ossosso

Hi everyone!
First of all sorry for my english

I only need an advice regarding the roads texturing process into a 3dsmax project.

All I have is a .dwg file with roads that I can import into 3dsmax like mesh or splines.
I've yet followed the 3das pdf tutorial regarding the construction of a Restaurant into 3dsmax starting from Autocad lines.
And I've also tried to use Loft to recreate the road geometry and then I've applied a seemless street texture.
But into this project there are some crossorads, and the streets appear not always uniform in their shape; so I'd like to know, if you can, which is the best technique to recreate road geometry and texturing in a project like this.

Any advice will be well accepted.

Thanks a lot!

Attached Images

plane.jpg (147.9 KB, 111 views)

Claudio Branch

Your texturing job will be made much easier if your road geometry is a series of quads that follow the road centerlines. I do alot of road and site modeling and I prefer Autocad and the EasySite plugin.

I have alot more control over the geometry of the road, how it is incorporated into the terrain, the density of the mesh and even the profiles of the roads themselves.

Once you have nice uniform quads for your roads, you can easily put a tiled road texture on them and most of your work is done.

The intersections can be tricky especially if your road texture features a typical centerlane oil stain. I use a multi sub object material and assign each group of polys making up a unique intersection their own ID numbers.

I go into Photoshop and create a unique texture for each intersection in the scene. You will need to get comfortable using the Pen Tool and Stroke Path commands within Photoshop to do this nicely.

It is art after all, and it just takes alot of practice. Best Luck!

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Texture-Sample.jpg (284.5 KB, 145 views)

ossosso

Thank you very much friend, really useful informations.

Unfortunately I'm not a 3dsmax user, so I've some problem with tools, for example: I've imported into 3dsmax a big mesh (from AutoCAD) that rapresents all the roads; then in component mode (Element) I've selected portions of surface (accordly with crossroads and linear roads) and I've changed for any piece the "Material Set-ID", then I've created a "Multi-Sub/Object" material and I've applied it to the big mesh.
Finally I've created a new material (and dragged it into the "Multi-Sub/Object" material) with a seemless road texture, but I think that the piece of surface has a wrong UV coordinates, 'cause the texture doesn't appear correctly, if I use a UVWmap modifier (planar mapping) it appears, but it doesn't "run" along the surface, so.. the final question is : there's a way I can adjust correctly UV coordinates in the way that the seemless texture follows the surface, or have I to rebuild all the surfaces using the Loft command?

Thanks again

Attached Images

road.jpg (52.2 KB, 64 views)

erickdt

I might isolate the roads and intersections etc in autocad save them as a seperate file and then bring the into illustrator. then you can lay in the lines as you wish where you wish and export your file as a tif or jpeg or whatever. basically make a texture for the entire road that doesnt tile at all.

ossosso

So you use Illustrator to recreate a unique big texture for the whole mesh?

Do you think there's some kind of tutorial about this procedure?

erickdt

Yeah that's what iwas thinking... This method could be problematic though since you might wind up with a huge texture that MAX can't handle.

If there is a tutorial I don't know of it.

ossosso

Ok, thank you very much Erik for your answers...
if you are on skype (flagg83) or msn (ossosso@libero.it) and you've a break call me , I'd like to learn from you this technique :P

ByeZ!

only3d

[quote=Claudio Branch;152753]Your texturing job will be made much easier if your road geometry is a series of quads that follow the road centerlines. )))

claudio, can u elaborate on your technique?
i use regular splines and 'bevel profile' for the sidewalks, but can u explain how to do it with quads as u do?

tnx in advance

ossosso

Yes Claudio, illuminate us

Claudio Branch

Alright then...my modeling approach is highly specialized. It is specifically for the creation of large-scale transportation animations. Like I said before, I start with AutoCAD and EasySite...mix in a little MicroStation and GIS...and then git er dun with Max.

My roadway modeling approach usually begins with survey data or a 3d contour file obtained through GIS. I start out by importing the file into Autocad (with my EasySite plug-in) and creating a TIN (triangulated irregular network) or mesh if you prefer.

Also at this time, I will import a hi-res aerial photo of the site and a 3D centerline of the proposed road created in MicroStation. Now I can trace existing roads and tie in the proposed road alignments using a P-line with it's width corresponding to the final width of the road.

Once I have the road layout complete in the plan view, I add "grade refs" along the 3D centerline to determine the height and slope of the road at specific intervals. EasySite reads the width of the P-line and the elevation of the "grade refs" to generate the quads (that I mentioned previously) from a file with the specific road profile. The road profile file not only creates the road quads, but also the geometry for the gutters, curbs, grass, and sidewalks.

Once the roads are modeled up, I delete whatever portion of the terrain mesh is lying beneath the new geometry. All that is left to do, is tie the road geometry to the terrain mesh. EasySite has a "FILL" command that accomplishes that task beautifully. Finally, I export all of it into Max.

Now that I'm in Max, I scale the thing up 1200X and convert all of the geometry to Editable Poly. EP has extremely efficient sub-object features that make finishing this thing easy!

From here on out, Editable Poly helps me to create retaining walls...create camera and traffic splines...create streetlight/foliage centerlines...and I already covered the textures previously.

This is basically the beginning of my modeling/texture workflow which will end up as a tranportation animation.

When I am finished, it might look something like this:

Attached Images

The-Road.jpg (223.2 KB, 139 views)