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better road creator.

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better road creator.

Postby Spookygnu » Fri Apr 22, 2016 9:54 pm

Is there a possibility on a road creator that could be alot more fluid than using the bulldozer tool or the leveller. I am thinking of a single brush that can flatten anywhere you click on the map.

My vision on this is.....

"I create my map and import a satellite map from google earth or TerraIncognita etc, overlay that on my height map so i can distinctly see where the roads are. I then click on the tools and there is a flatten brush. I then put that brush at one end of the road and without having to release the mouse button I can continuously brush in a road on the height map following the sat image."

This would have the properties of various offsets etc such as width and fall off etc, but ultimately it would be able to flatten and flow with the terrain. I find the bulldozer tool a bit slow with efficiency on creating the roads and you cannot quite get a smooth bend in a road for example a winding road on a mountainside. It seems a little chunky in trying to produce an effective road network. Having the two brushes is ok if you want to make a runway on an airport for example because that has a straight beginning and end, but, a road network always has a beginning and an end with numerous bends and curves to it. Having a single brush to make a fluent road network I think would be so much more productive to someones work flow. Plus less time consuming compared to leveller and Bulldozer.

Could a flatten tool improve on the buldozer tool?? or could a mix of leveller and bulldozer be combined to create a flatten tool?
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Re: better road creator.

Postby Aaron » Fri Apr 29, 2016 9:43 am

Hi Spookygnu,

Thanks for the suggestion. Coincidentally I'm doing a bit of work on roads at the moment, but I'm focussing on automatic road generation, not manual tools. I have some test code that can perform automatic pathfinding from user-defined start/end points, apply smoothing, minimising curvature, etc, but it's presently too slow, and needs a better user interface. Once this work is complete, I'll have a look at further improving the manual tools.

Best regards,
Aaron.
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Re: better road creator.

Postby ShadowIce » Fri Apr 29, 2016 5:29 pm

Aaron, I'm gonna have to agree with the automatic roads thing as well as the manual roads things. Automatic is DEFINITELY a needed feature, more so than manual, but manual would be nice! =) It would be damn GREAT to turn it in to a plugin! =)

~ShadowIce
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Re: better road creator.

Postby Spookygnu » Sun May 08, 2016 11:50 pm

thanks for the reply and info update on your work Arron. Can I also suggest if you are applying a user defined start and end point, giving us the ability to use shapefiles? This could then be overlaid onto the map as a road network and then converted onto the surface as defined road areas.
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Re: better road creator.

Postby Aaron » Fri May 13, 2016 1:11 pm

Hi Spookygnu,

Sorry for the delay. Yes, I've had that implemented for years, but not in a public build because I never quite had the time to polish it enough for general use. As it stands, I have the pathfinder plugin automatically generating optimised road vector paths* from given start and stop points, and I have the roads plugin bulldozing roads based on networks of these vector paths (not shapefiles as such, but easily converted to/from.) Now I just have to make it faster, give it a user interface (e.g. define road start and stop by mouse click), and add some file I/O for the vector paths (shapefiles, csv, etc.)...

Cheers,
Aaron.

* I'm not perfectly pleased with the optimised paths generated currently. This is something I'm working on also.
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Re: better road creator.

Postby Spookygnu » Sat May 14, 2016 12:24 pm

Thanks arron that is great news to hear. For everyone that uses your softare for map making in Arma 3 this would be a godsend. Currently Bohemia Interactive have something but it doesn't work as well as it should. So subsequently many of the map makers don't use the given tool to do such a thing. If you work this out and have something solid this would help in road creating immensely.

Look forward to seeing the end result.

Cheers

Spook.
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Re: better road creator.

Postby ShadowIce » Mon May 16, 2016 10:24 pm

Me too, spooky. Me too! =)

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Re: better road creator.

Postby LauraEss1957 » Thu May 19, 2016 6:17 am

This would also be great for creating embankments for railways.
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Re: better road creator.

Postby ShadowIce » Thu May 19, 2016 3:35 pm

I definitely agree. We need a better road system, Aaron. It would be lovely if it could be released in a patch! =)

Thanks again!

Regards,

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Re: better road creator.

Postby Spookygnu » Tue Oct 04, 2016 9:58 pm

Hi Arron,

Just curious on how this idea is going in your to do list?
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