how to make road strips?

[volkane]

Hi everyone,

 

I wonder how else to make road strips other than using checkers map?

[volkane]

Nobody ever need to do strips???

[martin walker]

not quite sure what u mean by "road strips" do you mean road markings ?

[STRAT]

if you mean 'markings' then model them.

[womble]

If you mean the middle of the road white line type markings, then heres what I do:

 

1) Create a long thin rectangular plan with the dimensions of the road marking (or approximated).

 

2) Apply a UVW Map

 

3) Cut out a road marking from a road texture, (many can be found online, or draw your own in photoshop, it just has to be quite messy around the edges). Save this file to use as a texture.

 

4) Using the paintbucket tool, paint over the white line so it is totally white, paintbucket any remaining road around the line so that it is completely black. Save this file to be used as an opacity map.

 

5) In max, create a material with the first file set as the texture, the second file set as your opacity map, turn off tiling on both maps and then apply it to your long,thin rectangle. Select the 'fit' command in the UVW map rollout if needed.

 

6) Space these out along your roads, they have to be incredibly close (1 or 2mm above) your road plane, or they'll cast shadows on the road below.

 

 

 

Maybe this is all a bit excessive for some people, but if you create 2 or 3 different types of linework, then you can repeat them randomly along your road and minimise any 'repeating textures'

[volkane]

Yes I'm talking about markings in the middle of the road that seperate lanes.

[jkletzien]

We just draw them out of editable splines, make them renderable, and describe them as a very flat profile. Then you make them non-shadow casting.

 

Probably don't have the kind of wear and tear that painting them by hand would give you, but it is fast and doesn't generate a lot of faces or force your engine to deal with opacity maps.

[volkane]

How do you make dashes then ?

[mskin]

I've struggled with this. Especially with complex sites that aren't as flat as many tutorials i've seen address. Here are some of the methods i've tried.

 

1. Photshoping them (using a bmp created from cad artwork as a guide) and then using the image as an opacity map over the road portion of the terrain. This always seams to be an excessive amount of work and the result have never impressed me much.

 

2. Use the cad linework or create them with splines in max. Extrude them about .125 of an inch, convert them Editable Poly and then conform them to terrain. Again, messy outcome. The lines never seam to sit flat and creat awkward shadows.

 

3. Use same method as before to create linework, but extrude them alot (100' or so) so that they completely intersect the terrain (that has been converted into an EP as well) convert the extruded lines to poly, and cut them into the terrain using the compound>boolean>cut option. Now you've sliced your terrain where all the lines were and the newly created polies can be given a new material id. I usually spend lots of time cleaning up vertices afterwords, but this seems to give me the best results.

 

lately, ive been conforming a nurbs surface to my terrain, and deleting he original terrain. this seams to give a smoother, more manageable terrain object. I convert this to a poly and cut it with my road line work. Selecting the newly created polies, i assign a material id of 2. then i inset 6", then extrude -6" and assign material id 3. now i have materials set up for grass(1), curb(2) and road(3). Selecting nurms surfaces at this point using materials to seperate surfaces, i get a pretty clean, smooth looking site with few visible facets at road radiuses etc.... This seems to work well, but i am spending alot of time cleaning vertices to smooth out some of the funkiness created trough the boolean process. i've noticed the more cutting i do, the more i loose control over the quality of my terrain and frustration sets in.

 

and then my my wife starts bitching at me because the tv doen't work and the dog is barking to come in, and i stop worrying about my terrrain. Then i go to bed and roll around thinking about how i can improve the process and finally fall alseep. the next day i go to work, to my real job doing construction drawings and construction administration, still thinking about how to improve my terrain modeling process so i can compete with the big boys. i spend a couple of hours looking for good terrain modeling tutorials on line, but all seem to fall short of answering some of these questions that have been puzzling the hell out of me.... lines, parking spaces, how do i make realistic trees? can i make them myself in photshop, whats the best way to mass populate a site with foliage while still maintaing look-at constraints to fascilitate realistic shadows, how do i animate with mental ray?

 

eventually, someday ..........

 

Terrains, for me, have been one of the most difficult obstacles to overcome in terms of modeling. i have been able to create them adequately for projects, but i have never been entirely satisfied with thier outcomes.

[Antisthenes]

model the road in rhinoceros then make a very large render of it. to apply as a texture mapping or even not need to depending if you are able to spare the (expense(polygons)) choices....?

