World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Looks absolutely epic!

 

Hi tex5564,

There will be more control over sidewalks on roads in 3.2, crosswalk options and stppoing / startin a sidewalk at any point along the road. So checking whether a road has sidewalks may not be enough. How will you use the info?

Sidewalks will be included in the new AI options in v3.2. Perhaps that will already cover what you are looking for?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

That is not correct. I requested it more than three times in the last two years!

Besides that, this could push the importance of your asset because there are not so many assets out there with such a functionality.

Maybe you could create those controllers as separate addons (sub assets) if there is too much work on it. Personally, I do not need it in the next few weeks but later this year.

A small dreamy look (with feature requests):
- create any type of "usable" sideobject
- create hanging sideobjects, like ropeway
- create railway tracks for rack railway, monorail
- create railway tracks for tram (this means, railways embedded in roads/crossings, too)
- create rivers (this is already included)
...and this all with vehicle controllers.

I know... this would be a complex extension but really great.
(If necessary, you could offer these controller package separatly.)

 

I did not say train controllers is never requested

There is a lot more demand for features that are directly related to the core of the tool, creating road networks rather then runtime features. Nevertheless, these runtime features are being worked on as well, for instance the new AI options in v3.2.

I am not saying that it is not on the list at all We just have to set priorities, http://unityterraintools.com/survey.php

Have a look at feature requests here on the forum, if they are fairly simple they are added almost instantly and available in the next update. A train controller is something we have no experience with, we will have to dig into it.

What about the link in my previous post?

"Usable" in what way? What would you like to see added to achieve that?

I assume you like to see some sort of physics added to this? Because by itself it is already possible.

Just like rivers, monorails can also already be created through side objects. Only railways embedded in roads and crossings is not possible at the moment.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

What I'm trying to create is auto-spawning pedestrian AI characters.

It spawns on any sidewalk positions 50~60m away from the player, and it walks along only sidewalk points.
At first look into every roads and connectors and check if the sidewalk is active or not,
and if it is, calculate all distances between the player and sidewalk points(I don't know sidewalk has its own points), and determine the position which is 50~60m away from the player.
After that, pedestrian's navmesh agent sets the destination along the sidewalk points, and when it gets to crossings, check all connected roads and select the one which has sidewalk.

This might be achieved with spawning empty side objects left and right side of the road manually and name it "Sidewalk Waypoint L(R)",
but It will be very useful if we've got API methods to access the sidewalk on each roads and connectors, and get the spline points of sidewalk, imaging something like this:

Code (CSharp):

1. foreach(ERRoad road in roads)
2.         {
3.             Vector3[] sidewalkPoints = road.GetSidewalkPoints();
4.             foreach(Vector3 point in sidewalkPoints)
5.             {
6.                 float dis = Vector3.Distance(point, player.position);
7.                 if(dis > 50 && dis < 60)
8.                 {
9.                     determinedPos = point;
10.                     return;
11.                 }
12.             }
13.         }

 

This will be possible but as mentioned in my previous post, sidewalks can be started / ended along the track so something like road.GetSidewalkPoints() will probably not work.

Crosswalk options will also be added. This will work similar as for roads on crossings. Once the character reaches a crosswalk the current set of sidewalk points will end. From that point the character can continue on the same sidewalk (if the sidewalk continues) based on a new set of points or cross the road, etc. The same near crossings, if there is a crosswalk, the character can cross the street otherwise it will continue to follow the sidewalk points of the sidewalk at that crossing corner.

An API method can be added that will return all sidewalks available on a road including the points.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

So current v3.2 beta has no methods to access sidewalks but will be added (including crosswalk options) in somewhere in v3.2 development?
Alright, until then I implement it with empty side objects. Thanks.

 

Access to sidewalk data is indeed not yet part of the current v3.2 beta.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

OK, One more thing:

I'm making car AI of left-hand traffic like Japan, UK, Australia based on ERVehicle.cs.
The problem is connection, that always connects roads from right lane to another right lane,
so if I get the road's connection with GetConnectionAtEnd/Start(),
it returns connection bridging from right side to another right side, which is reverse for left-hand traffic.
I think this related to dynamic prefab's behaviour, but is it possible to make connection to connect from left lane to another left lane?

 

That will be added.

General Settings > AI Traffic > Traffic Direction

The option is inactive at the moment. It is indeed a matter of reversing the points

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

2 questions for you:

1.
Is there a way to change the road type of a road that's been connected to a connector? It seems like the option is greyed out when connected.

