Hi guys,
haven't had a lot of time lately, but last night I finished a next iteration of my procedural road.
Volker helped me to get me on track with cutting and elevating a road bed based on the terrain. Also the rock and grass textures are his.
Besides that, my road is now following a curved path, builds "bridges" over depressions and cuts nicely into hills.
Because this road isn't based on a simple shape shader or anything like that, the road is infinite around the planet, so no matter at what elevation you have the camera, the road won't suddenly end.
I still have to do some cracks and patches on the road procedurally, and make it rotateable. I guess the latter will require a lot of re-wiring the network.
So summarizing what's procedural in this scene:
1 - the terrain
2 - the road and road paint masks
3 - the rock and grass texures
4 - the tarmac and the paint
5 - the curving of the road
... in other words, absolutely everyhing except the vegetation :D
I love procedural.
Cheers,
Frank
It was just a simple function, and you made it look very cool :)
As soon as I have some spare time, I'll do some finetuning ... maybe you are faster than me, though ;D
very nice! I think now there are mainly two problems:
-road surface is to rough
-a road usually wouldn´t go uphill like that, so either you need a procedural tunnel, or the road would have to wind up the hill
Quote from: Walli on March 08, 2011, 07:37:09 AM
very nice! I think now there are mainly two problems:
-road surface is to rough
-a road usually wouldn´t go uphill like that, so either you need a procedural tunnel, or the road would have to wind up the hill
What... ? This is Monster Truck Land, haven't you realized? They don't care about "details" such as winding uphill roads and tunnels ;)
Of course you're right. I don't think I can make a procedural tunnel, and I am also not sure whether I can procedurally detect a slope and make the road wind up correctly. But it's not too hard to reseed a couple of times to avoid extremes.
As for the road surface: I have done some image research on tarmac. There are so many different tarmacs it's unbelievable. This rough dark one was one of those and I have tried to mimick that. However, I can change the texture for the next render to look like a different type of tarmac.
Cheers,
Frank
I think the road itself needs a bit more shoulder along the edges. Other than that, this is very cool. This would make a very nice addition to the NWDA selection.
the possibilities, like this road, are endless!
great work Frank!
:)
thanks all. I'll have a new one coming shortly.
Great work!
Very nice paving work.
A couple of minor thoughts.
Can't tell if the road has some typical doming or crown elevation built into its center for run off ?
The most common marking on the open road here in Michigan is a single center line of White dashes .
Here, the solid double yellow center would mean there is some reason, (usually very tight curves) neither lane can pass or cross over the center.
The double yellow would seldom be seen in straight stretches unless an upcoming hill reduces the sight of oncoming traffic.
We sometimes see a solid yellow line on one side and dashes on the other where only
the solid line lane is not permitted to cross the line or pass.
I think that's pretty international. It was just the easiest way to mark the road and track boundaries. It shouldn't be too complicated to exchange the 2 center lines with a single white dashed line. Most markings where I live are white, too.
For artisitc reasons I just prefered the yellow ones.
The road should have a slight doming from the center. Not sure it's really visible here.
Cheers,
Frank
a few more views:
and one more
did you reduce the roughness of the road?
Or is it more a matter of render quality?
Because the render from distant shows a very rough road surface - the two close up renderings though look pretty much perfect. Very nice work!
thanks! Indeed the roughness is reduced. Previously, the underlying rock layer produced extra roughness, because I forgot to blend it away where the tarmac should be. Glad you like the last two.
Cheers,
Frank
Wish the council were so gracious about road surfacing here! We get an uneven bloody spewing from the tarmac machine, at best! Procedural potholes, anyone? ;)
Great progress, Frank. You're doing wonderful things as usual. :)
Looking very good Frank. As for the first scene you made, maybe a 'switchback' (series of 180 degrees turns) up the mountain would be more convincing - but, probably be a bear of a task. The other iteration are also very good. As soon as my render is complete, I'm going to try this road project.
Quote from: dandelO on March 08, 2011, 05:51:45 PM
Wish the council were so gracious about road surfacing here! We get an uneven bloody spewing from the tarmac machine, at best! Procedural potholes, anyone? ;)
Great progress, Frank. You're doing wonderful things as usual. :)
Thanks Martin, much appreciated!
Your comment got me thinking that I might create another variant that produces a much more "worn" - read: broken - look of the tarmac. With holes and cracks, quick-fixed spots and the like. You know, the kind of road that you and I have in our neighborhoods ;)
Quote from: choronr on March 08, 2011, 05:53:02 PM
Looking very good Frank. As for the first scene you made, maybe a 'switchback' (series of 180 degrees turns) up the mountain would be more convincing - but, probably be a bear of a task. The other iteration are also very good. As soon as my render is complete, I'm going to try this road project.
Hi Bob, unfortunately that's beyond my capabilities it seems, at least when done procedurally and with functions. I could paint that switchback path, though, and I might at one point.
Regards,
Frank
This is really cool work and looking very good, especially the close-ups. The yellow looks a bit pale to me, but otherwise spot-on.
