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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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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
Interesting that something like this is not covered in much detail despite all the cool racing games out there.
This look promising
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.