Creating a "perfect" road within blender

xray · Post by **xray** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:11 pm

I came along this when it comes to creating a level for a racing game. First I tried to create the road by manipulating a plane object and extruding every plane segment. But this seems to be really really time consuming, the other problem is getting the tiled aslphalt texture also exactly to every plane segment. Puh this is a hard work, and I thought there must be another easier way to create it with perfect look and perfect tiled texture on it. So I tried it in blender and found such a simple way so you are possible to create any complex street in about 5 minutes or less! So here are some shots of a test and if someone is interested I will create a little tutorial... just tell me if you need it too.

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:27 pm

That tutorial would really be helpful. Just post it here if you are finished, and I will use it for something ... I hope

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 2:52 pm

Sure, I'd be interested :-)

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 3:35 pm

I'm definitely interested. In fact, I had tried searching for a tutorial like that on the internet to no avail.

Mel · Post by **Mel** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 5:02 pm

Then you might want to search for "extrude along path" in google

Although, yes, it would be definately a nice addition!

xray · Post by **xray** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 6:28 pm

Then you might want to search for "extrude along path" in google

Sorry but thats wrong. You only are able to extrude bezier curves or nurbs curves/surfaces along a path. but these bezier curves and nurbs curves/surfaces dont have any vertices or polygons they are a mathematical way to fill for example splines with surfaces. So you get the problem when you want to export your road maybe into X,b3d,3ds or something else which irrlicht is able to load. That means you cant export any extruded surface along a path out of blender! Another problem is that you cant texture this surfaces only over blenders material system which is also not working for exporting into X,b3d,3ds...

But you pointed in the right direction, the solution goes over curves but not over "extruding along a path"

Still writing the tut, will get it maybe today.

hybrid · Post by **hybrid** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 8:44 pm

Can't blender triangulate a curve?

xray · Post by **xray** » Thu Nov 27, 2008 9:05 pm

Yes blender is able to create a polygon out of a nurbs/bezier curve or surface. But if you do so your triangulated object has so many polygons that it does not suit for realtime renders. But if you even get this working you get a new problem by texturing the extruded and triangulated curve/surface because I didnt found a good uv calculation script to unwrap all polygons this way that you get a perfect textured street. I also thought to create a python script which would unwrap all polygons the right way to get the perfect textured road, but it seems to be much easier. So here is the tutorial, and tell me if you found a mistake or if you dont understand something:

http://home.mnet-online.de/sk9/tutorial ... lender.pdf

cheers

pc0de · Post by **pc0de** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 3:09 am

Great tutorial xray! Thanks for taking the time to write it up.

Brainsaw · Post by **Brainsaw** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 6:36 am

That tutorial is really nice ... I never found the motiviation to really learn blender, but with this tutorial I guess I will have to download it

oldskoolPunk · Post by **oldskoolPunk** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 6:53 am

xray wrote:
Then you might want to search for "extrude along path" in google
Sorry but thats wrong. You only are able to extrude bezier curves or nurbs curves/surfaces along a path. but these bezier curves and nurbs curves/surfaces dont have any vertices or polygons they are a mathematical way to fill for example splines with surfaces. So you get the problem when you want to export your road maybe into X,b3d,3ds or something else which irrlicht is able to load. That means you cant export any extruded surface along a path out of blender!

Alt-C

You can easily control the resolution with the "resolution" value, lol

Your way is good too, though! Just alot of steps ...

xray · Post by **xray** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 11:46 am

Thanks, that you liked it!!

@oldskoolPunk: Yes you are right, but can you also texture this generated road perfectly? It would be interesting to know if theres a way...

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 4:14 pm

Thanks, a great tutorial! I just learned basic modeling with Blender in the last weeks and didn't know about curve modifiers yet :-)

xray · Post by **xray** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 5:40 pm

Thanks, Im also happy to be able to give something back to the community!

Yeah, Im using blender now for some time but it amazes me still quite often. Its really a great software, everyone should try it out, even some people say that the user interface could be confusing... Which app did you used for your hover craft game, cutealien??

CuteAlien · Post by **CuteAlien** » Fri Nov 28, 2008 7:07 pm

xray wrote:Its really a great software, everyone should try it out, even some people say that the user interface could be confusing...

Yes, it's really great - I wish I had more time for modeling :-) And yeah - there are some things in the interface which really could be improved. For example that you have to remember which color means pressed for buttons, as pressed and not pressed looks otherwise the same. I get confused by that all the time. Also moving around the scene is despite all the flexibility you have in the camera still rather painful. But I heard they work on improving the gui for Blender 1.50. And the GUI also has it's strong points. After a few days I got already rather well around in Blender. I just hope I don't forget all the shortcut's again until I find again some time for modeling ;-)

xray wrote: Which app did you used for your hover craft game, cutealien??

Well, I didn't do the modeling there. The artist used Maya. But maybe I can now create some more levels myself :-) I still hope (though a little doubtful) that I find some time next year to write a few improvements for H-Craft.