- Oshyan
I am in love with the yellow lines :D
Congrats Frank, this really looks good. I think I've got an idea about how you did this with the x to scalar etc, blue node setup, and just yesterday I vaguely got some other ideas about the problem of roads having the same angle as the hill. I don't know if you managed to solve that one ( I think I see a bit of angling road on top of the hill on your last render?).
I think the asphalt should be a little more gray. I have attached a reflective shader to mine, or you could color it with a distance shader. There will also be the problem (= challenge) of dashed lines, but that may well be done procedurally as well with a sinus function (like my sleepers).
Looking forward to your progress.
Thanks all!
@Ulco: I have a method to even out the road angle against the hill angle somewhat (but not completely). To be clear I'm talking about the effect that the road would tilt in one direction if it runs alongside a hill. But this method is pretty destructive if the angle gets too high, and it has other unwanted side effects. So all in all, no, I don't have a really good solution yet.
And indeed, the dashed line would have to be created using a trigenometric function. Something based on e^sin(x) s going to be best I reckon, rounded up with a hard step or so.
Regards,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on March 09, 2011, 03:02:15 AM
And indeed, the dashed line would have to be created using a trigenometric function. Something based on e^sin(x) s going to be best I reckon, rounded up with a hard step or so.
If you want the lines to be 10m long, then divide it by 5, make a modulo(2) and put a Nearest integer node after it.
There you go, ask the function wizard Volker! :)
I know what you mean, I've got a method as well, but fairly hard to get right. This (another) method here evens out quite good, but has a lethal effect on roadsides >:(
There should be a way to take only the central Y-values of the road as a basis for displacement in the terrain.... but I'm getting a bit tired of functions now.
The problem I also encounter is that I cannot bend the road anymore. I had it working previously, but lost it when going for simple shapes (where it works fine). Anyway, I'll abandon this and get on with my railstuff.
two more, now grey tarmac and white lines, dashed middle.
Second one sunset mood.
... for a change :)
Cheers,
Frank
:o
looking really good Frank....I like this a lot!
thanks! The road is still quite edgy along the way. I'll have to fix that... doesn't seem so easy to find the right lever.
Je voudrais bien faire pareil. :-\
Quote from: bla bla 2 on March 09, 2011, 11:13:38 AM
Je voudrais bien faire pareil. :-\
vous et moi, tous les deux!
:)
Look at this... how is this possible? I'm just warping into one direction soooo... no clue where this circle is coming from. Crazy stuff...
These are looking very convincing Frank. There's a lot of power in them blues. I'm glad you're getting your feet wet. 8)
Those circles I'd imagine are coming from your warp PF. If you push it too far within a set scale, you get those sorts of artifacts. The answer would be to use 2 scales of PF each with a set max displacement. ie One large scale for large displacements, one for minor variation.
I wonder if we could push the guys to give us a way of blurring/smoothing displacements/colours with nodes outside of heightfields? ;) So that you could level off your road a bit more.
Jon
Quote from: Hetzen on March 09, 2011, 11:40:32 AM
These are looking very convincing Frank. There's a lot of power in them blues. I'm glad you're getting your feet wet. 8)
Those circles I'd imagine are coming from your warp PF. If you push it too far within a set scale, you get those sorts of artifacts. The answer would be to use 2 scales of PF each with a set max displacement. ie One large scale for large displacements, one for minor variation.
I wonder if we could push the guys to give us a way of blurring/smoothing displacements/colours with nodes outside of heightfields? ;) So that you could level off your road a bit more.
Jon
Hey Jon,
I'm using the blue nodes since years, I agree they can be very powerful additions to the normal shaders. I wish I could define a user interface for a network of blue nodes, so that I could effectively write new shaders.
I'm actually not using a PF for warping in the last render, but a blue perlin function fed into a displacement shader. I didn't have these artifacts with the previously used PFs... Anyway, I believe your explanation must be right.
Lastly, what do you mean by smoothing displacement ouside of a heightfield? I usually use a smooth step scalar to do this. Or did you mean something else?
Cheers,
Frank
Sorry Frank, you've previously given the impression that you didn't like getting into math, hence my comment. My bad. I've got to say I really like the modulo function, it gives you all sorts of possibilities.
Those circular artifacts tend to occur when you displace/warp something outside it's scale range. eg a perlin set at say 100m scale and you multiply that output by something a lot larger than it's scale, like 200m.
As for 'smoothing'. What I meant by that, was some way of looking at a defined area (say x +/- 10m by z +/- 10m) and finding out an average value of y, then smooth step between these values of y to give you a flat road surface. You could use this for rivers down slopes, etc. The only way I've seen this done, and it's not a perfect solution by any means, is by smoothing a heightfield masked by the limits of your road/river.
Cheers
Jon
Ah, I see now what you mean with the smoothing. Yes, that would be ideal. It could probably be approximated with functions already, by probing the y value at say 9 defined points in the neighborhood of the current position and calculate an avg from that.... haven't tried this, though, but it sounds possible.
