World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Correct. The code gets the center point of an object, however ER3D do not have the center point at the center of the length of road. So there is some additional code placed in the ActiveMgmt.cs class, Startup function:

private const int ROAD_DISTANCE = 600;

var roads = GameObject.FindGameObjectsWithTag("HBCRoad");
foreach (var road in roads)
{
ERRoad erRoad = ERroads.Find(x => x.GetName() == road.name);
var centerPoints = erRoad.GetSplinePointsCenter();
var activeSetting = new ActiveSettings(road.transform, ROAD_DISTANCE, centerPoints[(centerPoints.Length / 2)]);
activeItems.Add(activeSetting);
}
-----------------------------------
Because of this change, do not include your road's tag in the ActiveMgmt's ActiveProperty list. Using the above code will give you the center point of a road.

Also instead of one long road you might be able to have shorter chunks and connect them with a base Connector object. But test this out to see if it's what you need before you get deep

 

I have been getting some weird lines/banding. It seems to mainly happens where the lights are baked onto the road. The road is not very long. maybe one kilometer. It looks fine in the editor but looks like this in the Built .exe

Does this look familiar to anyone? Thanks for any advice or help.






It looks fine on one end of the road and the other end has the banding.

 

Hi Jbs_GameZone,

Also for OC purposes, longer roads can be divided in multiple sections without losing the shape by inserting an I Connector. This option is available further below in the Inspector for the selected road in the marker Section. It will split the road in two road objects at the selected marker.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Many thanks Raoul, that was exactly what I was looking for, a more straightforward way for diving the road into multiple pieces, selecting a node and adding a connector is very fast indeed.

 

Hi devotid,

I missed your post earlier today looking at the previous page only, sorry about that!

That looks like uv floating point inaccuracies. Does this happen further away from the start?

In that case, just like for OC purposes mentioned in the posts above, the I Connector can fix this too. Insert an I Connector just before this issue starts to appear.

Or you can check Player Settings > Optimization > Vertex Compression, and make sure vertex compression for UV0 is switched off.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,
i got an errors, when grab any marker and move in any direction, all connected roads stop doing repaint. When i create a new connection/crossroad they just dont show until i grab other marker and move. I am actually in big projekct and this error very slow me down.
Can you help with this? i just added demo scene and roadsHD, and add some my random crossroads, this problem show just right now.

Also when i grab a selector and with shift create roads, ER dont grab new connector for make other roads but stay in 1st selected connector

ER v 3.1.1

 

12 errors, it can be more if i will select and move other markers

 

New path

 

Hello gozdagb,

Can we handle all this step by step because it seems different situations are involved?

Can you give the exact setup of this situation? It reads as if multiple roads are connected to this road. Is that the case? Are they connected to the start and end of this road through I Connectors. Or, because I think you are referring to the HD Roads package, are they connected through an HD roads connection prefab? In that case, these prefabs are based on custom meshes. If roads B and C are connected to this prefab, these roads will not change/update when moving a marker of road A connected to this same prefab.

It is hard to comment on the gif by itself. The gif is zoomed in on a road section, it is not clear how the full road looks and if it is connected to a crossing. Then I see markers added quite close to other markers at quite sharp angles and the road does not always update. Are these sharp angles related? Unrealistic angles do not necessarily prevent the road from updating as can be seen below.




All together it is hard to give feedback based on the provided info. Would it be possible to send us the scene or project by email or PM so we can look at it?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

"Can you give the exact setup of this situation?"
I dont know what you mean 'setup', i have actualy created a lot of roads and side objeckts paths, ER was just work well in friday, today i just enter to the project and ER start to give me a lot of errors, from friday to this day i did not add/do anything. OR if 'setup' mean flow then doesnt matter if i continue road path, start new, start from connector or other situation.

I creted a lot road named "NM_Asphalt_Dotted" with no problem, but now something change and its looks like i got problems with roads from package HD or with roads created from "Road Network" in one scene. When i create new scene and add new Road Network there is no problem.

