Optimal way to make modular Mario Kart or F-Zero style roads? (Maya)

Turbopasta

Hey guys, I'm working on a fast arcade-style racing game in the vain of something like F-Zero GX, and I'm just wondering, what's the best way for me to go about making tracks? The courses I have in mind have lots of bends, loops, and turns, so it's not like I can just have one track for straight and another for 90 degree turns.

Something like this:
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNvJxiV2Pc"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtNvJxiV2Pc[/ame]


I can get the mesh looking pretty good through the CV curve tool and extruding, but it seems like after you do that, you have to go in and texture the UVs of each one individually, which seems really time-consuming. Not only that, but if I decide to change the texture of the roads, I would have to go in and change every single one by hand, so that's obviously no good. The tracks I have in mind are pretty long too, since the player is going to be moving very quickly through the environments.

I'm not opposed to doing some of it by hand, but I just want to know what my best course of action is before I really dive into UV texture editing for this thing. Thanks

MethodJ

IIRC, NURBS objects have automatic UVs assigned at creation. So extruding along a spline would probably work pretty well with a tiling road texture, you might just have to stretch the UVs a bit to ensure proper coverage.

I would suggest you try the NURBS route and check a tiling texture against the UVs before trying a different method.

antweiler

Maybe you could get this tool, 5 bucks seem to be a reasonable price: http://trackmaker.wordpress.com/

ExcessiveZero

you could have the same thing in theory to straight and 90 degree turns with a modular kit just start it straight and end it straight within a unit scale keeping it snapped to the grid, though im guessing you know that, you should be able to make some straight pieces then preserve uvs are a option, insert edge loops and change it, adding loops, should maintain the uvs the way you want, can use bend modifiers and the like.

could help more if you were using max, id just run this along a spline path deform with some extra geo so it curves, maybe maya has the same, I dunno only have used it about a month.

passerby

@ExcessiveZero, ya the defualt extrude can do extrude along a path things like max can, and the wire deformer, can bend existing geo to a match a spline like in max too.