As for the math-denyer - you must be confusing me with someone else :)
I like getting into math, it's just that I'm not particularly good at it anymore. I did a lot of higher math during my studies, but never used it ever after, so I had to re-learn e.g. vectors :D
Cheers,
Frank
For anyone still following this thread: If you have no idea where to start making your own roads, see the attached tgd.
It's a simple winding procedural road, but no frills. Based on the network in there, you can start making your own, infinite, procedural, good looking road. It's really easy to also generate masks for the paint based on the mask for the road.
This one isn't pretty, but it gives you the basic setup to extend to your liking.
Regards,
Frank
I've been following this thread with great enthusiasm. Thank you for all your input as well as the others contributing here. Between you, Dune and dandelO, you guys have opened some new doors to creativity ...thanks again, all of you.
I've been mucking around with this thing myself. I'd rather not download your file just yet, Frank, until I feel I've exhausted all my own brain-power(such as it is).
But the thing I write here for is a very simple basic problem I'm facing, be it through functions or fractals. Simply, is there a way to 'tame' the scale of a noise to exactly the scale you input? By this I mean, the warping of a line function does not let me keep the scale of the 'road' width consistent. It will widen/thin the basic road line-mask according to how the fractal or Perlin lies at any particular point along its length.
Maybe I'm not being clear enough, it doesn't sound right reading it back. Is there another method to generate a noise that I can use as a warper, generally, other than an inconsistent perlin/fractal, so it bends the road consistently but still maintains the correct width?
See this deviation in width in the screen-shot below...
Cheers. :)
I know what you mean, Martin. AFAIK there is nothing you can do about it if your technique is based on warping a stripe of white color.
It's really only bad when your displacements are very strong, otherwise, on real roads, often they are wider in the curves than on the straight parts. The effect must not get too strong though.
Maybe your road won't get distorted when you apply the defomation on the scalar or vector level. For example, if you run your function that generates scalars through a sine, then your line will be deformed like a snake but not become wider or narrower in some parts. I guess. Haven't tried. I can live with the effect if it's not too strong :)
Frank
I'm guessing that the only way round it at the moment is to not have too severe a displacement in the warping.
Large scales, creating sweeping curves are much better handled than tight ones and because they generally are much wider than the road, there's minimal distortion.
I like the 'roundabout' effect you showed above when you apply more warp than the scale describes but, unfortunately, that's when the distortion of the road width becomes really apparent.
And, I haven't even started on altitude deviation yet... :D
If your road is traveling along the x axis, you can tame that width variation Martin by, adding a 'multiply vector' after the 'get position' by a 'constant vector' of (1,0,0) before you plug it into the perlin function. This will effectively give you the same variation all the way along y and z for every x.
Hello Martin,
look at the attached previews.
I'd expect the two warpers to show a parallel result but it is not possible - at least not with this setup :(
Hi Jon:
your multiply vector does not work here ... as there is no noise at all after multiplying it with 1,0,0
Ducking great!
Frank, have you thought about releasing a series of tutorial videos on NWDA? I'm thinking about e-learning like lynda.com or totaltraining.com. I'd be happy to pay for quality tutorials about functions and procedurals in depth.
The problem Volker, is that the Perlin has a different value at your offset point to its standard point. You need to flatten your 'get' input into one dimension to give the same output along a given axis. Easiest way is to nullify all other axis by the method I posted above.
Jon
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 09, 2011, 02:03:05 PM
Hi Jon:
your multiply vector does not work here ... as there is no noise at all after multiplying it with 1,0,0
In this case, your road follows the z axis so multiply your perlin by (0,0,1). Try that. Should work.
Here you go Volker...
And here's the road mask combined...
Quote from: Hetzen on March 09, 2011, 02:13:37 PM
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 09, 2011, 02:03:05 PM
Hi Jon:
your multiply vector does not work here ... as there is no noise at all after multiplying it with 1,0,0
In this case, your road follows the z axis so multiply your perlin by (0,0,1). Try that. Should work.
You are absolutely right ... I was following your 1,0,0 without thinking about it ,-)
Quote from: PorcupineFloyd on March 09, 2011, 02:07:08 PM
Ducking great!
Frank, have you thought about releasing a series of tutorial videos on NWDA? I'm thinking about e-learning like lynda.com or totaltraining.com. I'd be happy to pay for quality tutorials about functions and procedurals in depth.
Yes I thought about that. I'm not sure yet whether to get into that or not.
- Frank
That's great, thanks Hetzen, Volker.
I hadn't thought of warping twice and mixing them. That would keep the width consistency across the entire length. Cool. :)
No problem Martin.
Sorry for hijacking Frank.
