Modeling roads - Terrain

bpears

So I've been thinking about how I should be modeling my roads. I was going to do separate meshes for road and terrain, and lay the road over it. But if the terrain is leveled with the road, it can bleed over onto the road on the z-axis.

I was looking at GTA's games present and past, and their roads are so fluid, so leveled with the terrain. Are they just putting the geometry as one thing? One mesh? Because you could texture it this way still. So I wonder if that is what they are doing. Or if there is some other way to achieve a good AAA road/terrain.

Thoughts?

Steppenwolf

Either model the roads into the terrain like this:



Or use tiling overlays.

bpears

Steppenwolf wrote: »

Either model the roads into the terrain like this:



Or use tiling overlays.

Ah, so it is like that. Cool, thanks. Also, is that typical geometry for a GTA road? seems like 1 edge loop down the middle would be good, I mean for a road without sidewalks.

Steppenwolf

I don't know how it's done in GTA. It's just one method that works well. Ther's enough geo for decent lighting and smooth surface on hilly/bumpy terrain, allows to to make curves that don't look too blocky etc. And you see from that pic how to reduce polies for backdrop terrain.

What engine are you working with?