Street Texture Mapping

[Guest ossosso]

Hi everyone!

First of all sorry for my english

 

I only need an advice regarding the roads texturing process into a 3dsmax project.

 

All I have is a .dwg file with roads that I can import into 3dsmax like mesh or splines.

I've yet followed the 3das pdf tutorial regarding the construction of a Restaurant into 3dsmax starting from Autocad lines.

And I've also tried to use Loft to recreate the road geometry and then I've applied a seemless street texture.

But into this project there are some crossorads, and the streets appear not always uniform in their shape; so I'd like to know, if you can, which is the best technique to recreate road geometry and texturing in a project like this.

 

Any advice will be well accepted.

 

Thanks a lot!

[Claudio Branch]

Your texturing job will be made much easier if your road geometry is a series of quads that follow the road centerlines. I do alot of road and site modeling and I prefer Autocad and the EasySite plugin.

 

I have alot more control over the geometry of the road, how it is incorporated into the terrain, the density of the mesh and even the profiles of the roads themselves.

 

Once you have nice uniform quads for your roads, you can easily put a tiled road texture on them and most of your work is done.

 

The intersections can be tricky especially if your road texture features a typical centerlane oil stain. I use a multi sub object material and assign each group of polys making up a unique intersection their own ID numbers.

 

I go into Photoshop and create a unique texture for each intersection in the scene. You will need to get comfortable using the Pen Tool and Stroke Path commands within Photoshop to do this nicely.

 

It is art after all, and it just takes alot of practice. Best Luck!

[ossosso]

Thank you very much friend, really useful informations.

 

Unfortunately I'm not a 3dsmax user, so I've some problem with tools, for example: I've imported into 3dsmax a big mesh (from AutoCAD) that rapresents all the roads; then in component mode (Element) I've selected portions of surface (accordly with crossroads and linear roads) and I've changed for any piece the "Material Set-ID", then I've created a "Multi-Sub/Object" material and I've applied it to the big mesh.

Finally I've created a new material (and dragged it into the "Multi-Sub/Object" material) with a seemless road texture, but I think that the piece of surface has a wrong UV coordinates, 'cause the texture doesn't appear correctly, if I use a UVWmap modifier (planar mapping) it appears, but it doesn't "run" along the surface, so.. the final question is : there's a way I can adjust correctly UV coordinates in the way that the seemless texture follows the surface, or have I to rebuild all the surfaces using the Loft command?

 

Thanks again

[erickdt]

I might isolate the roads and intersections etc in autocad save them as a seperate file and then bring the into illustrator. then you can lay in the lines as you wish where you wish and export your file as a tif or jpeg or whatever. basically make a texture for the entire road that doesnt tile at all.

[ossosso]

So you use Illustrator to recreate a unique big texture for the whole mesh?

 

Do you think there's some kind of tutorial about this procedure?

[erickdt]

Yeah that's what iwas thinking... This method could be problematic though since you might wind up with a huge texture that MAX can't handle.

 

If there is a tutorial I don't know of it.

[ossosso]

Ok, thank you very much Erik for your answers...

if you are on skype (flagg83) or msn (ossosso@libero.it) and you've a break call me , I'd like to learn from you this technique

 

ByeZ!

[only3d]

Your texturing job will be made much easier if your road geometry is a series of quads that follow the road centerlines. )))

 

claudio, can u elaborate on your technique?

i use regular splines and 'bevel profile' for the sidewalks, but can u explain how to do it with quads as u do?

 

tnx in advance

[ossosso]

Yes Claudio, illuminate us

[Claudio Branch]

Alright then...my modeling approach is highly specialized. It is specifically for the creation of large-scale transportation animations. Like I said before, I start with AutoCAD and EasySite...mix in a little MicroStation and GIS...and then git er dun with Max.

 

My roadway modeling approach usually begins with survey data or a 3d contour file obtained through GIS. I start out by importing the file into Autocad (with my EasySite plug-in) and creating a TIN (triangulated irregular network) or mesh if you prefer.

 

Also at this time, I will import a hi-res aerial photo of the site and a 3D centerline of the proposed road created in MicroStation. Now I can trace existing roads and tie in the proposed road alignments using a P-line with it's width corresponding to the final width of the road.

 

Once I have the road layout complete in the plan view, I add "grade refs" along the 3D centerline to determine the height and slope of the road at specific intervals. EasySite reads the width of the P-line and the elevation of the "grade refs" to generate the quads (that I mentioned previously) from a file with the specific road profile. The road profile file not only creates the road quads, but also the geometry for the gutters, curbs, grass, and sidewalks.

