My Procedural Road, *Final* pg. 8

[FrankB]

Thanks for the kind critics guys 

Just one comment, Jon, I had the road really smooth, but then I did something "wrong" and some of the underlying roughness showed through. I liked it and decided to keep it - gave the road more character, really the image became more interesting.

Re the flowers, yes they are a bit too close. It's also not difficult to make the road / ditch transition sharper, but it didn't occur to me to multiply with a voronoi mask - good idea

Cheers,
Frank

[Hetzen]

Just one comment, Jon, I had the road really smooth, but then I did something "wrong" and some of the underlying roughness showed through. I liked it and decided to keep it - gave the road more character, really the image became more interesting.

I wasn't really being serious Frank. I know how hard it is to sometimes scultpt this program, and there are many, many ways to skin a cat. Your ripples don't look too out of place.

[Zairyn Arsyn]

its too bad we dont have a Bezier curve curve tool... that could be handy.

i was showing the last render to a co-worker, then explained it was procedural (he does'nt know much about TG2 or its improvements over the years)
he said he would have used a Bezier curve, he did'nt know TG2 did'nt have bezier curves.

[FrankB]

One more "just-for-fun" render for fans of this thread. Featuring Inky's Camaro Police chase car hunting down Inky's poor Porsche. Futile, if you ask me.

[choronr]

One more "just-for-fun" render for fans of this thread. Featuring Inky's Camaro Police chase car hunting down Inky's poor Porsche. Futile, if you ask me.

I like this scene and road combination. The terrain with the vegetation you've added reminds me of highway 87 (Phoenix to Payson, Arizona). During the springtime here, one must take this ride ...very beautiful. I would sure like to see a lot more road pictures. You've done a great job on this one Frank.

[Dune]

Nice chasing scene, Frank. I like the roof lighting on the police car (among other things). Nice touch! In this render you see the problem I'm often having as well with shadows. The back wheels seem to float, no matter how close you get them onto the road surface. It would need some extra (soft) shadows (and/or higher GI?).

[bobbystahr]

And for those of us who are math impaired I found an app that will carve your roads into a .bmp...all you need is an app that will convert the bmp into a .ter....terragen classic should work. In my example I used the created alpha map to displace the road in TG2 and the texture came out of roadmaker. I used terraformer to convert my .bmp btw..
on the link below download roadmaker obviously but all the appls are useful IMO.. ...
http://www.shapemagic.com

[Matt]

all you need is an app that will convert the bmp into a .ter....terragen classic should work.

Terragen 2's heightfield loader also loads BMPs and many other image types. You can then use a Heightfield Resize operator if it's not the right scale.

[bobbystahr]

all you need is an app that will convert the bmp into a .ter....terragen classic should work.

Terragen 2's heightfield loader also loads BMPs and many other image types. You can then use a Heightfield Resize operator if it's not the right scale.

D'oh...forgot bout that and I think I even discovered that by accident one day

[FrankB]

Thanks to Bob, reminding me of my procedural road recently, I went back to working on it.
I'm happy to say I had a truly senior moment  resulting in a major break-through.
I finally figured out how I can "procedurally" (!) make the road follow the terrain in a natural looking way. Previously it really only worked on flat areas of a terrain, but now the road and the terrain blend together nicely....
The attached image is just a quick doodle to demonstrate this. I might post a few more images to show this.
I think I might eventually able to release this road on NWDA as a product - albeit due to its complexity, it's not going to be easy to understand for beginners.

Anyway, is there still demand for something like that?

Cheers,
Frank

[Henry Blewer]

YES! I can think of many things which can be done using your approach. Rivers, streams, roads, fences, power lines, ski runs, paths, and building placement. This is definitely something needed. It would be cool if Matt could use this as a shader in a future release of Terragen 2.

[Dune]

Well well, procedural sounds really good, Frank. But I would love to see a render where the terrain is more rugged, and the road is hugging a steep area.... is that possible with your method?

[FrankB]

...and the road is hugging a steep area....

I don't understand

[Dune]

Sorry, I meant if a road goes uphill but not really perpendicular to that hill, it tends to tilt sideways. If you have resolved that issue it would be astonishing!

[FrankB]

Ah I see now. I'm using a different approach. So in my setup, the road is the central element (it's always level and on the same altitude, and the terrain is generated (or transformed) so that it gradually "grows" with a configurable distance from the road. THe road and the terrain they both merge to create something new, but in an ideal way.

I recognize the issue you are refering to, though. It's something I haven't solved yet, but it's also something that doesn't happen in my setup.

Cheers,
Frank