2. How do I remove road types / connector prefabs from the selection list? Using the "Manage road types" window offers the option to check a road type and click remove, but it's still in the list after. Is there no way of removing connection prefabs at all?

Again, thanks so much!

 

Hi marcrem,

1. The road type is currently greyed out when there are no other matching road types available or when sidewalks are involved. This is based on the crossing connection on both ends of the road. Which road types are involved? This is not the case for Flex Connectors in v3.2.

2. Road types can be removed from the scene from General Settings > Road Types > Delete Selected Road Type (near the bottom). "Manage Road Types" will remove the road type from the project. However, if this road type is still used in an active scene, it will be written back to the project list. Connector prefabs are stored in: /Assets/EasyRoads3D/Resources/dynamic prefabs/ and /Assets/EasyRoads3D/Resources/custom prefabs/ and can be removed from there

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Raoul,

Thanks for a great asset. I am trying to "master" it but I am having difficulty doing a very basic thing - attach a crossing to an existing road. I know it must be very simple but I can't seem to figure out the work flow. Basically I create a default road, then a default x crossing. How to connect them?

 

Hi wmaass88,

In the situation in the image it is a matter of selecting the blue marker handle of the road and drag it towards the green connection handle. The road will snap to the connection when within range. This is how it works for crossing prefabs already in the scene. From there other roads can be connected to the green handles or a new road can be pulled out from the green handle, mouse down and drag.

Other options to create crossings are:

1. Select any marker of a road, open the connections tab in the Inspector. In this situation only connection prefabs will display that match the selected road. Selecting one will insert it and align it with the road.

2. Move any marker over another road section. When a blue sphere appears it means that connection / crossing prefabs are available for the involved road types. Releasing the mouse button at this point will insert a crossing and connect the roads.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Good evening,

I just bought 3dRoads3D Pro and I'm having trouble with something really basic. I downloaded the Demo Project and imported it into a new project (Unity 2019.1.1f1, lastest version).

I'm gonna try to use the asset for runtime stuff, so I loaded the "scene runtime" scene to start testing stuff. When trying to create a road at runtime, I'm getting a NullReference.

I tried running the scene as it comes with the project, and was getting null references, so I played around a bit and found out the following:

On the ERRoadNetwork class, calling the CreateRoad(....) function, only the versions of the function that DO NOT include the ERRoadType seem to be working.

There are 4 version of the function:

ERRoadNetwork.CreateRoad(string); WORKS
ERRoadNetwork.CreateRoad(string, ERRoadType); DOESN'T WORK
ERRoadNetwork.CreateRoad(string, Vector3[]); WORKS
ERRoadNetwork.CreateRoad(string, ERRoadType, Vector3[]); DOESN'T WORK

This is the error I'm getting with any of the 2 non-working versions.

NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
EasyRoads3Dv3.ERRoad.Refresh () (at <69cf1a9e593e4f2ca7976a517a06d72c>:0)
EasyRoads3Dv3.ERRoad.SetWidth (System.Single width) (at <69cf1a9e593e4f2ca7976a517a06d72c>:0)
EasyRoads3Dv3.ERRoadNetwork.CreateRoad (System.String roadName, EasyRoads3Dv3.ERRoadType roadType) (at <69cf1a9e593e4f2ca7976a517a06d72c>:0)
runtimeScript.Test2 () (at Assets/EasyRoads3D/Scripts/runtimeScript.cs:210)
runtimeScript.Update () (at Assets/EasyRoads3D/Scripts/runtimeScript.cs:245)

Any clue what might be happening? I tried feeding it an ERRoadType created in code, and also one picked from ERRoadNetwork.GetRoadTypes(), doesn't matter, both fail.

Thank you.

 

Hi Raoul,

Is it possible to prevent a mesh side object to reapeat itself along the road ? I need it only once at a time in different locations on the road network.

I can make it parametric which do the job visually, but this side object is a prefab with multiple colliders and the parametrization get rid of all of this.

Thanks

 

Hi Izanamya,

That is not possible at the moment. Closest would be to set the "Distance between objects" value to a large value and only activate it on specific marker sections where required. But that could very well still spawn the object at the end of these sections as well.

What you are asking is planned for v3.3. but that will not be available soon. What can be added for the next update is prevent that object from being spawned at the end as well when the distance to the end of the active section is shorter then "Distance between objects".