Good ideas, Jon! No problem with hi-jacking. We're still on topic :)
Or, I could have added a single node(Z to scalar) to the setup I already had and not bothered posting the question at all! I'm bloody dim sometimes! ::) :D
That makes the Perlin-warper uniform along the length of the road so, no need for two different warp shaders, since the Z to scalar is infinite from East to West it'll always cross the road at the same points on each side when the road runs North to South. Still, this means it can't possibly double-back on itself(which is good in a way too because it avoids the circular warping), some larger scaled warp over this one, in the other direction should overcome that, though, and the road will then be able to double-back.
So the road should stay reasonably consistent in width, as long as the warp amount doesn't exceed the warper's scale(then it'd thin out). It certainly avoids the problem of a patch of Perlin warp catching one side of the road and not the other, which was what I was after.
* Sorry, Frank. Just clearing up my mess.
QuoteOr, I could have added a single node(Z to scalar)
Or X to scaler, indeed, that's what I did. If you attach a rotate Y, you can rotate the road. I don't know if Frank uses that as well, haven't checked his tgd yet... he probably does.
As for flattening the road; I tried to stretch the fractals in the Z direction (with an X-based road) where the road is (with a little softness on the sides), but where the stretched fractals meet the unstretched, you get weird displacements, so that doesn't work. Smoothing (by surface layer) doesn't work either, as the whole road dips underground. Perhaps the tilt of the road could be 'counterbalanced' by the ground displacement on the other side of the road, somehow... but that's math I don't understand.
Edit again with an afterthought: there was once someone who produced ripples by setting a number of positions in a line of blue nodes. Perhaps it would be possible to construct roads like this; so you could point (copy coordinate, several times) where you want it, then some math would smoothly connect the positions.... etc.
Quote from: dandelO on March 09, 2011, 07:47:09 PM
Or, I could have added a single node(Z to scalar) to the setup I already had and not bothered posting the question at all! I'm bloody dim sometimes! ::) :D
That makes the Perlin-warper uniform along the length of the road so, no need for two different warp shaders, since the Z to scalar is infinite from East to West it'll always cross the road at the same points on each side when the road runs North to South. Still, this means it can't possibly double-back on itself(which is good in a way too because it avoids the circular warping), some larger scaled warp over this one, in the other direction should overcome that, though, and the road will then be able to double-back.
Can I ask your reasoning behind the Length to Scaler node DandelO? The output value will look like...
sqaure root of (x^2+x^2+x^2)
I'm not sure I understand why it's there?
Also, the Exponential Colour node looks quite interesting too. Is that used to flatten out the peaks of the Perlin (or does it actually sharpen them)?
Good work on dropping the second Warp shader.
Quote from: Hetzen on March 10, 2011, 03:41:40 AM
Good work on dropping the second Warp shader.
Hmmm ... I introduced the sceond warp shader just to verify that the warp shaders look the same or different.
;D
Hi, Hetzen. I used the length to scalar node as it's the simplest way to make a single straight line of the X to scalar below it.
[attachimg=#]
Then from the invert that line, into an add node, using a constant for width. The exp colour node was just to fill-in the gaps of the Perlin noise.
My maths is crap so these are all probably used quite wrongly but they work to this end.
* Volker, it was a good idea, regardless.
Interesting project! Nice progress so far!
so here is another slightly advanced version of the road. This time I'm using a merge shader to join the road with the landscape, which works quite well.
These horizontal dark, specular stripes on the tarmac are supposed to be cracks that have been fixed with a stripe of darker tarmac. This helps make the road look a little less perfect.
I wish I had better car models. I had to use these two not so good models you see here. Does anybody know a link to a great quality, free car model in obj format?
I have blended out the road in the distance to avoid it climbing up the hills in an unrealistic way, but I forgot to also blend away the road paint , hehehe. Stupid.
Anyway, what I really like is that the tarmac itself is looking better and better on close-up with each iteration.
Cheers,
Frank
http://dmi.chez-alice.fr/models3.html
And why not add some potholes and dirt, that's the easy bit. I had a go at straightening your road (you have quite a different setup than I had, interesting), and managed at some angled areas, but you'd have to select a good area to render, as at other areas the road dips into the hill or runs on a dike. Which is not too bad if you have low hills. Negative displace by the terrain, but set the offset about half the displacement. I blended this by a wider 'verge area'.
Thanks Ulco, but the models on this site are all lwo format.
I've tried one with the lwo loader but it loads as a black geometry without textures.
nice road Frank, the road painter was obviously day dreaming/drunk!!!
@ Ulco...I have used quite a few models from DMI...some beauties there (with a few tweaks anyway!!)
:)
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 10:41:09 AM
Thanks Ulco, but the models on this site are all lwo format.
I've tried one with the lwo loader but it loads as a black geometry without textures.
just load the LWO into blender and export as a obj??
you may have to do some subsurfing etc though?
I get pimples when I even think about blender.
Any chance a gracious soul can properly convert a few of those beauties and send them over to me?
Cheers,
Frank
great great job Frank !
Great looking tarmac now, I agree. I had a peek at your .tgd after all, Frank. Very simple looking setup, that I'd never even have dreamed of making one like. I always seem to go the long way round(the back-roads. ;))! I'll stick at it though, practice makes perfect. ;)
Poseray will also convert any of the DMI models and let you set materials and shaders before you export, there are some great models there.
