Vue Street

[Solomon]

yes, its possible :)

[Solomon]

check out this thread for gist of what you maybe asking - there is more than one way to achieve those roads

http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/showthread.php?t=40777&highlight=solomon


http://www.zbrushcentral.com/zbc/attachment.php?attachmentid=47192

[andalusite]

I think there are several ways to do this in Vue:

1.
Paint in the terrain editor with the 'altitude' setting. This will give you a horizontal road.

2.
Paint in the terrain editor with the 'dig' setting, which gives a road which follows the terrain a bit more closely.

3.
Use a greyscale map in the Picture option.

I remembered seeing a tutorial for roads in Bryce at Calyxa's pages (http://calyxa.best.vwh.net/pearl/roadtut/index2.html) which manipulated a greyscale map in Photoshop. The result is a road which follows the terrain. But I thought there must a simpler way using the blending tools in Photoshop.

I did a quick and dirty:
1. Make a terrain in Vue
2. Export as a picture file (the resolution of the terrain sets the image size: 512, 1024 etc)
3. In PS open the terrain picture. (You will have to convert it from Index to Greyscale)
4. Make a new layer and paint a road. I used a hard round brush with 50% grey.

5. The next step was trial and error. We need to have the grey values of the road to be slightly darker than the underlying terrain to ensure the road cuts into the terrain. I tried a few blending modes for the road layer and found 'soft light' looked OK. I had to reduce the opacity to about 25% too.

6. Export the image of road + terrain greyscale.
7. Open the image in Vue in the terrain editor. And set Blend to 100%.

To assign a material I used a mixed material, with a map to control the distribution of the two materials. We already have a greyscale map of the road.

8. So back in PS change the colours to show a white road on a black background and export as a picture.

9. In Vue, in the material editor, make a mixed material.
10. Under 'Distribution of materials 1 and 2', do right mouse button and got to Edit Function.
11. Add a Texture Map Node
12. In the Node load in the black and white map of the road.

Click OK all the way out of the material editor.

Now what I found was that the distribution of the materials did not line up properly with the road in the terrain!
So back in the material editor > Edit function I had to use the Image Offset in the Texture Node with a value of +30 in X.

I have no idea why the images did not line up.

Improvements should be possible with more time and better resolution of the terrain and greyscale maps.

I do not know how you would use a bitmap for the image of the road in the material editor.

http://www.kyanite.co.uk/images/Terrain3.png
Combined map for terrain and painted road, made in PS

http://www.kyanite.co.uk/images/roadway_top.jpg
Top down view of road in the terrain with materials in Vue

http://www.kyanite.co.uk/images/roadway.jpg


Perspective view of road aas it cuts into and follows the terrain in Vue

Im sure I have seen quite recently an item on sale in Cornucopia for roads in terrains.

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