Assets [Released][Thread Moved] Free road creator

Tool has been released and have therefore been moved here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/1-0-free-road-creator.629983/

 

Any nice screenshots and stuff?

 

I don't know exactly what you want to see but here is a road system that I created:

All assets shown are included in this tool. (The turn markings are placed manually). This is work In progress so expect inprovements!

 

A lot has been improved since creating this thread. The biggest change is the additions of new interchanges(triangle and diamond) and the addition of roundabouts. You can see a example of it here:

Note that you can have much more connections then 1.

 

After a lot more development and many fixed bugs the road creator is now in alpha instead of pre-alpha. This meens that there will still be bugs but it should be more stable. I can't list everything that's changed but here are the most inportant parts:

Roads and road-related objects:
- Added road guidelines which both other roads and prefab lines can snap to. This is to create parrarel roads.
- Added a option that can be changed in the object creation gui to create straight road segments so that you don't have to place down the control point. These segments will stay straight even when moving the start/end point. To curve it simply move the control point.
- Removed the road transition as it was unnececary. Roads now have start width and end width variables that do the same thing.
- You can now create road presets. Added two sidewalk presets to show that the road creator can be used for more than just normal roads.
- Added a traphic light
- Fixed texture overlapping caused by curve smoothing
- Fixed vertices being very unevenly spread out for curved roads sometimes

Prefab line tool:
- Added option to curve the prefabs to get a prefab line that follows the curve better
- Added a option to fill in the gaps between the prefabs so that it looks like one smooth mesh
- Added random y rotation option
- The spacing of the prefabs is now much more accurate

Intersections and roundabouts:
- When created they are now created in the center of the editor camera and also rotated
- All intersections now fully support rotation
- Doubled the amount of vertices a roundabout generates so that the texture should match more with roads
- Fixed texture overlapping caused by angled connections to intersections
- Fixed a gap excisting when the intersection and the connected road had different y-offsets

General:
- Added a object creation gui with buttons for creating the different objects added by this tool. It's only shown when a road or road-related object is selected. This is now the only way to create roads, prefab lines, intersections, roundabouts and road splitters. Road systems are still created with new GameObject > 3D Object > Road System
- Added undo support for reseting a road system, road or prefab line
- Added a wiki that describes what all values do
- Uploaded more example pictures, see original post

 

A lot of road signs have now been added. They are low poly and are based on swedish signs:

Enjoy!

 

More work has been done and here are some of the highlights:
- Added a few bridge assets (a bridge based and different pillars)
- Added option to prefab lines to make the objects follow the terrain or curve, by modifing the y-positions of it's vertices

- A LOT of prefab-line related fixed including:
- Fixed prefab offset being unaccurate (sometimes they were placed a bit before or after the start position instead of starting at it's center)
- Fixed prefab-lines generating way to many prefabs when points are above ground
- Fixed changing prefab scale(not the transform one, the prefab-line one) making fill gap, bend object, autocalculating spacing and more not working correctly

 

I'm very happy with the progress made, so the first beta isn't to far a way. I have a few more plans before releasing it but it probably won't take longer than a few weeks. If you have any questions just ask!

 

Show video and screenshots of the asset in use! We're curious!

 

Sounds like a good idea. I'll try to do it soon. If anyone has a picture please share it!

 

A cool little feature added is that it's now possible to change a points y-position with the plus and minus keys. This is very useful for creating bridges.

 

Another quick update. Prefab lines can now follow roads so that you easly can create bridges for example. When the prefab line is assigned as the road's follow object it's will no longer have control over creating/moving and removing points. It'll all be controll by the road.

 

The problem is that stuff still are a little bit broken/not perfect so it isn't really possible to create good results YET. As development continues it will be inproved but it's still in alpha

 

Terrain deformation has finnaly been added! It's still a little work in progress though as can see in the picture:

Any ideas of how it can be inproved?

 

https://answers.unity.com/questions/473812/real-time-terrain-deformation-after-explosion.html

 

probably would look better with a curb and if made angled, not steep vertical

 

Thanks for the link. Will defently check it out.

Today I completed a change that I started a while ago, replacing a segment's shoulder meshes for extra meshes to allow for more flexebility. You are no longer limited to one mesh per side which allows you to create stuff like this:

 

I have inproved terrain deformation a little bit:

The problem is that the Unity terrain is so unexact, that's why it doesn't go out as far on the right side as on the left. Also as you can see in the picture, when creating steep slopes the terrain goes through the road at some places at the same time that there is a noticeble gap in other places.

A bit happier news, convert intersection/roundabout/road/road splitter to mesh now converts it to one object instead of multiple, much more convinient!

The beta is coming closer, the only planned thing left is to fix issues regarding mesh smoothing and intersection connections. Sometimes there are gaps and overlapping so I'll have to fix that.

 

Make sure it does not float Easy roads float a little, not noticeable in desktop, but on VR its noticeable (because of stereoscopic vision).

 

I know, not floating would be the ideal situation but it's hard to achieve. How should the vertex know how high up it needs to be to avoid the terrain going through the plane?

 

This is probably the best it gets:

It has been extremly optimized though, like 50x or something insane like that. The reason is that I now change all the heights in a array and then update the terrain instead of updating the terrain for every vertex.

 

I've fixed all the major bugs that I've found so far and the tool work quite well in my opinion so I have decided to upgrade it to beta. So I took the time to create a little scene to show off some of the newer features (like bridges):

I would say that it's nearly feature complete so now there's just bug fixing left to do before release and that's where I need you guys and girls. I need testers to find bugs so please try it out and report broken behaviour and I'll do my best to fix it.

@carking1996 I know you have wanted pictures for a while so I hope you're happy now!