 

Once the roads are modeled up, I delete whatever portion of the terrain mesh is lying beneath the new geometry. All that is left to do, is tie the road geometry to the terrain mesh. EasySite has a "FILL" command that accomplishes that task beautifully. Finally, I export all of it into Max.

 

Now that I'm in Max, I scale the thing up 1200X and convert all of the geometry to Editable Poly. EP has extremely efficient sub-object features that make finishing this thing easy!

 

From here on out, Editable Poly helps me to create retaining walls...create camera and traffic splines...create streetlight/foliage centerlines...and I already covered the textures previously.

 

This is basically the beginning of my modeling/texture workflow which will end up as a tranportation animation.

 

When I am finished, it might look something like this:

[Claudio Branch]

Here are a few screen shots. The first two are from my AutoCAD environment and the the large tool pallete on the right side of these images is the EasySite plug-in. My workflow requires 10-15 of these specialized commands. You may notice in these two stills that the culvert geometry is not present.

 

I mentioned previously that the width of the road is determined by the width of the P-line. I did not mention that EasySite will also query you for the quads interval value. Straight portions of the road have an interval of 24' and as the road curves through the environment the interval value may go down to 3'. This will minimize the amount of segmenting that is visible when the road turns within a small radius.

 

The third image is in my Max environment and shows the completed culvert geometry. You can also see how the terrain mesh is attached to the road geometry at the sidewalks outside edges and how the proposed road alignment intersects with the road on the aerial photo.

 

I have hidden all the splines that the cars and some cameras follow. These splines follow the geometry of the road surface and were created by using Editable Poly (Edge, Loop, Create Shape from Selection).

 

I have been using this approach for about 18 months now. It works very well when your projects are large-scale and require animations that portray the road accurately to the viewer.

 

I'm sure this is alot more than anyone cared to know!

[STRAT]

ossosso ossosso - please fill in all your personal details correctly else you'll have your account here suspended.

 

thank you

[siliconbauhaus]

wow.....thats a cool way of doing things. I need to check out easy site as I'm always doing bloody site models

[dinhtuan]

You are very kind to share this Claudio Branch. Thank you very much. Need to look back autocad now.

[only3d]

yeh, tnx alot claudio, your reply was very insightfull!

unfortunately my english is not good enough to get everything u talked about ..but it seems its not that different of what im doing in max.

 

again tnx anyway!

 

by the way your work looks amazing and very proffrssional!

heres an an example of my own..

[Claudio Branch]

yeh, tnx alot claudio, your reply was very insightfull!

unfortunately my english is not good enough to get everything u talked about ..but it seems its not that different of what im doing in max.

 

I see that you are working on large-scale transportation scenes as well. I am certain that you know how challenging it is to create a nice clean terrain model with the roadways seemlessly integrated.

 

Obviously, the whole thing could be done in Max. However, there are some very powerful tools within EasySite that will streamline the workflow that Max simply doesn't have right now.

 

EasySite is designed specifically for this task, that's why I use it. It generates appropriate geometry (quads) that anticipates the task of texture mapping.

 

Max is an incredible tool alone, but if I use it only to make a model faster and haven't considered the complexity of adding textures to a road layout, then I will pay for it when I have to spend much more time figuring out how to make the textures look right.

[Gene]

Wow, this is a great thread.

 

Claudio, I am getting up to speed in Max and not sure I understand everything, but your work is very clean!

 

Can I ask if it's possible to create a mesh from an imported site survey directly into Max? Sometimes I get a site survey or 3D coordinates from a client and it's just a bunch of points or segments divided up by layer.

 

Can I isolate the parts of the road I want and then connect them manually?

 

Thanks,

 

Gene

[only3d]

no argument here claudio. your technique sounds very "hands on" and the outcome u cant argue with. its just that i would need to learn (yet) another software and my mind gets tired with old age (pushing 30 ).

besides its not something i do often, actually its pretty rare for me to work this type of scale.

 

still this was very insightful! maybe for for future work..

and yeh a great thread! i predict at least 10 to 15 pages for this baby

[Claudio Branch]

Can I ask if it's possible to create a mesh from an imported site survey directly into Max? Sometimes I get a site survey or 3D coordinates from a client and it's just a bunch of points or segments divided up by layer.

 

Can I isolate the parts of the road I want and then connect them manually?

 

Gene, In regards to the first part of your question, I am sure that it is possible. I recall doing a tutorial on one long, long ago...

