Torque 3D Development - River & Road Editors

#81 @Tim -



This is from an early version of Torque 3D, but i think it shows what you want.

#82 Ooh! Nice! Any word on the "mesh road tool"?

#83

Quote:2) The video makes it look like the road is blended with the terrain, I wanted to know if the 'road' system, can actually make something like common asphalt roads, or if it's only capable of dirt paths. I'd love to take a look at a close up screen shot of the transition from terrain to road, when the road contrasted more sharply than the above video shows.

As Tom shows, the road material is just like any other material in Torque... so you use alpha transparency to control the fade (or not fade) from road to terrain texture. It just so happens that the sandy road in the South Pacific demo fades slowly into the terrain around it, since it was intended to be put down on a sandy texture.

#84 @Tim

Quote:1) Kinda hard to fake the transition from a river to a lake with geometry, unless you're going for a damned up river, or waterfall.

Agreed, some types of transitions could be very difficult, it does have limitations.

Quote:
3) Yeah, I had a feeling that might be the case.

4) What I was interested in would not be multiple textures on the same road, but actually two separate roads layered on top of each other where one road would use a material had a texture like tire tracks, which could be laid over top of a dirt road, asphalt road, ect.

Assuming we get per-road RenderPriorities working that should be possible. I guess you are thinking that the tire tracks could be put along the road wherever you like and using the road as a sortof strip-shaped-decal?

The disadvantage to doing that instead of putting them together in the material of a single road is it could make it more trouble adjusting your road's position since they will not automatically mirror each other. Also currently it would be very hard to select one road or the other because the editor is not really setup to deal with overlapping roads, but this could be fixed.

#85 So how many Sickhead Games employees does it take to explain the edges of the road in Torque 3D? Nyuck nyuck.

#86 @Russell - <rimshot> hahahah =)

#87 It's a thing of beauty. I can't wait to buy this.

#88 Very impressive, I wish iTGB was this smooth.

#89 Wait wait WHAT?!??!

"The next time I blog, I will be pointing all of you Torque 3D owners to a BETA DOWNLOAD!"

That was a ninja edit becuase that was not there when i read this artical the first time. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOT (Brain explodes) .... Must find brain glue before beta!

#90 @Kevin: that was there when I first read it, and I was the first person to comment this blog.

#91 @Tom, Russell & James

Thanks for the replies, and especially for the screen shot. Yes, I was thinking that I'd like to be able to layer roads on top of each other for decal information. Such as a dirt road, and in one section of it, I've got a puddle / tire tracks for detail. I take it by the way you're talking by this priority system, it's not in place, which means it also most likely won't be there for the beta release. Is this a planned feature for the full release?

And last question on the roads system, what plans, if any, do you guys have for supporting intersections? I understand at that the roads currently only go directly onto the terrain, so I'm gonna have to work on getting it to mesh up with my own overpasses, but I'd love to see at least intersection support so I could do this stuff without lots of geometry all over the place.

#92 I'm guessing like tom did for the 2 lane street, which can become a Y branch easily you can do the same for a intersection. Just make a new road for the center intersection with a different texture. Plus I don't think it'd been too much geometry if you're using the decal road and not the mesh road.

#93 Not necessarily Kevin. From the videos, it looks like you've only got controls of the middle points, this might make it difficult to get different road segments to mesh up nice, especially if they're fighting for the Z buffer.

.
   //
==  ==
 //

Something like this, would be very difficult, since because the corners cannot be controlled, you cannot get them to match up nicely. The only way I can think of doing it like this now... would be to use the road system only for stretches of road, then place custom geometry for all intersections. This, although not ideal, is of course definitely a possible workaround.

#94 Just thought I'd mention that for a normal simple city with blocks, you might want streets in a simple grid like this:

|-----|-----|
|     |     |
|-----|-----|
|     |     |
|-----|-----|

Sounds like for the existing road system, you'd have to do some extra work for each street intersection. Though not sure how reasonable that is to automate in a generic manner anyway...

And rather than 3 horizontal and 3 vertical roads, you might need 6 horizontal and 6 vertical (with corner intersection pieces) (with 3 left intersection pieces, 3 middle intersection pieces, 3 right intersection pieces).

Also keep in mind my example is simplified.

#95 Ok, seeing the river/road tool, and the ease with which it can make a big visual impact on an already great scene has pushed me over the edge... I finally pre-ordered T3D... :)

And I am definitely looking forward to more of Lara's tutorials. The ones a few months back were extremely well done and very useful. The ones for Torque3D look to be just as good if not better :)

Oh, and I just looked at Lara's pic above... it's even more amazing that she does these tutorials with no hands :p

#96 Wow I love Lauras Voice its so easy to listen to! Good work!!

#97
Paths, Roads, Rivers WILL NOT support intersections AT ALL.

I'm not trying to be mean here, but this is the way it is...

If you need roads for an entire city, or complex intersections, or on-ramps and raised-highways, these tools were not designed for that purpose and will most likely not help you.

Anything more complex than a single stretch of road/river is going to require custom built geometry.

#98 @James - I figured as much for all the raised geometry, but was curious as to if intersections would be supported, at least we know. Maybe the racing kit will offer some additional functionality here.

#99 From what i gathered from the blogs (anyone involved in the development correct me if i am wrong) the road editor is just a tool for placing decals while the river editor is a tool for placing a waterblock.

The tool allows placement along a line through the world your building and lets you have nodes along that line (lets call it path) so you can have curbs and also places where the decal/waterblock has different width, etc (as shown in videos).

That said, it seems obvious to me that in this case intersections would never show up automatically - but you can easylly do them.

Example 1: Place the road decals in your world - then manually place a special decal on the intersections.

Example 2: place the river waterblocks in your world and where two waterblocks meet place something like a water splash effect by gowing against rocks or small waterfall - use some water special effects here to cover up (splashes and stuff)

Game Designing is also finding workarounds

#100 Well, from what I've seen so far here on these blogs and at GDC etc. Torque3D is looking like the perfect engine for our next project.

Go GGs !! We're loving the work you're putting into the engine, it looks stunning !! And these new tools look great too..Just what we're going to need 8)

Harv