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I'm not sure if this is related to EasyRoads specifically, but I'm trying to figure out what's going on here. In the right picture you can see that the sidewalk seems to show through the vehicle. It happens at certain viewing distances/angels. Any advice? I've played around with clipping planes already, but no difference.

 

Hi rafvasq,

The images are a little bit small but this appears to be material related, the offset values on the shader. Which packages do you have imported? Which shader does the sidewalk use? How strong are the offset values?

This offset option is more intended for roads, not so much for sidewalks. And on more flat roads, like city roads, it is probably not really required. It is especially intended for hilly areas, it will take care of issues with the unity terrain breaking through the road when the terrain LOD system kicks in.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Apologies in advance if this question has been asked before, but: I have Vegetation Studio Pro installed, but there appear no options for automatically attaching VS vegetation mask splines to road geometry under Terrain Management in EasyRoads3D. Do I have to perform any manual steps? VEGETATION_STUDIO_PRO is defined as a symbol.

Thanks.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. The sidewalks were using EasyRoads3D>Unity 5 Standard. I switched to the Standard shader and works better now. Thanks again.

 

Hi PeterB,

Which version of EasyRoads3D do you have imported?

/Assets/EasyRoads3D/scripts/ERVegetationStudio.cs

This script should check for VEGETATION_STUDIO_PRO in all recent versions.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I have the latest one from the Asset Store, 3.1.7. I also have the example project loaded, and the HD asset. The /Assets/EasyRoads3D/scripts/ERVegetationStudio.cs file does not check VEGETATION_STUDIO_PRO, only VEGETATION_STUDIO.

 

Ah. It seems that the Demo package redefines ERVegetationStudio.cs with an earlier version. Removing ER completely and reinstalling the base package plus the HD one works perfectly. But the Demo project destroys the installation when loaded.

 

Thanks raoul. Is there a reason why they would not snap together in the example pic?

 

Thank you for reporting that! Indeed importing the demo package afterwards will overwrite it. Importing the EasyRoads3D Pro package afterwards will fix that.

I will have a look and make sure that file is up to date in the demo package as well.

Raoul

 

Hi Binary-Soul,

My apologies for the late reply, I only just saw your post.

There is indeed an issue with these functions in v3.1.7. This is fixed in the next update. Please contact us by mail or PM if you need this to work urgently.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,

Do you mean the blue marker does not snap to the green handle? What exactly happens when the blue marker is selected and when moving it towards the green handle?

It appears these are the default road types and the crossing connections match the road type. Snapping will not work when the road shapes do not match, in that case the green handle will turn red after selecting the blue marker handle.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I didn't save that scene to test unfortunately. However I am having success now and am able to connect roads and crossing. Thanks for your help!

 

Couple more questions:

The reason why I need to learn how to connect roads and crossings is that I am using Real World Terrain to automatically generate terrain and roads from real locations. In the attached example how would connect up the overlapping roads to an x crossing? Is there a way to split the roads so that I can insert an x crossing and then attach the roads?

And can I change the width of the roads easily?

[edit] I see how to split them now. Select node and Shift J.

 

Hi wmaass88,

I am not sure what the status of Real World Terrain currently is, how the roads are generated. After selecting a road, is a road type selected in the road type dropdown in the Inspector or does it say "Select Road Type"?

It is very much recommended to work with road types, this can be done through the scripting API when auto generating roads from data. In that case changing the road road width is a matter of changing the road width in General Settings > Road Types. The "Update Scene Instances" button near the bottom in the road type section will update the width on all roads of that type.

Yes, Shift + J or the "Split Road Selected Marker" near the bottom of the marker section in the Inspector does that.

This split operation is not necessary when working with road types, selecting the marker and opening the connections tab in the Inspector will show matching connections, selecting one will auto insert it at the selected marker.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thank you for your reply Raoul.

Good to know I wasn't just being dumb haha. I think I can probably work around the problem without too much trouble and just wait for the next update. If I see it turns to be a real problem, I'll write back.

After testing it out a bit more I came out with another doubt. Is there any reason why the minimum Left/Right Indent and Left/Right Surrounding values of a road marker are 5? I tried to override it in code to make it something smaller but saw it can't be done. I guess there's a good reason for that min value, but couldn't really understand what it was.

 

Hi Binary-Soul,

ok, just let us know, we can always sent a build.

5 is the default value. The global value can be set in General Settings > Scene Settings. But for the Indent value it can never be lower then the heightmapscale plus a small margin of the Unity terrain object in your scene. This is to guarantee the best possible terrain deformation results.

