The "curve"
polycounter lvl 10
One thing that always baffles me is the smooth curve that so many artists apply to their work. It's aesthetically pleasing but I never understand how it's applied. It's hard to explain but I'll try:
I want to make an outdoor scene with an old asphalt road that smoothly curves away in the distance, most likely applied with something like UDK's terrain editor and terrain materials. My problem is that when making a texture, it's always in a straight line. So how do I get that smooth bend that's so common in so many scenes? Multiple textures? non-directional texture and multiple yellow-line decals?
I want to make an outdoor scene with an old asphalt road that smoothly curves away in the distance, most likely applied with something like UDK's terrain editor and terrain materials. My problem is that when making a texture, it's always in a straight line. So how do I get that smooth bend that's so common in so many scenes? Multiple textures? non-directional texture and multiple yellow-line decals?
Replies
Depending on the curves of the road here is what I would do in max.
- Create a blocking model for a straight stretch of road (evenly sub-divided modular chunk that gets copied a bunch of times).
- Create a path spline, by drawing a spline on the surface of the terrain.
- PathDeform(WSM) an instance of the blocking model over the path spline
- Go back to the original straight blocking model and adjust the length to make sure it covers.
- Finalize the mesh model.
- Adjust the rotation of segments with soft select turned on as needed.
- Done.
OR- Create a road
- Use Geometry projection http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/geometry-projection?ref=nf
- Done
If you want to do zero mesh interactions it actually gets a lot harder...I feel like if I make a mesh, I'll have to make it modular. If I make it modular, I'll be constantly adjusting the terrain to cooperate with the mesh pieces. Also, wouldn't I have to do some working with the light maps to not give me seams where the flat geometry meets? I could be wrong though, never tackled something like this. But I feel like if I could just bend the terrain material, it'd make my life a lot easier.
I think this is your problem. You don't need to do that. You can create your terrain however you want and then model the road to match that terrain.
You can break up your road into pieces but they don't have to be modular pieces. What I mean by that is that usually modular road sections (say for a city) will consist of a straight section, some curved sections at certain angles (45,90), some t-junctions and intersections, and the like. You don't need to do that -- the reason you'd break your road mesh up is primarily to stop from having one massive mesh that's always drawn - reusing the parts is important if you can, but (depending on the vert count) not necessary.
But check out the features of whatever engine you'd be working with. A lot of engines have their own road system to go with a terrain system.
Crysis: [ame="
Far Cry 3: [ame="
The road systems will run better than a mesh solution, with engine-handled lodding and visibility. Unless you want something really specific (producing a look you can't get in the engine) then you should use them.
The closest in UDK that I know about is the spline loft actor. It's less "paint and forget" than normal roads, but it lets you use modular mesh pieces and to build your road (or whatever - it doesn't have to be roads) and then deform the shape using splines. If you want to see it in action, open up the FoliageMap demo and search for a SplineLoftActor.