What i got working wrong?
Roads dont refresh/recalculate paths,
Adding another point from existed path, system dont select new point just stay on previous selected and i need to select a new created point for continue draw path
Edit existing path dont working, when i move point, road dont refresh stay where he stay until i move neighbor.
Pressing "Build Terrain" just do nothing, There is information about updating terrain object, but nothing changed, roads still are under or above terrain.

What also i can do, for help you to solve this problem, gifs? move?

 

OK, problem solved...
I dont know where was problem, but solution was simple.
I take childs from Road Network, deleted road network, add new and replace default childs by my copy. Work well

 

Hello,

Looked over the tutorials, but I have an issue when trying to create my custom T Crosses prefabs.

1) It doesn't allow to change the width of the roads (main or secondary) :



2) If I select other materials (in my example I need it from Primary Road Coast -> Dirt Path Sand ) it will not display the texture at all :



3) This is a minor one that I can get through, but observed it and here it is anyways : Always shows Crossing Presets: Default T Crossing regardless of what I choose in Create Copy Of section.


4) Decided to go without modifying anything in my new Prefab, just to see if I can save it and use it in my road but I throws an error :



For creating the custom T cross prefab I've done this :



Looking fwd for your feedback, thanks

 

Hello gozdagb,

Glad to hear you got that working again. Could you please send the project to us if this happens again so we can check what the problem is, something must have changed.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello Jbs_GameZone,

Road types are selected from the dropdown, as a result the other options are disabled.

But indeed please work with road types on crossing prefabs instead of changing the width manually. This way the road network is better manageable, crossings can be auto inserted based on road type info and if you want to make changes in a later state only the road type has to be changed.

After creating a road type in General Settings > Scene Settings, you will see a button "Create New Connection Prefab". This will instantly create a new prefab based on this road type.

The material for the connection, pink in your image can also be assigned in the Road Type settings, "Connection Material".

Regarding the error, which version of Unity is this and which version of EasyRoads3D? In Unity 2018.3 and EasyRoads3D v3.1.4 prefabs can be edited in the new prefab editor. Also when following the steps you took except using Shift + Click to instantiate the source prefab in the scene. Instead the new prefab can be edited in the prefab editor. In older versions of Unity, the prefab should save correctly using v3.1.4.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thanks very much for the detailed answer and the good news that is possible to do it in some way and I repeat that is not needed to make any crossing with the tunnels just bend it and built a huge long tunnel with splines

Will test and see what can I do following what you have said and see how it works

 

I really like very much your asset and is very good and awesome how you can create the roads and side objects and much more, and be able to customize it and use many different configurations and different materials and even different 3D meshes and custom ones

I am using Unity 2018.2.20

But as I am starting to learn how to use it, I have some questions that I can not find how to do it, or if it is possible to do it

MOVE THE CREATED NEW ROAD

I have seen that after you create a road you can not move it anywhere, I mean that you can not change the position of the road or rotate it, it is created fixed to the place you create it.

Of course that you can modify it with the markers.

Also you can not copy the new created road and paste it in another different scene because the meshes are missing

I have seen the manual and videos but have not been able to find a way to move, adjust and change the position of the newly created road or copy or export the whole road to another scene. Please, I am missing something?

Also there is no names on the road meshes

EDIT THE CREATED ROAD

I am just starting to use it, and have seen that if create multiple roads in the same scene, then after I find difficult to edit again an already created road, I mean to select it and edit the road to modify the markers and the easy road script values.

