curbing over uneven pavement - results and further question

[SgWRX]

hello. i found an excellent post from 2011 referring to a couple louis marcoux videos on morphing road and terrain. posting my results of that as it applies to making a curb follow the surface of a road or parking lot pavement, as the pavement slopes down and around.

 

the problem i usually had was that the gutter part of the curb which may stick out about 12", would lose contact with the surface of the pavement. it would either float above the surface or dig down into the pavement. the curb in my case was created via the sweep modifier on a spline which was glued to the pavement surface. banking/no banking can help in some ways but not others. i have not yet tried with lofting, i know there can be twist involved at certain points... sweep and glue is just so quick!

 

anyway, my question is whether there is some other approach i'm missing that might work even better, be quick and allow for quick turn-around time when pavement slopes change etc...

 

first two images show these steps:

1. create my uneven pavement object

2. create a flat poly object and morph that flat poly to the uneven pavement, make sure it matches up, then set the morph percentage to 0 (ie it's flat again)

3. create the line that represents my curbing and sweep my curb/gutter shape

4. move the flat line with the sweep to touch the surface of the now flat poly object (step 2)

5. add skin wrap modifier to the swept line (the curb)

6. go to the flat poly object with the morph and set it's percentage back to 100.

7. delete the original object that represented the uneven pavement surface

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]54851[/ATTACH]

 

this image is a close up of a part of the curb that is actually floating even using the technique above. applying an edit poly modifier to the curb, i see that pulling down the vertices where it floats is only about 0.5" of drop. which isn't too bad, i could work with that.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]54852[/ATTACH]

 

this image represents the problematic glue approach when sweeping a curb, in this case banking was turned on and you can see the gutter part of the curb gets burried

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]54853[/ATTACH]

 

thanks,

Edited October 23, 2016 by SgWRX

[Chris MacDonald]

This is why Railclone is so invaluable to us. It has a "surface" feature that allows you to snap your geometry to a base.

 

Why not model your kerbs, then hide that surface you've used to create the uneven pavement, and recreate a new pavement by selecting the edge loops within the kerbs and using those? Should be simple enough and will match perfectly.

[Scott Schroeder]

At the very least, get iToo's free Glue plugin to glue your spline down to your surface.

http://www.itoosoft.com/freeplugins/glue.php

[SgWRX]

i'll have to look at that plugin. i already have forest pro. the glue works great for gluing splines to uneven surfaces, but that doesn't solve the problem of parts of it hovering or digging in.

 

anyway, thanks for the suggestions.