Trying to figure out how to make twisting roads - may need plugin or script

[stayinwonderland]

What I want is fairly simple. So far I've been using Path Deform Binding. But I don't have much control over it.

 

The two main ways I want to control it are:

1. to edit the segments (with PDB I have to go right back to the original tiling piece and rebuild the path/road again)

2. to simply have control over banking/twisting of the spline. PDB has twisting but it's a little hard to control, and you can't rotate a spline vertex to make it twist.

Edited January 20, 2018 by stayinwonderland

[stayinwonderland]

Man, this used to be such a good forum

[Sachin Porwal]

Are you looking for something similar to this ?

 

http://plugins.cgrecord.net/2017/11/free-3ds-max-script-road-creator-lite.html

[James Vella]

have you tried railclone?

[stayinwonderland]

I think railclone is overkill. I might try railclone lite.

[Nicolai Bongard]

Railclone lite has the limitation that the splines have to be flat afaik, so you have to go for the full package if you have a road following terrain.

If all you need is control of verteces to control the tilt/twist of a road, you can create some elaborate setups with verteces linked to dummys and whatnot, but i am not sure if that supports soft selection and either way i guess that is not what you have in mind. Sounds like you also want to not have to edit polys, but some sort of relatively automated setup, or at least something that lets you control the twist by rotation/degrees?

Is your road just a mesh that is flat, or are you trying to create sidewalks and curbs and all of that as well?

I guess a little more info on what you want to achieve may be helpful if you want some ideas on how to create it.

[stayinwonderland]

it's going to be like sky roads if you will. Roads that twist and turn through a city. I guess think more of a roller coaster in terms of the path it will take. Supports aren't necessary. It'll have a fairly simple profile that may even just be a flat spline that's extruded along the entire length of the road. But I may need to control materials on it, so like a glowing stripe will run its entire length. For that reason it may need to be a mesh that's cloned rather than just extruded.

 

3ds max can do pretty much all of it except the banking/twisting part.

[Nicolai Bongard]

Hopefully this video may prove useful:

 

[stayinwonderland]

No, I saw that. I need to instance geometry, not just have a cross section lofted.

[John Dollus]

I did this with a roller coaster long before railclone came along. From what I recall, I used a path constraint on geometry, animated the bank amount along the path in the constraint settings and then the snapshot tool set to instance to lock down the geometry once I was happy with the behavior of the path animation.

[stayinwonderland]

Do you mean Path Deform Binding rather than path constraint? That has a twist on it, but it's hard to control (if that's what you mean by bank amount?)

[John Dollus]

nope - instead of the modifier section, go over to the Motion panel. near the top, you will see 'assign controller'. In there, select 'position' and the assign controller option will light up. select that and then go down the list to path constraint. It has different control than the modifier option.

Here's a quick and random google tut on it-

https://gunisigicihangir.wordpress.com/2015/03/07/creating-a-railroad-with-path-constraint-and-snapshot-tool/

[stayinwonderland]

thanks for the suggestion but that's not what I want. I need Railclone I think.