Or, are the values changed through the scripting API? That will require a Refresh() afterwards, but this will probably throw the same error as in your previous post in v3.1.7.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

RWT us creating the roads with default road type, which is fine for now while I learn. Thanks for that tip on the split operation and road types, works much better, quicker and cleaner than what I was doing.

 

raoul,

Is it possible to connect 2 roads with different widths to a crossing? In this example I set the main road (the one with the parked red car) at 11.5 width. The smaller road is 6. When I connected them with an x crossing the main road reverted to 6.

 

Hi again,

What would be the best way of doing shoulders? we got the pack here:
https://assetstore.unity.com/packag.../roads/easyroads3d-pro-add-on-hd-roads-118774

what we'd like to do is have just like the size of sidewalks, but made of asphalt to create roads that will look like this:

 

Hi wmaass88,

Road types are assigned to the connections, that is what the road width is based on. For each connection on a crossing prefab the road type can be adjusted by selecting the prefab in the hierarchy:

Inspector >EasyRoads3D component > Connection Settings > Select Road Preset

The new Flex Connector coming v3.2 will handle this sort of situation better and easier.

http://unityterraintools.com/v3beta.php

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi marcrem,

The HD Roads package does not include shoulders like in the image, it does have for example dust strips as side objects and also sidewalks as side objects. The same approach could be followed for the shoulders.

In this case you may want to look at the procedural side object option to split the source prefab in start / mid and end sections. These start and end sections can look slightly different so they blend in nicely at the start / end near crossings.

Various side objects in the demo package use this approach, for example the concrete barriers, guard rails, the bridge. Please let me know if you have more questions regarding this part.

Once setup they can be auto activated for this specific road type in the road type settings. That way the will be generated automatically.

Alternatively the shoulders can be part of the road texture but it seems you will be using the roads in the HD Roads package.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul ,

I create a simulation environment(10 x 11 km) with easyroad v3.16
In the scene , i create more city road and 2 highway roads with the new road type (add by "Road Types" in the "General Settings tab")
It seems work normally by unity editor , but when I build it to an executable package and run it
Some texture of the roads become abnormal like " Abnormal_RoadTexture.jpg" and some texture of road still normally like " Normal_RoadTexture.jpg "

Below is my step to create the road_network of the scene:
1. Duplicate the texture "roadsample_d.jpg" to "roadsample_d_noLine.jpg" and remove the white line
2. Create a material like " Inspector_roadsample_d_noline_material.png " Setting
3. Add New Road type(duplicate by "Default Road") with "roadsample_d_noline" (road width = 8/ 16/ 30 M )
4. Use the new road type to create all roads in the scene

The abnormal roads seems occurred with the part of the highway road(Road width 16 M) .

Would you have any idea to fix the abnormal roads ?

Thanks
Johnny77Lee

 

Hi Johnny77Lee,

This is most likely related to floating point inaccuracies on the road UVs on longer roads. In that case. The road will look all good at the start, at some point further along the road the texture inaccuracies start to appear and this will become worse further along the track.

This situation does come up now and then here on the forum. V2 included an option that deals with this, it was not added to v3 because in v3 roads will generally be cut in separate objects after inserting crossings which eliminates the problem. With improved motorway support coming in v3.2 this feature will also be added to v3.

Meanwhile there are two fixes:

1. Insert I connectors at intervals at a distance just before the texture inaccuracies start to happen. Inserting I Connectors will also split the road in separate objects.

2. The reason why this happens in the final build and not in the Unity editor is most likely related to the project settings, specifically: Project Settings > Player > Other Settings > Optimization > Vertex Compression > Tex Coord 0

Switching this off for Tex Coord 0 should also fix the problem.

Or do these materials have different results on exactly the same road (same length)?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi guys! I have endless refreshing when add HD roads add-on in my project:



Easy roads - v3.1.7
HD add-on - v1.1

Has anyone come across this?

 

Hi Sound_Priest,

General Settings > Scene Settings > Refresh Road Network

Do you mean this starts by itself or does it hang when doing a road network refresh? At which action, after selecting the road network object? And is it indeed directly related to having the HD Roads package imported as well?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I would like to make a prefab from the game object "Road Network", because several people work on the scene and it needs to be reverted from time to time. But making a prefab produces errors when working with the street connections. Is there any chance to get this fixed?