I have seen that to edit the road you need to select the Road Network object in Hierarchy and click on < Icon, but
If you click < icon it takes to the root of Road Network object and selects again all the multiple roads created and it tells you that there is "No Road or connection selected "

So the problem is that it selects all the multiple created roads and shows the "No Road or connection selected", so please how do you select a road to be edited? because if you select one of the roads in the Road Objects folders there seems no way to edit the road or show the markers of that selected road

Please, can you be so kind to help, as I am surely missing something and doing it wrong

Thanks very much for your help

Best wishes

 

Hi,
unfortunately i cant:/ i will try recreate this error on free time on other project

i have question
Maybe you will have idea or will create method for that (house1.jpg) something what i can show space with special place where i want to be terrain flat, something similar to ProBuilder?, in this case i need something like that to flatten place under house.
I arrange something like that (House2.jpg) but this take ~5mins per house, maybe there is smarter and faster method?

Thanks.

also... I have not been convinced of ES for some time, but it seems to be doing what it should in a fairly simple and economical way. It requires some time to learn how to make an intersection/ side object or just a road, but after this time it is only easier. Despite that, there are still things that I do not understand how they work, sub segments are broken? smoothing them does not work? ruts penetrate through terrain. I do not know how to overcome it. But ES still rules!

 

Hello SpaceRay,

Shift + Z selects all markers of a road. This way a road can be moved. Rotating a road is indeed not possible at the moment.

You can open both scenes in the hierarchy and drag drop the road from one scene in the other scene.

Is that a problem for you? Do you need the meshes to be names? The individual road objects are all named.

In general, existing roads are edited with the main road network object selected. When the main road network object is selected blue handles are visible. They represent the marker positions of the road. Selecting a blue handle selects the road object. The road can now be edited in the Inspector, marker control points can be added/removed, markers positions can be updated, etc.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello gozdagb,

EasyRoads3D cannot flatten the terrain below individual houses. But if houses are added as side objects and the indent distance of the roads are extended to cover the surface of the houses, the terrain will align with the houses in Build mode.

How are sub segments broken? Sub Segments are disabled when a road is attached to a crossing because currently crossings do not support sub division. This all changes in v3.2 where custom road shapes are supported.

What do you mean with this?

Can you show examples of this and that is not covered by what is mentioned on the Troubleshooting page in the manual. In short, the Unity terrain object is grid based. The cell size depends on the terrain heightmap resolution and the terrain size. This defines the flexibility in the road shapes. If your roads are too curvy with not enough terrain points available to flatten the terrain according the road shape, the road will float above the terrain at these positions or the terrain will break through the road. The default Unity terrain object 513 heightmap, 500x500 size should be able to deal well with curvy roads.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,

I have a question about the demo project that supplements EasyRoads3D (separate asset on the Asset Store). The demo says that it includes ER3D 3.1.1, but ER3D is at 3.1.4. It seems like if I install the demo, I will overwrite ER3D with an older version. Is there a workaround for this (e.g. install the demo first)?"

Ben

 

Hi Ben,

For playing around with the assets you can import the demo first and after that import the EasyRoads3D Pro V3. It will automatically override ERD3D from 3.1.1 to 3.1.4.
For a cleaner production project you can only import EasyRoads3D Pro v3 and from the demo project export & import only the prefabs you are interested in, like described here http://unityterraintools.com/tutorials/so_import_export.php

Hope that helps

 

Hi Raoul,

Many thanks for the quick reply, I managed to get them going ok. As for the error I updated to 3.1.4 and everything is ok now.

 

Hi Ben,

The demo is indeed often a little bit behind. Like Jbs_GameZone mentioned you can import the demo first or reimport the Pro package itself afterwards.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

@Jbs_GameZone and @raoul thanks very much for such fast feedback. Very much appreciated.

 

I have just upgraded my project from 2017.4 to 2018.2 and, while I can see the roads just fine, when I click on a road, the ER Modular Road (Script) has seven blank buttons. Therefore, I have no means to further edit the roads on my map. I'm running the latest ER3D, but I must be missing something. Can anyone help? Thanks.

 

Hello Ben_Iyan,

What do you mean with "Click on a Road"? Do you mean, with the main Road Network object selected, click a blue handle to select a road?

And what are these seven blank buttons? Are these the toolbar tab? If these are blank then this must be related to the textures not displaying.