 

Looking good so far, keep going.

 

Here's a city scene, showing the usage of sidewalk and extra meshes (parking lots in this case)

 

awesome, better than that roundabout which needs work

 

Noticed at this moment that I made one of the roundabout connections to wide :c Except from that what do you think can be improved with it?

 

Everything. It needs sidewalks, proper colors, looks blue and bleh. Make a center ground piece. Make sure joining road/crosswalk areas have correct sizes, etc

 

Thanks for the feedback. I need to fix the colours, it's a lighting problem so hopefully it's fixed soon. The sidewalk are placed as it's own object so it's easy to place a sidewalk along the roundabout. About the connections, they are calculated automatically but then I accidently changed it manually. For the center groundpeace explain more.

 

https://i0.wp.com/developinglafayet...ads/2017/03/img_2369.jpg?resize=660,400&ssl=1

It has a center grass piece

 

Oh ok. But can't that just be added by adding a green plane under?

 

The thing is that this tool won't create something fantastic for you. It's a tool that can be combined with assets and artistic feeling etc to create something great. That's why I shouldn't do these photos as I'm not good at art. It's possible to create beautiful environments with this tool but I don't have what it takes.

 

Well yes you can, but that's the cheap way! Make it do that and it'll be a much welcomed improvement. Also as for textures.. I have plenty of experience with those so if you need some, I can donate some I already have.

 

That would be really nice thanks. Can I include them in the project? As for the centerpiece I can add it for you

 

Yes, feel free. I'll get them to you later today (private message).

 

@carking1996 Roundabout centerpieces are now a thing!:

With customizable material

 

I need bugs to fix! Please report.

 

Well have you fixed the current intersections of roundabouts? Added sidewalks to it? Make it robust! The city streets you did look great above, do the same for everything

 

Yep, I fixed the wrong connection width for roundabout connections. I created a little scene to show you that it's possible to achieve good results with the roundabouts from this tool:

The whole reasoning by having sidewalks as there own object is that you don't always want it to follow exacly. It's common for sidewalks to be a meter away from the road for safety reasons. It opens up for more customizability. Centerpieces was a good idea so if you have more concrete things that you want added I'm happy to hear but sidewalk will be kept as it's own object.

EDIT: As you also can see the bug that intersection/roundabouts had a different colour has been fixed, they are much more similar now. The small differences are because of the lighting settings.

 

Another update. Except from fixing bugs I've also added a new feature:
Prefab lines and whole road systems can now be converted to a mesh. So you can easly export the mesh with some free tool to blender for example, fix some small issues with the roads and then reimport it. I try to make the generated objects as professional as possible but there will always be small issues sometimes.

Also now when converting a road/intersection etc to a mesh it now converts it to one mesh instead of a series of meshes which makes it much more conviniet to edit.

 

If possible, should I change to a system where intersections are automatically generated? https://www.strawpoll.me/16695670. It would require a lot of work and would remove support for all intersections currently created but would improve usability a lot. What do you think?

 

Well how does it work now? Any video?

 

Haven't even started, wanted to see what people though about it. It would be similar to this:
https://forums.unrealengine.com/com...cedural-street-and-intersection-building-tool

 

Have u saw this road system
https://github.com/MicroGSD/RoadArchitect

 

Yep. It's kinda dead nowadays and the intersections don't work at all.

 

Not trying to start a battle or competition here, but I've forked RoadArchitect and I am currently trying to make it a bit easier to use on Unity 2018. If anyone has any experience with the RA source code or procedural road generation, contributions are welcome!

https://github.com/embeddedt/RoadArchitect/issues/1

 

Seriously why are you doing this instead of contributing to my tool? Ra is really old so the code was made for a super old unity version and then patched and changed, when so long has gone it's better to start over. The code isn't great, every Road has like 100+ variables, it's insane. My tool has a lot of stuff that road architect never had like prefab lines, intersections etc. Imo it's just better, it doesn't overcomplicate things.

High resolution textures are coming to this tool soon so ra won't have that advantage either. Generally my tool allows for a lot more customization. You can assign which material you want. You arn't limit to use the three that come with it with only 2/4/6 lanes. With this tool you can easily assign a texture for a 10 lane road for example.

So, it's always your choice but please join my project instead, it has come a lot longer and working together we can truly create something fantastic. Even if you don't, please explain why because I really don't understand your decision.

 

Thanks for your opinion. You do make some good points. It basically comes down to a few things:

1. IMO, Road Architect's materials, textures, etc. look more realistic than yours at the moment. I expect this to change however and you have stated you are working on high-resolution textures.
2. At the moment, your project has no license. This makes it useless in any game, open-source or commercial.
3. You seem to be doing everything from scratch, whereas I would rather use RA's materials, textures, and models and redo the code.

Don't get me wrong, I think your road asset has great potential, it just might not suit my needs at this time.

 

1. Mayby you can ask if I can use them and this way we can together combine the best from both tools. Carking1996 said he would send some textures.
2. Added a open source license. Good enough?
3. The code is nearly finished and is in a working state, it's only that I recently decided to redo the intersection system.

If you have any more concerns let me know! I really believe cooperation is the most effective way forward. It's better than that we both spend a lot of time on similar code.

 

I don't think we need to ask because RA is licensed under MIT, which pretty much allows any use as long as credit is given.

It's great to see you added a license, but GPL3 makes your code useless in commercial games.

 

Also, something seems to be broken with not using your original project. I created the three layers, copied the Resources folder to my Assets folder, and I could create roads. However, the roads are pink, and the materials all have "Hidden/InternalErrorShader" as their shader, which clearly isn't right.

Did I miss something when following the instructions?