deform it onto the spline, and delete any leftover faces. Or you might want to copy it again so you can reuse the piece later.

 

 

To do the texture transitions, you'll want to make the splines flat using the top view. Next make a really tall, thin, and long box (lots of segments) with the transition texture on it. Deform it to the spline, then make and hide a copy of it. Now, take the first curvey bit, delete all the side and bottom faces, select the top ones, and use a confrom/wrap-to tool to glue them to the ground object. Now detatch those faces (might need to reselct them) to a new object, then hide. Now unhide the curvery piece that still has sides, check to make sure it's tall enough to go through the base landscape (and be sure there's no open edges in it), and use a boolean/cut/subtract modifier to slice it into the ground. Then unhide the faces you glued down before, and weld them into the new hole.

 

Roads can be cut into aand stuck to the ground in a similar manner as well.

[Jet Li]

Damn nice support here! Thanks again illspirit! I apreciate it

[Jet Li]

Okay, I think I got a hang of it now, or at least the roads, I will have to retexture them though of course (especially the middle of intersections), but that can wait until I've gotten my 1months time to take some reference footage for this project. I'm gonna move on to the blending then. Thanks again illspirit

 

 

 

 

 

[ciroman]

awesome!

[illspirit]

Looks nice so far. One other thing I forgot to mention: It helps to add a little 1 or 2 meter wide strip of grass at the edged of the template pieces. This way when you cut it into the ground and weld it, you'll have a little room to move the vertices around without screwing up the UV's and shape of the sidewalk. This also makes it easier to add clean embankments/slopes by the roads if they're not quite level with the ground.

[Jet Li]

Thanks for the tip , I'll do that. And on the 23rd I will go to the other country which this project will be based on (or rather the city), and I'll take alot of ref of the roads aswell as the other stuff (buildings, interriors, weapons, vehicles etc.). So I'll have the real textures then to apply to these models. Also I just bought the "Path Deformer" plugin and I'm still waiting for it to get here. So I think this month is perfect for going away. Anyway, thanks again

 

EDIT:

 

Path Deformer Lite works great for this. Allthough my first test I sorta knifed up the road alot to get a smooth turn, but next time I'll make it lowpoly, I only need to knife it from left to right to split the road, then slice more just where the road turns or goes up etc., so it works perfect. Thanks again illspirit

 

 

Heres a vid showing the path deformer in action

 

right-click and download

Edited June 16, 2005 by Jet Li