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View Full Version : Rally stages creation method(s)? pseudo-tutorial

IvanThaDriver
11-03-2006, 06:30 PM
Hello everyone!

I am making my very basic steps in 3d modelling and track creation aswell. Usual way of creating rally stages which I encountered bases on generating loft around road spline, then extruding edges to create roadside and a wall with forest texture for example (visual effect stays ok until you don't find your car above trees) - like here

http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/7320/tunnelstage1te7.th.jpg (http://img70.imageshack.us/img70/7320/tunnelstage1te7.jpg) http://img273.imageshack.us/img273/2609/tunnelstage2tl8.th.jpg (http://img273.imageshack.us/img273/2609/tunnelstage2tl8.jpg)


Or create mountains by collapsing "wall" vertices and chamfering etc (or anything like that - typically quite a lot of manual work) - here is an example of my first track experiment done this way

http://img290.imageshack.us/img290/6322/itdfantasyhillclimbcitykc7.th.jpg (http://img290.imageshack.us/img290/6322/itdfantasyhillclimbcitykc7.jpg)

This concerns "tunnel like stages" from point A to B.


Instead, I was interested how to create big open areas (compare freedom of movement to a big city a'la GTA) without "holes" anywhere so there wouldn't be physics artifacts happening like cars falling below the ground rotating to hell etc. Also I wanted a way which would allow natural, intuitive and spontaneous surface modelling (including the road) without being "sentenced" to certain road spline (soft selection or displacement maps etc). This is what I found on my own so far (I quote small "pseudotutorial" I made some time ago - I need to split it into 3 posts because of image number per post limitation) :
IvanThaDriver
11-03-2006, 06:31 PM
- generate "plane" object (poly number of your choice) - this will be the terrain (apply texture, mapping etc)


- generate road loft from simple rectangle spline with "apply mapping" on (flat one - no elevation changes) in a way that it's "vertical wall" crosses with the plane, apply texture, uvw xform etc, convert to "editable poly"


- Use boolean between them so "a road shaped hole" gets created in the plane.


- Delete "vertical walls and underside" from road object so only the top remains, move plane to z=0 (manual entry), move road to z=0 aswell


- merge 'road' with 'surface' and vertex weld them so no holes will appear later during surface modulation. Road and surface are separate elements inside the object so one can easily change materials, use different mapping methods for roadside or do anything else with them (select edge loops etc)



Now you have an object which is made of road and terrain, both neatly welded to each other so you won't spot weird actions in physics.

Now the pleasant part. Use "soft selection" or "displacement" modifier in vertex mode and adjust your terrain to your taste, yes, there will be odd camber here and there but it's possible to fix that manually. This way one can create literally thousands of fantasy tracks in one day, easily and with no frustration :-)

Pics (don't mind small walls of the road, very old pictures before this method was refined)

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1329/1plane27n27loftbooleanvideogameracetrackgenerationzn8.th.jpg (http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1329/1plane27n27loftbooleanvideogameracetrackgenerationzn8.jpg) http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2526/2plane27n27loftbooleanvsi8.th.jpg (http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2526/2plane27n27loftbooleanvsi8.jpg) http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4742/3plane27n27loftbooleanvaq8.th.jpg (http://img159.imageshack.us/img159/4742/3plane27n27loftbooleanvaq8.jpg) http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/964/4plane27n27loftbooleanvideogameracetrackgenerationiq4.th.jpg (http://img294.imageshack.us/img294/964/4plane27n27loftbooleanvideogameracetrackgenerationiq4.jpg)
IvanThaDriver
11-03-2006, 06:31 PM
... some quick touch of scatter plugin, ripple modifier on terrain and I generated these in 5 minutes (road object in the picture with bus is too low poly (very small ram here) so road vertices stick out oddly sometimes - I'm gonna fix that manually but generally it's advised to use high polycount for the road because of nature of soft selection, corners "roundness" and physics/driving experience aswell (subtle bumps etc)).

http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6048/itdrallyfluentstagehillie0.th.jpg (http://img517.imageshack.us/img517/6048/itdrallyfluentstagehillie0.jpg) http://img270.imageshack.us/img270/4286/itdrallyfluentstagehillqb2.th.jpg (http://img270.imageshack.us/img270/4286/itdrallyfluentstagehillqb2.jpg) http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/2301/itdrallyfluentstagehills15oy8.th.jpg (http://img292.imageshack.us/img292/2301/itdrallyfluentstagehills15oy8.jpg)



My question to you is - what ways do you see to improve this method, generate fantasy/non-fantasy cities/open maps fast, what ways do you know to generate levels fast, what can be done and can't be done with usual "forest tunnel" method etc etc etc. I would just want to put this together. Thanks for any help and discussion :buttrock:
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