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New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

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New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby markofjohnson » Wed Oct 26, 2011 6:12 pm

Would it be possible to add a variation of the smooth tool?

I'm using the bulldozer tool to make road segments cut into a mountain side, the roads are right next to cliffs above and below. Where the road segments join (for turns - I'm making lots of switchbacks) its hard to get a smooth road. I'd like a smooth tool that will only smooth terrain that is already 45 degrees steep or less. This is to smooth bumps in the road. I need to smooth bumps (so our car can drive fast) on mountain roads that are cut into the mountainside or atop a cliff. The current smooth tool smooths out the cliff and destroys the road. I want it to leave steep surfaces alone and just smooth out the bumps where I'm blending different road segments made with the bulldozer tool.

Perhaps instead, or in addition, I'd like a 'sharp' smooth tool that accurately respects the visual radius shown in the editor. The current smooth tool has some kind of fade in its effect, kinda like a photoshop selection with a feather, so it smooth outside the radius too. When I use it for road smoothing I find that either the radius is too small to smooth the bumps at all, or too big so it smooths out the nearby cliff and destroys the road. If it would smooth exactly inside the radius, even if that created new bumps / cliffs / cuttings just outside the radius, that too would smooth the road bumps. This second proposal would probably work even better than a 'only less than 45 degree smoother' because when turning a 90 degree road bend going up a mountain, the second road segment tends to create a 90 degree bump where it intersects the previous segment.

Many thanks for considering my requests, and thanks for your great work on L3DT, which I'm using for an upcoming iPhone game in Unity3D.
Cheers,
Mark.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Aaron » Thu Oct 27, 2011 8:40 pm

Hi Mark,

I'll have to think a bit more about smoothing with the bulldozer tool; it's not an easy fit. However, I will have a look at adding a curved bulldozer brush so that you can do nice smooth corners.

I'm also building a tool to automatically generate realistic road paths given two end points. An example screenshot is given below, where one of the end-points is off screen to the lower right, and the other is a long way over the other side of the mountain.

[click to enlarge]
MountainPath.png
MountainPath.png (345.2 KiB) Viewed 36622 times


This tool needs a bit more refinement, and so probably won't be ready for the new release in November, but it will be included in a developmental build shortly therafter.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby muddpuddle » Fri Oct 28, 2011 3:49 am

That is looking pretty cool. Nice path up the mountain.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby David Walters » Tue Nov 01, 2011 11:24 am

Aaron, I've just noticed this image you've posted and wanted to post to say how awesome a feature this will be and that I'm super excited to try it!

I have one question ( / request :-) ) - Will it be possible for it to automatically assign a different attribute for these path surfaces? Don't get me wrong as I don't want to seem ungrateful - the mesh generation will be a massive help! - but having it so you can get a worn dirt track (for the purpose I have in mind) or road surface in the right places will make this perfect. Otherwise you'd have to paint over all the paths by hand?

This feature will really help give my big, pretty - but barren - landscapes some direction!
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby markofjohnson » Thu Nov 03, 2011 9:23 pm

The auto road tool would be amazing. But still, an alternative smoothing tool would be (not a smoothing bulldozer, just a different smooth tool) would be helpful too. Here's my road:

Image
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Aaron » Mon Nov 07, 2011 1:09 pm

Hi Mark,

I'm sorry, I didn't read your original post carefully enough. A smooth tool with a gradient threshold is certainly doable. I'll put it on the dev plan.

Your road looks fantastic. It's probably a much more scenic path than my automatic road algorithm would have made; the current calculation won't do the nice deep cuttings you've got there. Bravo.

David Walters wrote:I have one question ( / request :-) ) - Will it be possible for it to automatically assign a different attribute for these path surfaces?


Indeed, laying down a 'road' land type in the attributes map is definitely a requirement of the automatic road generator. Manually applying the road type is no fun at all.

Cheers,
Aaron.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Prime_8 » Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:10 pm

very cool road.

I too would like a featherable smoothing brush ..

i don;t need road as yet ..

I'm pondering tunnels .. LOL i know L3DT is now voxel .. LOL

~ i figure marking entrance and exit faces some how .. export to Max , make teh tunnel on just those 2 areas and a mesh ..
and put back in ..LOL ?

well i'm not needing that tillspring ... LOL
~ i'm still coding my mesh rigging tool .. LOL
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby markofjohnson » Sat Nov 12, 2011 5:56 pm

Thanks Aaron. Hi Prime8.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Prime_8 » Fri Nov 18, 2011 1:05 am

ha i just tried to mak a rod again , no where near as good as yours .

lol
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Telarus » Thu Dec 01, 2011 10:03 am

Wow, this thread has some good momentum. Looking forward to the road tool (I'll be hitting you up for a new license soon Aaron).

Nice to be back on the forum. The UDK has recently released some KILLER landscape tools. Can't wait to play with the faster L3DT builds.
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Re: New smooth tool to help make mountain roads.

Postby Spookygnu » Fri Apr 22, 2016 10:06 pm

Wow never noticed this thread I posted a similar idea to marks smoothing suggestion. I hope something can be worked out because currently the road smoothing is a bit hard hard going and time consuming on workflow.
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