The Google 3D warehouse has many cool car models too, just remember, as many of them are quite low poly, to weld the vertices in Poseray before you do a subdivision on them, else they'll end up full of holes when you subdivide them.
thanks Martin. The tgd I posted is not all my setup consist of. Actually I deleted at least 80% of the nodes before posting this. What's left is the bare minimum to create a procedural line with a user configurable width, and one of many ways to makes it curvy.
So there is probably not much to learn for you in this anyway. But I agree it's always interesting to see which routes other people take.
And thanks for the poseray tip.
Cheers,
Frank
Yes, I gathered that you only had included the basis of the road, just, it's a completely different method than I would take myself(because I'm dim witted and have a hard enough time getting my head around the scalar nodes, nevermind all these vectors that everyone keeps banging on about! ;)) but, yes, it seems you're doing it a completely different way.
What would be nice is a self-enclosed road node, with shading already done, that could be dropped into a scene(you know how I like to keep things packed away inside a simple surface shader, or such) then that could be warped by any other shader that would take effect over the entire surface.
So many options and methods to think about. I'm about to take another TG break for a while, got other things needing attention at the moment but it's been a good few weeks of rediscovery again over here, keep it up!
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 10:52:22 AM
I get pimples when I even think about blender.
Any chance a gracious soul can properly convert a few of those beauties and send them over to me?
Cheers,
Frank
which ones do you like?
I can have look for you
:)
Quote from: inkydigit on March 10, 2011, 11:29:56 AM
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 10:52:22 AM
I get pimples when I even think about blender.
Any chance a gracious soul can properly convert a few of those beauties and send them over to me?
Cheers,
Frank
which ones do you like?
I can have look for you
:)
Oh thank you Jason! I don't mind which, just some normal cars - you can choose for me. If you happen to have some already, I'm glad to take these.
Cheers,
Frank
no worries Frank, I will have a dig around my hd...
:)
Pretty awesome, Frank.
Maybe you should adjust your scene to fit the cars?!?! :) :D ;D
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 10, 2011, 02:49:39 PM
Maybe you should adjust your scene to fit the cars?!?! :) :D ;D
you mean make the scene look crappy? ;)
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 02:51:35 PM
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 10, 2011, 02:49:39 PM
Maybe you should adjust your scene to fit the cars?!?! :) :D ;D
you mean make the scene look crappy? ;)
I think Volker means like the roads of the 60s?
Quote from: choronr on March 10, 2011, 02:57:35 PM
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 02:51:35 PM
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 10, 2011, 02:49:39 PM
Maybe you should adjust your scene to fit the cars?!?! :) :D ;D
you mean make the scene look crappy? ;)
I think Volker means like the roads of the 60s?
Nope ,-) I want it with plain colours, no variations ... plastic trees and clouds made of sugar!
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 10, 2011, 03:08:19 PM
Quote from: choronr on March 10, 2011, 02:57:35 PM
Quote from: FrankB on March 10, 2011, 02:51:35 PM
Quote from: Volker Harun on March 10, 2011, 02:49:39 PM
Maybe you should adjust your scene to fit the cars?!?! :) :D ;D
you mean make the scene look crappy? ;)
I think Volker means like the roads of the 60s?
Nope ,-) I want it with plain colours, no variations ... plastic trees and clouds made of sugar!
Volker... you need sleep. Trust me, I recognize the symptoms ;)
Something like this perhaps...
yeah, this is good. I'll make something like this. I've already got those horizontal cracks, but I need the tarmac to be "worn" more.
A bit better; but, AZ brags about their good roads - couldn't find a bad one Frank.
Are we in the Bryce forum, Volker?
* Nice shot, Bob. Something like I was going for before, except, I lacked the coolness of this one! ;) The road tarnishing/repairs would be quite a hard job to look convincing(Gregsandor did some cool work on something like it, I think it was image mapped, though), and it looks like I needed more orange in my surfacing, mine was too yellow, huh?
Go for it, Frank! Who needs curvy roads?
Hehe, indeed, who needs curves? ... well, at least on roads :D
I just realized that this is the 9th longest thread in the image sharing forum. Woah. Never thought it get that popular. So I shall not disappoint you all and finish this with a proper high quality render. Stay with me :)
Me too; I've been rendering a long one (too embarrassed to tell you how long) - when finished, I will start and try my bit on a scenic road .
QuoteSo I shall not disappoint you all and finish this with a proper high quality render
I thought you'd finish this off with a nice tgd...
I thought Jon's parallel warp setup is very interesting, as it doesn't widen/narrow the road when warped. It would only need some softening for the verges and some way to (easily) make the lines, which is not too hard in another setup, but in Jon's file I'm at a loss.
Not meaning to hijack your thread, Frank, just one line of words; I tried to also divide Jon's line into sinus parts (for railroad sleepers), but couldn't get them before the warp, so they are still X (or Z) oriented. Would this be possible, Jon?