It is hard to comment on Unity upgrades. EasyRoads3D works for Unity 5.6 up to Unity 2018.3. Did you try restarting Unity after the upgrade?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

I mean that I select a road game object in the scene view in the editor. In the un-upgraded version (I always make a backup now) there are icons on the buttons in the road editor ... editor. I can include a screen shot it that would make things clearer.

Yes, I've tried multiple restarts, but no change.

Ben

 

Hi, i have been using ERv3 for a bit now and appreciate the effort you have put into it.
I just started adding sidewalks to some roads and am having a lot of difficulty. i just grabbed latest (3.1.4) to see if it was that. the problem improved, but also introduced new problems.

(unity 2018.3 and er3.1.4)
1 - I have a road that is on flat terrain and is layed out in a square shape with intersections connecting the roads. if i build the road, it correctly deforms the little bit of terrain poking through. when i turn on sidewalks it doesnt deform the terrain correctly.

2 - on latest i now see a new bug. sometimes when i connect a new road then turn on sidewalks, it will put the sidewalk on the road and not generate new geo.
(side note, i also found one T intersection that appears to be the exact same as the others but it has the sidewalk button greyed out and i dont know why)

Any ideas? Thanks!

Here are some screens to help illustrate.

 

I'm trying to create a custom crossing prefab, and I've run into a few issues. Just a bit of background in case it's relevant: the mesh was created in SketchUp (yes, I know, not an ideal modeler for Unity), imported into Unity, cleaned up using ProBuilder, then exported to an asset which was imported back into my Unity project. The mesh is completely flat, i.e. all vertices are at y=0. I then dragged that asset onto the source object in the custom prefab window, selected "recalculate normals" and "recalculate tangents" then "update connection prefab."

I started to create the connections, starting with 0 at the bottom. In my mesh, 0 and 2, and 1 and 3 are identical widths (within <0.1 mm in SketchUp). I create new roads for 0 and 1, selecting the vertices for each. When I get to the opposite connection that should be able to use the same road as created for the first of the pair, it is not available in the selector (first 2 images). Attempting to use the crossing prefab shows both roads do in fact have identical widths (next 2 images).

Is there something I'm missing?

 

Hi Ben,

The icons are located in: /Assets/EasyRoads3D/textures.editor/. As a start you could check the status of these textures.

Regarding the EasyRoads3D version and upgrading from 2017.4 to 2018.2, the same version would be imported from the Assets tore if you would create a new Unity 2018.2 project so this cannot be EasyRoads3D version specific related.

Once again, this appears to be related to a Unity upgrade. It is hard to comment on this. Have you tried reimporting the Pro version? If you want you can email or send a PM with a link to the project so we can look at it.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Pheck,

The white surfaces are hidden in your screenshots. Can you switch them on in general Settings > Scene Settings and look if they are created correctly? Do the level with the road or perhaps with the side walk?

What is the sidewalk status on the crossing on the other end of that road? They must match. Once all is in place and a grey/green sidewalk handle is clicked, the sidewalk settings on the crossing on the other end will be auto adjusted. But this is not the case when connecting roads. In that scenario the sidewalk settings must match.

What is the exact situation when the sidewalk option is greyed out? For example, the sidewalk checkbox is disabled when a road is for example also connected to a custom prefab. Custom prefabs are based on imported meshes, they do not support built-in sidewalks at the moment.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Colin,

I am not sure if this is related , but what is imported for the system to read in meshes is that the outer edges are correctly identified. These edges are highlighted by the black dots.

In your image there are two black dots on the inner circle, that does not look right. It can potentially mess with the ordering of the edge vertices.

Could you send the prefab so we can test it on our end just to make sure the mesh itself works well?

When creating a new Custom Prefab, the button that generated the prefab asset in the project folder says "Build Connection Prefab". "Update Connection Prefab" (in the above quote) is the name of the same button after dropping an already existing Custom Prefab on the canvas. What exactly is the situation here? Was the custom prefab already created and is this related to updating the prefab after changes to the mesh?

