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Make tracks in game from real sattellite data?

Started by IronHorse, October 02, 2016, 08:40:22 AM

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janaucarre

What a complete useful and detailed tutorial.
Thank you very much

Grooveski

Brilliant - Thanks again.    :D
That's going to be a real time-saver.    8)

Hawk

Great tutorial Reactive! This is a really useful piece of kit.... Thank you mate!  ;D

Hawk.

Grooveski

A quick question for all the modellers out there.  Could be another time saver.

I still do edge welding manually after smoothing(subdividing) a track surface. 
...meaning I create a point along the kerb and grass vertices to match each point on the road model.
....then move all the kerb/grass points away from the road(creating a gap).  I do it in sections, a straight will all be done in one but a corner will take a few selections.
.....then point by point I snap the kerb/grass back to the road.

It's a long-winded affair that I do because if I just used the the Merge Points function in Lightwave there's no way to lock the road layer and guarantee that it was the points on the kerbs/grass that were moving.

So that's the question.  Anybody's modeler allow them to lock a layer then have the points on another layer snap to ones on the locked layer?

I've been LW for so long that it's all I know - but am happy to switch to another modeler to use a single function.

Warlock

In Maya a locked layer won't even let you select the object so not possible to merge anything...

Hawk

That is something I would like to know too, as the current process is certainly a long winded affair and can take literally hours of work to achieve.

But personally I find the best way is to extrude the track side grass areas directly from the track surface for the whole track first and then match and snap the terrain to the new grass verge area you just created. That way you guarantee no gaps between the track surface and the terrain and it's a lots simpler and easier and quicker to snap to less points in the terrain(reduced ploy's) than what can be a high detail or ploy section of track surface. Adjustments to any terrain can then be easily made, if required, knowing your not going to move the track surface poly's.

But yeah, a function like you describe would be very handy indeed. I'll let you know if I ever find a way of doing that.  ;)

Hawk.

Reactive

November 19, 2016, 01:39:41 PM #36 Last Edit: November 20, 2016, 05:24:57 PM by Reactive
As for 3dMax there are scripts AntStitcher, AntStitcherFree and miauu's Vert Stitcher from miauu's Script Pack. Not working in 2017 version, but in 2014 and lower they  might work well.
But also you can smooth selected poligons inside one model
Excuse my English, its not my native.
Ryzen7 1800x / Aorus GA-AX370 Gaming K7 / Hynix 16Gb x2 2993MHz / Samsung 960PRO 512 M.2 / nVidia GTX1060 6Gb / Windows 10 pro x64

Grooveski

November 20, 2016, 07:12:28 PM #37 Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 03:19:58 PM by Grooveski
Not only had I not thought to look for plugins, but it turned out I didn't even know how the standard tool in LW works.  ::)

Cheers again Reactive.  Those plugins looked ideal so I rummaged around and found a couple of similar ones for LW.  Smartweld and MultiMerge.

As I was installing them though I got to wondering if Merge Points had any rules that I wasn't aware of, so had a little play around and it looks like it always retains the highest of any pair of points.
...so instead of moving out points to make a gap that's workable in the plan view - I should have been moving them down.  As long as the road points are all higher than the others they are left alone.   ;D



Thanks for the glimpse of the MeshSmooth modifier - looks the part for sure.  I'll give that a try on the next job.   ;)

Grooveski

November 20, 2016, 09:40:19 PM #38 Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 03:20:56 PM by Grooveski
OK, last theory was wrong.  Was just messing with some kerbs and when I tried a merge the high points moved down.    ???

I'm onto thinking now that it's using the individual point numbers of the model.  I done a quick cut/paste of the grass model...
...so the grass would have higher point numbers than the kerb(the point numbering system looks like it's fluid so a cut/paste moves that parts point numbers up and all the rest of the models point numbers move down to fill any gaps)



Anyway, that time it worked. 
...and it'd have worked with the previous attempt where the last thing I'd cut/pasted was the kerbs.  It's retaining the position of the lower numbered of each point pair and moving the higher numbered one.
...I think.  ::)



There's a system there somewhere I reckon, I just have to find it.   :P
...and I don't really care what it is. 
This way would be better if it's right, I could do away with the moving the points step - just add all the new points, do a few cut/pastes and be confident that it'll merge with prioroty road>kerbs>grass>sand>landscape
Lol - we'll see - fingers crossed.   :D

Grooveski

December 09, 2016, 01:31:20 AM #39 Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 03:22:26 PM by Grooveski
It worked!  :)
One-click welding with control over what what points remain static - love it.     ;D



Used copy/paste to leave behind the original model(to check against).



Should have figured this out years ago.   ::)

Warlock

There is something new to learn everyday  m8 :)

Good job !

Hawk

Great!  ;D

What software are you using there Grooveski?

I've found that in the latest version of Maya, you can snap groups of verts to a surface made live; in previous versions you could do the same but all verts in the group wouldn't line up properly so you were better to do them individually.
Still got to do some more tests to see if I could select a whole group of verts around a whole track to see if I can get them to line up okay though. But even so, it does speed the process up considerably. ;)

Hawk.

Grooveski

December 09, 2016, 08:21:28 AM #42 Last Edit: August 05, 2017, 03:23:36 PM by Grooveski
Quote from: Hawk on December 09, 2016, 03:31:08 AM
What software are you using there Grooveski?

Lightwave.  ;)
.....Modeler 99% of the time then going into LW Layout at the last minute to position cameras(and marshals).


Hawk

Not sure if you know, but you should create and place the GPB replay cameras and marshals using TrackED.  Or are you talking about just placing some cameras for personal view/screenshot testing purposes in LW?  :)

Hawk.

Grooveski

Makes no difference where they're positioned.   ;)  Lightwave is much nicer to work in than TrackEd, I've been using it for years and when I first tried TrackEd the marshal positioning wasn't working properly.
...so I do it this way.   :)