By the way, here's a hairpin road, just for the fun of it, as it's very bad! But the smoothing has an interesting, but not definitive effect.
It should be possible Ulco. The method posted earlier in the thread was really a response to DandelO, tbh I've not looked at how you've been generating your railroad (I did see your thread and images and think you've found a very convincing way).
As for your railway sleepers, I didn't realise you were using a sin function. Rather than warp the sin output, can you not displace it or move it laterally with the perlin noise directly? You could even just mask a continuos sleeper pattern that runs north-south by the road mask. I would doubt you'd be able to bend the direction the sleaper's facing this way, (they would always run east-west). Maybe you use your previous method, and just mask it?
Btw, Volker and I have found a new way of generating level roads, which samples several altitudes before and after the generation point, and smooths out the road along it's length, that also keeps a consistant level along it's width. Unfortunately both him and I are tied up with work commitments over the next few days to put much more time into this new method.
Quote from: Hetzen on March 11, 2011, 03:17:52 AM
Btw, Volker and I have found a new way of generating level roads, which samples several altitudes before and after the generation point, and smooths out the road along it's length, that also keeps a consistant level along it's width. Unfortunately both him and I are tied up with work commitments over the next few days to put much more time into this new method.
Funny guy ;D Jon is sending me new TGDs every 30 minutes and I do not get the hang on it :) Jon and me are trying different approaches and share our results. I assume that the finished network will be stunning (at least to look at) ;D
But he is right, both of us have our real-life business to run. I'll be on a business trip until Monday. Have fun and share your efforts!!!
Volker
Sounds good. I'll have another go. Have a good trip and hopefully post some more math!
Ulco, your road looks like the Great Wall of China. That might be a cool project also. All this is far beyond my skill...
Great Wall of China, indeed, Henry! Great idea, get to it, someone! :)
Sooooo....
this is a WIP of the final scene. I'm quite satisfied except a few things that will come with the next iterations:
- the road shouldn't visible end
- vegetation needs to extend further away
- road/rubble line needs to be a tad sharper.
- the darker bushes will be brightened up a bit
Cheers,
Frank
Great work Frank. Like the hot atmosphere and sense of scale.
I haven't much to add to your to do list except maybe for reducing the coverage of the white stripes a bit as they are very white. Perhaps a bit of breakup/cracking would be nice too.
super work Frank!
I really like the tar filler for the pavement cracks. Nice touch!
very nice! The white stripes are bit broad for my taste, but thats not a real issue. The only point that really jumps into my eyes and "screams: rendering, not real!" is the car (metallic shader).
I am looking orward to the final!
Frank, this is super! Ironically, I started a project similar to this; car, road and a gas station ...fun stuff.
thanks guys :)
@Walli: right. I made a few changes, let's see if that's better. (still rendering)
@Bob: no wonder! I took the photo you have posted in another thread (or in this one?) as an inspiration to make a scene with a straight road in a desert / canyon setting, with dry plants and all that kind of stuff. Looking forward to seeing your version!
Cheers,
Frank
possibly my final. ... unless you have some more ideas that motivate me ;)
Cheers,
Frank
Wow! Just like at home ...you're firing my creative juices.
Quote from: choronr on March 15, 2011, 02:49:35 PM
Wow! Just like at home ..
Bob, this was the best thing you could have said. Thank you!
Really stunning work Frank, quite realistic. The shading on the car isn't up to the realism of the rest of the scene unfortunately, but I'm not sure how much you can do about that. How many polies is the car model? And am I to understand from the Facebook post that you'll be sharing this soon? ;D
- Oshyan
Now that is a fine looking road!
Very nice scene, Frank. But... I liked the old car better, as this one seems to be made of water. A bit more reflection on the white one would do, IMO. And I think the verges shouldn't 'bulge up' like they do here. There are also some white spots/artifacts, and the light (on my monitor that is) is very bright/hard. Not to degrade your final render, but that's my honest opinion.
very nice final !
But the car still gives this render away as CG ;-)
So it seems that it's not easy to meet everyone's expectations with this render :)
Here is what I thought when making some of these picture elements.
1 - the bulding verges. I've seen them look like this more than once. This happens when you put a layer of tar on a sandy underground, and over time, the road starts to sink in a little. Undergrowth from the sides contributes to making the verges swell and eventually even burst open. Maybe I've overdone it slightly here, but not much.
2 - The car. So what's wrong with the car? I think it looks quite realistic. Now the car is black and has a shiny surface - just like my own car. Because the sun is shining from the front, you see a lot of reflection on the hood, and because of the angle camera/car, you primarily see reflections of the landscape on the car's side. I don't know how many poly this car has, but it's a 100MB plus object and it looks quite detailed, at least from this distance. Don't get me wrong, I'm taking all your critics about the car serious, but I'm not getting it. Can you be a little bit more specific on what it is that makes the car look cg for you?