 

But, I do not feel qualified to tell you how to do this within the Max environment. I am certain that there are several forum members out there that could answer this part of your question better than me.

 

I start all of my site work within AutoCAD and EasySite everytime.

 

As for the second part...

 

Within the AutoCAD/EasySite environment you can very easily create your TIN (terrain mesh) out of 3d contour files or a point file (point cloud). EasySite will query you in regards to how fine you want the mesh to be. On flatter terrains you can get away with bigger triangles. When your terrain becomes hilly, a tighter mesh will minimize the inherent faceting of the geometry.

 

Isolating any part of the terrain and modifying the density of the relevent mesh is also very easy to do. It's as simple as reworking part of a drawing that isn't quite right, except that you are doing it digitally in 3 dimensions instead.

[only3d]

GENE its very much possible to do in max. the 'terrain' compound tool lets u do exactly that with linework imported from acad or recreated in max (much better option)

not the easiest thing to do but possible

[Gene]

I never used the Terrain button before and only discovered it earlier today! I'll look up some tutorials to figure out how it is used.

 

Also, I tried creating a surface using Nurbs curves and that really worked out well, but it was a rather high patch count.

 

Cheers!

[kevin miller]

Hi everyone!

First of all sorry for my english

 

I only need an advice regarding the roads texturing process into a 3dsmax project.

 

All I have is a .dwg file with roads that I can import into 3dsmax like mesh or splines.

I've yet followed the 3das pdf tutorial regarding the construction of a Restaurant into 3dsmax starting from Autocad lines.

And I've also tried to use Loft to recreate the road geometry and then I've applied a seamless street texture.

But into this project there are some crossorads, and the streets appear not always uniform in their shape; so I'd like to know, if you can, which is the best technique to recreate road geometry and texturing in a project like this.

 

Any advice will be well accepted.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

This is an old post but it is related to a struggle I am currently having myself. I have searched everywhere for information on how to address this very issue but to no avail. It is a shame no one responded to this post as I am sure there are others who have struggled with this.

 

I have been trying to learn 3ds max over the last few months with the help of some people, books, and online resources like this website. 3DAS has some good info on creating a street but not like what is described in this post. I have created a 2D plan drawing of the site I am currently getting ready to model. If you look at the attached plan, I have colored in where my street is suppose to run. There are sidewalks along most of the street as well. My challenge is, how do you model a street with an arc in section (streets are never flat, they always have a crown in the center to remove rain) that not only curves in plan but has crowned side streets that connect into it of a varying widths? Lofts work for a single straight run of a street and are preferred because of keeping texture coordinates on the curved shape. The tricky part is having these side streets intersecting into the main street. My initial thought was to create a shape of each site component, one shape for the entire street, one for the side walks, one for the land part, etc, and then extrude these to their proper elevations. However, I would not have the “crowned street” and how would I properly texture map the street so the texture follows the curves properly?

I have attached a poor rendering of my one building I have been working on for this scene. It is my first 3ds project and is ready for texturing and needs lighting help but it is what it is. I have also attached a link to a sample of a cobble texture image to show what I need to get the streets to look like.

 

 

[kevin miller]

Whoops, big mistake! I see I am on the 3 page of replies so it looks like I am looking quite foolish here! Somehow, when I was doing a search I landed here. Anyway, time to review. If anyone wants to through in some other advice to help it will still be much appreciated!!

 

Thanks!

[kevin miller]

I just read all of the post and I must say I am a bit disheartened on the solution described by Claudio. Although his reults are amazing, I just do not want to have to yet buy and learn a whole other program to get this done. When I used to use FormZ, I would created the terrain model with their tool (very powerful) and then extrude the road and use the intersect boolean tool (FormZ is known for very solid stable boolean tools)to create the final street. The road could then be dropped 8" or so to emulate the curbs. However, I still would not have had the proper crown in the street profile witht his method. I am now trying to learn 3ds Max since the texturing, rendering, and animation capabilties are so strong. I was hoping there would be a way to create what Claudio had created but do so in Max. I currently have the site drawn in Autocad and have converted everything to polylines. I am getting ready to import into Max but I am just not sure how to make this work and look good.

[Gene]

There are many ways to skin this cat.

 

A very simple method (but a little tedious) would be to draw the lines you want to use as road section guides and import them into Max. Also, draw your roads as one large flat plane. When they are in 3DS Max, you can simply use the "cut" tool to cut a centerline down the road. You can then select these center segments and raise them up to mach the guides.