Deform tire tread marks

HAWK12HT

Hey all, Any ideas on how to get tread marks on surface (deform) ? Not looking for the old school Pflow or texture based methods as that is what I come across during research.  

cptSwing

This thread comes to mind, maybe helpful? http://polycount.com/discussion/108145/assassin-creed-iii-deep-snow-tech

Maybe doing some research into development of indie game "Spintires" could help as well, nobody does mud like they do. (Didn't find any good info during the 5 minutes I just spent, though)
EDIT: This: http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/PavelZagrebelnyy/20130613/194247/Rendering_and_simulation_in_offroad_driving_game.php

HAWK12HT

Thanks CPTSWING, doing more research into this though as most of it requires coding. My plan is simply to use only 3ds max to get the desired effect. 

Obscura

In which engine?

HAWK12HT

Unity  but need to attempt this first in just 3ds Max. 
Interesting that something like this is not covered in much detail despite all the cool racing games out there. 

Obscura

My idea is to use a dynamic spline mesh with a decal material the modifies the displacement. As the wheel would go, it would pull out new spline points that would follow the movement of the wheel, and would snap to the terrain. Theoretically this can work, but it would require a custom spline mesh and custom shader.

HAWK12HT

Yeah, I believe I have found something that might work using World space conform modifier in max. Though it wont work for animations. 

HAWK12HT

ok so partial luck with wrap modifiers in 3ds max, too heavy to work with. 

Obscura

At the end it needs to be working in Unity?

HAWK12HT

Yup 

HAWK12HT

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TcYjz9wUXQw

This look promising 

Obscura

I don't understand why do you bother with the 3dsmax solution because it is definitely going to be a completely different solution in Unity. Its just a waste of time sorry. Cause you have completely different tools and possibilities there. Unity is a real time renderer and game engine and max is more like for modeling and rendering.

HAWK12HT

Because I will turn the whole scene  from max into Unity enviro, modelling deformation by hand will be time consuming and doing all this in Unity involves coding and custom shader work. That is why I intend to do all sorts of deformations in max and bake it in Terrain model without using high end plugins etc. 
Besides all this I realize that there is not much technical information regarding this sort of effect using just the base 3ds max, there are plugins like snowprint which I dont intend to buy. So hopefully I will come up with something and will share it if the results are worth it.