In general, after creating a new road type from a connection, this new road type should be available in the dropdown for any other selected connection that matches this shape. And in the scene this means that roads should connect between these matching connections.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I see the dots you mention. I'm not sure what's going on with those. I will take a closer look at the mesh and see if something looks odd there. Unfortunately SketchUp doesn't produce the cleanest meshes, but it's the tool I'm most productive in (I really need to learn Blender). I'll send the mesh as-is via email (there doesn't seem to be a way to attach it here).

You're correct about the Build/Update Connection Prefab. I initially started out with an empty prefab, added my mesh, built the prefab. I re-opened the window to get the screenshots, hence the label.

 

Thank you! I will have a look at the prefab

Raoul

 

1 : it looks like the white surfaces are different with sidewalks on/off (images below). with sidewalks on, the white surface is higher than the road, but does not appear to reach the height of the sidewalk. as you can see in the image, its inconsistent across different sidewalks.

2 : ("fixed"/bug found) the sidewalk circles are on in all corners (images below for your reference). when i turn on one intersection it automatically turns on the connected intersection. i have also tried all combinations of manual clicking to make sure its not a automation bug.
(bug) it appears this issue is reproducible based on my setup. where i live sidewalks are 2 meters across and 0.1 meters high. i have changed the settings to do this, but since i couldnt get into the settings of one of the intersections (because sidewalk bool was grey) i couldnt set one intersection. when multiple connected intersections have different sidewalk settings, it doesnt play nice. once i deleted the intersection, set sidewalk bool before connect, then set the same values, it fixed everything visually. (i had set width, height and outer curb)

3 : (fixed...?) I dont use custom prefabs with ER setups, everything in this road network & project is stock ER. I havnt seen this issue show up in other scenes, but i have seen my road texture get swapped to a different road type when toggling on/off sidewalks. not sure why though.
("fix") if i create a new T intersection, i can set the sidewalk flag before hooking it up. for now this fixed the issue, not sure why i couldnt set the flag. possible related to the custom settings mentioned in the previous bullet.

4 : (new) is there any way to prevent intersections from moving their snap points when a connection is made? i see them move as if they are averaging the distance to the new road node. in the image below, the left part of the T intersection has become longer than the right. this happened when i connected the left road to the T.

 

Thank yo for the further details.

1) Is indeed v3.1.4 imported, can you double check this in the most right tab in the Inspector? Because the white surfaces not aligning correctly with the road was an issue in an older version. I belief it was trigger for sidewalks that do not have the outer curb activated.

2) yes, sidewalk settings for crossings connected to the same road must match. In late v3.2 the sidewalk system will get an upgrade that will make this more flexible.

3) I just tried to reproduce the greyed out sidewalk checkbox on T Crossings but no luck. Does this happen ina specific situation? For example when roads are connected and when these roads are connected to other crossings?

4) That happens when "Activate bending" is toggled on. Depending on the connection shape Indeed the sidewalk handle positions may not be exactly at the outer corner position but that should not have an affect on the road network itself. Does it?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

1:


3: ill let you know if i see more reproducible steps.

4: i dont think its impacting the road network, just inconsistent visuals from my want/expectation. Ill look for that setting. I have seen some issues with corners not blending their verts correctly.. for example overlapping z-fighting triangles and corners be rounded at different amounts and texture tile rates being different... etc.

 

1) Does this issue happen with all crossings? How can it be reproduced?

I had a quick look in the demo package in Unity 2018.3 with v3.1.4 imported. Using the same road type I tested sidewalks with and without outer curbs active. The white surfaces are correctly generated and the terrain deforms accordingly.