3 - The lighting: it is harsh, that's true. But it's also quite photo-realistic if you ask me. I swear with my camera, if I were to take this shot, the sky would be completely white. I would see even less detail in the shadows. But I can also render another version of this with a sunset theme, no problem. This picture renders in 2:22 at Full HD.
Thank you all! You're good guys, challenging me further :)
Cheers,
Frank
Very nice TG2 road you made here Frank!
It is really stunning what you guys make here :)
I think the car isn't so much important for me as so far this thread goes.
But What you said made me think about the image(the car mostly).
I thought too that the car is a little too CGI looking.
But after your post i searched for black cars on Google (be carefull there are CGI ones too i think).
And they don't look quite like the one here(of course there are too many conditions for such a comparison ).
We know that this is a render that is one of the factors maybe!
The anti aliasing on the front window and the harsh look on the upper side mostly doesn't look like quite with the rest of the image.
It is maybe not so , but it looks like the car have other settings like the rest.
Has the car body the same shader everywhere , Frank?
Did you raytraced the car ?
If yes could you render the car with the micro render ones more Frank?
Or the other way around . Just curious !
The rest of the image is very realistic for me too !
And yes you can not meet everyone's expectations :)
If you get too much angry at us , throw it away and put a little human (or an animal) far away on the road.
It could get some kind of meaning for the ones like me who try to read too much deep into images ;)
Quote from: Kadri on March 16, 2011, 09:04:57 AM
And yes you can not meet everyone's expectations :)
If you get too much angry at us , throw it away and put a little human (or an animal) far away on the road.
It could get some kind of meaning for the ones like me who try to read too much deep into images ;)
Hahaha, funny idea :)
But no, I'm thankful, not angry. I don't get any crisis on self-worth when somebody points out something or even dismisses the entire render.
Frankly, I think that overall this is probably the most photo realistic render I have ever made. I'm happy.
Anyway, another render is underway. I've re-colored the car to white, fumbled with its refelctive settings a bit. I've also adjusted many sizes slighty (e.g. car a tad smaller, rock a bit smaller, etc...), added a tilt angle to all populations, added some flowers on the right side of the road, and a couple other tweaks. Let's see how this turns out. It will come in Full HD resolution. Give me 2 hours.
Oh, and I've reduced the verge-bulding.
Cheers,
Frank
Quote from: FrankB on March 16, 2011, 09:24:44 AM
...
I've re-colored the car to white, fumbled with its refelctive settings a bit.
...
I don't know why , but white was and is the most problematic color for me on objects in my renders.
I am curious how your render will look like :)
Il manquerai une animation de course de voiture sa pourrai le faire. ;)
Here is the hopefully improved version.
BTW: I've lowered the exposure as you can see, but unfortunately this introduced banding in the sky. Sorry for that.
liking this one Frank!
looks like a great place for a spin,
the car paint looks better now too!
Looks better :)
Oh my, didn't think one could make this piece even better - but, you did it. Looking at all aspects, the addition of the patches of flowers; the color of car change; and generally, the entire vegetation presentation with this lighting - right on Frank - tis a beauty! My version will be based on dandelO's road with a bit different POV; but, after seeing this one, I think I'll be making some changes.
That last one is MUCH better, Frank, almost perfect. But.... one more thing; your road really gets wobbly once it goes uphill in the distance. I really like the canyon as well!
Thanks guys, I'm glad you like it.
@Oshyan: regarding your question - it will require a lot of work to tidy this up before it can potentially become a product on NWDA. I mean, I could release it quickly, but I rather spend some more time simplifying the whole setup further.
Cheers,
Frank
I've been watching your progress with this Frank and it is such great work. Lots of possibilities for great renders ahead!
The latest looks quite nice, but I still see issue with the car. In this case the dark windshield (tinted on a convertible?) and the "dead" headlights (they're glass, but no reflection/refraction?).
The rest of the scene is pretty spot-on, but personally I think the specular on the tar seams is a bit too sharp (is glow enabled?), and I could do without the flowers, they seem out of place. Otherwise I agree with you, your most photorealistic render to date. Great work!
- Oshyan
Thank you all, glad you like it.
I can't help much about the car though. It is what it is I suppose ;)
Cheers,
Frank
Terragen - you can't beat it. Stunning Frank really
Beautiful render Frank!
Really naturalistic lighting that fits the environment perfectly.
Chris
Awesome stuff Frank. I've enjoyed seeing how this progressed. My super critical comments would be.
I actually like the flowers you've put in. Just not so close to the road. That little bit of colour in the mid ground really convinvces you that 'this isn't the CG I'm looking for'. Heather has that colour flower. When you see the same model on the road side, that's when the game is given away I think.
From where the sun is, I can understand the car window choice. Difficult one that. In reality I guess, you wouldn't see anything at all, except perhaps very subtle smears in the specularity/refraction. The rest of the texturing looks right. The paint looks waxed. The tyres, dusty and matt. Shiny alloys?
The transition from tarmac into stones looks a little soft. I wonder if there's a way to get a sharp fall off with a 'cracked' plan mask. The bumps look right.