 

 

 

POST 100!!

[STRAT]

 

 

 

POST 100!!

 

teehee, i bet 99 of those are promoting Rhino too

[padhia]

YOU HAVE TO READ THE VISUALIZATION INSIDER Tutorials!

 

The link is on cgarchitect's home page, bottom right.

 

It is a weekly tutorial posted by a great author. It coveres that and much more.

[John Dollus]

To space out the stripes:

 

1. draw a line down the center of the road where you need the stripes

2. use the shapemerge function to project the spline onto your road surface.

3. use edit poly or edit mesh to select the edge down the center and create the shape from the spline using linear shape type.

4. raise the spline up above the road surface a small amount.

5. Use that spline as a path for the spacing tool to create the dashed lines based on the renderable spline object.

 

Done.

[Claudio Branch]

Here is how I do it...

 

I create 90% all of my site modeling (roads, curbs, sidewalks, parking lots, retaining walls, etc.) within AutoCAD using EasySite's 2.9 plug-in.

 

(cadeasy.com is where the plug-in can be found)

 

After that, I import it all into Max and finish up with minimal terrain work, add the buildings, props and textures.

 

Your road for the most part is just a repeating tile on quads and your initial modeling work will drastically reduce or increase your texturing job at the end.

 

I included some samples renderings. If you want more samples or more info on my terrain modeling workflow, I will gladly share all of it!

[Guest nazcaLine]

http://www.cgarchitect.com/upclose/article25_TB.asp

 

you guys don,t have to model anything, it's just materials...ted boardman's tuts are excellent...

[Claudio Branch]

You need to model all of the terrain if you have an animation with traffic traveling over roads that are not flat....

[Koper]

what would actually take more resources? modeling the markings or using maps and creating a material using blends within composites? (max). I think it would be better doing it with maps and not modeling it.

[Brian Smith]

I'm big on keeping scenes optimized but road lines just aint gonna make a significant difference. Even for the largest of developments it might only add a few thousand faces, which is a fraction of a drop in the bucket.

[Koper]

true

 

as i see it, once you have done a complex material you can save it in a material library and just re-use it in other projects?

[Redav]

Thread mine but I thought I'd share.

 

I used to model my linemarking in AutoCAD using the 3D strings from our design software. I did this because I could reflect accurately what our linemarking plans detailed. It was simply a case of extruding a thin profile alone the strings and then using subtract to create the gaps. It was time consuming, i.e. it might take a day to do a 4km highway with interchanges but it was spot on. Naturally it made for some very heavy polygon counts.

 

These days I use a plugin called Dynamite VSP in MAX to create the linemarking. It's a very similar principle in that it lofts along the 3D strings that are imported into MAX but instead of creating gaps in the objects, it uses opacity mapping. The best part of it is that it's all parametric. Now it might take me an hour or so to setup the 3D strings but it literally takes seconds for Dynamite to generate the linemarking.

 

Mind you, 99% of my visualisations are highways so this might not be of benefit for models that only have roadway around buildings.

[Claudio Branch]

Mind you, 99% of my visualisations are highways so this might not be of benefit for models that only have roadway around buildings.

 

Peter, about 60% of my project are transportation as well, but I've never heard of "Dynamite VSP." Would you mind posting some examples of you work using this?

 

Perhaps you could show some screenshots of shaded wireframes with your final textures mapped onto them?

[Redav]

Peter, about 60% of my project are transportation as well, but I've never heard of "Dynamite VSP." Would you mind posting some examples of you work using this?

 

Perhaps you could show some screenshots of shaded wireframes with your final textures mapped onto them?

G'day. I haven't got anything handy right this second but check out http://www.3am-solutions.com/. They have a samples of visualisations done on there. This is a powerful plugin which imports and links 12D and MX (or XM as it's now called) design models into MAX or Viz. Chances are you haven't heard of either design program but that's what any serious civil designer uses in Australia or Europe.

 

One thing I'll point out is that the plugin was geared to creating road visualisations quickly so a lot of the work may not appear to be up to the standard that many architectural visualisers output but that's only because many users have a technical background (myself included), not a graphical, architectural or even a MAX / Viz background. So achieving rendered output on par with what you see here or vizmasters or wherever still comes down to the user but this plugin has some very useful tools.

 

p.s. hope this doesn't look like advertising, I'm just a user of the above mentioned program