4. The "Activate bending" option is for intended for small angle changes. Indeed the triangulation can be off depending on the angle. The v3.2 Flex Connector will replace The T Crossing "Activate bending" option, sharp angle, Y crossings etc. are supported.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

currently, I am using EasyRoad3D v3 Pro and I want to export my road data in OpenDRIVE format (http://www.opendrive.org/) which is an open XML file format specification to describe a road network's logic.
So I was wondering if you heard of this file format and/or planning to work on this in the future?

Best,
swnc

 

Hi swnc,

OpenDRIVE has been brought up before here on the forum or perhaps by email. It is on the list to look into but with less priority since most user requests are related to expanding crossing options.

In any case, the road data is available through the scripting API so you do not depend on what is provided. Exporting to OpenDRIVE format is possible this way. V3.2 includes further improvements to road types and setting lane info. This data is also available through the scripting API for the full road network.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I was able to repro the issue in a different level with a few specific terrain setups. set your terrain width and length to 4000 and the height to 200. (yes thats large and a bit unusual when multiple terrains might work better... )
although i dont know why, it seems to also be related to the detail resolution but i cant get consistent repro to say why when playing with that number in relation to roads.
regardless of it being such a large terrain, non-sidewalk roads work fine, but sidewalk roads have zfighting issues or penetration issues.
increasing raise road network helps, but naturally thats raising all roads which isnt a good idea most of the time.

 

So the size of the terrain is 4000x200 which indeed is a little bit unusual. What is the heightmap resolution? This is important for creating these white surfaces.

Does all this work well for you on a more standard terrain, like the default terrain of 500x500, heightmap resolution 513?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

its 4000,4000,200
I didnt notice any issues on a default terrain size.

 

What is the heightmap resolution? Based on this, what is the Default Indent value in General Settings > Scene Settings?

I tested on 513, 1025 and 2049. After each heightmap respolution change I updated the Indent values to use the lowest possible based on the new heightmap resolution. I tested this on the existing road network similar to the one in my previous post. And also by disconnecting / reconnecting roads to crossings. At no point did the white surfaces break through the road.

What are the exact steps to reproduce? Would it be possible to look at your project? Can you email or PM a download link?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

sorry i cant share the project... plus its about 20gigs so i doubt you would want to grab it.
ill do a repro walk through in a moment and get that to you.

sorry heres terrain settings.

 

Repro steps:
make a new scene
add a terrain (width 4000, length 4000)
add easyroads object (import all presets)
add road (secondary road type) add 3 road nodes in a line using shift left click method
deselect any road nodes
add secondary T crossing (add it to the scene with shift left click, dont let it auto connect)
connect road to T crossing
turn on sidewalks by clicking the spheres
build terrain

(i did not test for other variants that may produce the same result. this is just a 100% repro path i know of)

result:

 

Thank you, I can reproduce this with these settings and steps. I will look into this.

It does not happen when pulling out roads from the crossing. Also activating the outer curb fixes the problem.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

interesting, yes in the test level, activating outer curb improves/fixs the issue.
In my production level, activating outer curbs improves the situation but doesnt fix it everywhere. ... ??? odd.
here is what i see with outer curb turned on after i build the terrain/roads:
(i dont see any other issue areas though, so its the last spot. i have tried modifying the terrain in the area to improve the result, but it doesnt seem to help.)

 

What is the situation here? In your previous post the roads were laid out on a new flat terrain. Is that perhaps the case here and are some road markers raised? In that case, it could be that the road spline moves below the terrain at y = 0. Since it is impossible to apply negative height values to the terrain, the terrain can break through the road. What do you mean with modifying the terrain.

Since this appears to be related to a specific spot, it is very hard to comment on it. being able to have a look at this will certainly help.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

same section from the previous photos. flat terrain (mostly... some minor changes in height) and squared up roads.

looking into that section some more for additional variables, it looks like I-connectors are related to the issue.
the connection is:
T > road > i > road
^^^^^problem shows up here

I use the iconnector to choose where i want the sidewalk to end, otherwise i wouldnt need it.

when i disconnect the i connector, it doesnt show the artifacts. seems related, but i dont know the architecture.