The repair lines in the road look a little too 'wet' in this environment. But in reality I guess, the tarmac would melt and reflect as you have it. Nice touch.
The road could be smoother. ;) ;D (The method Ive found, I'll gladly post at some stage, doesn't work with pre displaced landscape. It has to work in colour space before you displace the landscape. Which is a different way of working.)
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
Quote from: FrankB on March 19, 2011, 06:44:14 PM
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. 8) Your ripples don't look too out of place.
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.
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. ;)
Quote from: FrankB on April 04, 2011, 05:32:19 PM
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.
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?).
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
Quote from: bobbystahr on May 21, 2011, 11:56:43 AM
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.
Quote from: Matt on May 21, 2011, 01:26:08 PM
Quote from: bobbystahr on May 21, 2011, 11:56:43 AM
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
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
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.
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?
Quote from: Dune on January 18, 2012, 10:14:25 AM
...and the road is hugging a steep area....
I don't understand
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!
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
I would even go out and busk again to get the bux for a setup like that Frank. .. ...
Ehr... :)
I must be dreaming; yesterday, my ISP went down from late morning and then for the entire day. Then, I woke up this morning and turned on the PC to find this great message - YES Frank you've turned my day around.
As Henry said, your file has endless possibilities, just as TG2 itself. Adding vegetation is great; but, adding roads delivers the human element. It was once said that if mankind were to go extinct and then Earth were explored by some alien civilization, they would say that our race was one of great 'road builders'.
I can hardly wait for your final package Frank ...thank you.
A little correction from what I wrote earlier... see attached little render, it's possible to have the road go uphill and downhill a bit, and have it inherit a bit of the underlying roughness.
Quote from: FrankB on January 18, 2012, 12:25:37 PM
A little correction from what I wrote earlier... see attached little render, it's possible to have the road go uphill and downhill a bit, and have it inherit a bit of the underlying roughness.
Nice....
just give me a few days to finish this off....
Curious to see what setup you use. I have an inkling it is quite similar to the warped surf/waves/breakers setup I use, with a ..... (Sorry, I'll shut up).
just an update: I'm still working on this techinique. To be precise I am struggling to simplify this rather complicated network so that it becomes usable by other people than me.
The trouble is that it doesn't work out of the box in every situation and terrain, without having to fine-tune 4 or 5 parameters through try and error, and I am seeking to simplify that as best as I can, and document how to best use it. I'm convinced that this pack will be great to play with and give very interesting results, but it's not just plug an play, if you know what I mean....
Frank
Could you send it to me Frank?
If the technique contains blue nodes I'm perhaps a good candidate to test it, since I know virtually nothing about them :P
Hi Martin, yes you can have play with it. I'll upload it to the NWDA Underground. However, the blue nodes are not a problem at all in this case. The road itself is easy to use, it works just out of the box.... It's the seamless integration of the road with any random terrain that makes it a little bit complex.
Ah ok, I see.
it's in the underground now.
here is a 2400px wide teaser render, albeit just a bare landscape with some surface colors.
https://img.skitch.com/20120123-p195n9tf51hue6e11p2t5hh5xg.jpg
Cheers,
Frank
This is more fun watching than a pole dancer ...can't wait for this one Frank!
Quote from: choronr on January 23, 2012, 03:20:37 PM
This is more fun watching than a pole dancer ...can't wait for this one Frank!
Ghehe, that might be age related Bob :P
Quote from: choronr on January 23, 2012, 03:20:37 PM
This is more fun watching than a pole dancer ...can't wait for this one Frank!
this is SO not true, Bob, but thanks anyway :)
lol :P
it is fun though. Shit, i am a nerd... when did this happen.
Quote from: Tangled-Universe on January 23, 2012, 03:24:47 PM
Quote from: choronr on January 23, 2012, 03:20:37 PM
This is more fun watching than a pole dancer ...can't wait for this one Frank!
Ghehe, that might be age related Bob :P
Yep; and, out of sight, out of mind.
I am very impressed. The image speeeed 52-2.jpg is excellent!!!!!
Quote from: Jo Kariboo on January 24, 2012, 12:03:20 AM
I am very impressed. The image speeeed 52-2.jpg is excellent!!!!!
Thank you :)
another view
and here is a view of the (greatly) simplified node network.
In the Road Group, there are 7 parameters for the road, and 6 masks as a result. That's it.
The example shows, how the road and tarmac, the road line paint and the road repair bumps are embedded into your shader network.
Under the hood though, and that means in the internal networks of the groups and shaders, lies the real horse power engine that makes all this possible.
This is the most simplified network that comes with the pack. of course there will also be a tgd with all the nodes on the top level, and all the node connections visible (so no hidden nodes).
Frank
I can't wait to get into this one Frank. Looking forward...
It's out now: http://www.nwdanet.com/buy/7-preset-packs/79-road-and-tarmac-pack
:)
Best regards,
Frank
Looks nice and useful , Frank :)