 

Apologies for being slightly off-topic, but does anyone know of a good source of sidewalk and curb materials for Unity (preferably LWRP)? Most of the textures included with ER3D are excellent, but I've never seen a sidewalk that looked right to me (not just in ER3D, any Unity example I've seen of sidewalks just doesn't look right to me), and my efforts so far have failed miserably. There is a really nice concrete used for the Jersey barrier side object, but it doesn't look like a sidewalk. Specifically what I'm looking for is the traditional North American broom-finished surface. At this point I don't even care about the expansion joints -- I can model those in Blender myself and generate normals, etc.

I don't know what it is, but I am completely incapable of making a realistic looking concrete, no mater how beautiful the source textures, normals, etc. I start with. I've had no trouble with using high-resolution texture images for other materials -- brick pavements, asphalt, tactile paving, etc., but concrete just ends up looking spectacularly fake once it's in Unity. I suppose it's consistent in that I have the same difficulties in achieving the desired results in the real world with actual concrete.

 

Hi MadAboutPandas3,

The situation with prefabs is that it requires the mesh assets of all roads crossings etc. to be physically present in the project folder. Unity stores the mesh assets by default in the scene file when generating the meshes. There is an option in Build mode to save the mesh assets in the project folder but it is recommended to only do that once the road network is ready if you prefer to have these assets in the project folder.

One way to work as you described would be by storing the road network in a separate scene and load this scene in the hierarchy as well. Or only do this when someone else has to work on the road network in another scene. 1) Load the complete scene with the road network. 2) Load an empty scene int he hierarchy, drag the Road Network object from the original scene to the empty scene and save the empty scene. This scene now acts as the "prefab".

Would that work?

Thanks,
Raou

 

Hi Colin,

The HD Roads package includes two sidewalk materials also for LWRP. The sidewalk system will get an upgrade in v3.2 more sidewalk materials will follow.

As we are located in Europe, is this what you are looking for?

https://www.google.com/search?q=Nor...66LiAhUj3uAKHfNlBJoQ_AUIDigB&biw=1920&bih=969

Regarding concrete in general, the HD Roads package also includes concrete road types



Above is a damaged variation texture blended with a dirt texture. Below is a cleaner variation




Thanks,
Raoul

 

I need to take another look at the HD Roads package. Last time I looked was a few months ago and I hadn't discovered LWRP (or at least hadn't discovered that it wasn't some specialized hard-to-use feature that I didn't have the bandwidth to learn, but is instead way easier for me at least to understand and configure). Here is the "classic" North American sidewalk (uncured): https://concretesealerreviews.com/what-should-i-use-to-seal-a-concrete-driveway/ Or the image at the top here: https://safety.fhwa.dot.gov/ped_bike/tools_solve/fhwasa13037/chap3.cfm

Diversion: In general, in the US and Canada sidewalks tend to be divided into rectangular segments are 3-4 feet wide (1-1.3m) and 5-6 feet long, although current standards recommend a minimum width of 5 feet (1.64m).

I'm of course trying to duplicate existing as-built, and while the sidewalk in front of my house is the typical US style, I've since noticed our downtown/Main St sidewalks are in fact divided up into squares, although I've always found any concrete material I've tried always looks way too dark. The sample image you've provided looks amazing however. Mine never seem to look like that.

 

The HD Roads package includes a "SRP Support" folder with both LWRP and HDRP packages.

It looks like perhaps the current concrete texturepart of the HD Roads packages I posted on the previous page can be used as a starting point for this type of sidewalk. I will certainly make a note of this for the sidewalk upgrade in v3.2

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi @raoul ,
The new EasyRoads 3.2 looks promising and I have two question in regards to it. The first question is when the final version will be released? And the other question is, can I use custom prefabs and custom side objects with it (without any modification) for the non-beta and final version of EasyRoads 3.2?

Best.

 

Hi D4N005H,

V3.2 will be a big update, there is no release date set. More new features like motorway exits will be added. The final release also depends on the feedback on the betas. Are you waiting for something specific?

The system itself works exactly the same as currently in v3.1. With regard to custom road shapes in v3.2, the main changes are the option in General Settings > Road Types, creating new road shapes directly within the tool and the new Flex Connector supporting these custom road shapes. The system by itself can already handle custom road shapes in the current version by importing models and extracting the shape from defined connections so there are no changes here.

And because the system for attaching roads to crossings remains the same, custom prefabs indeed still integrate well with built-in crossing options.

The new features have no affect on the side objects system either, v3.1 side objects will work in v3.2

Thanks,
Raoul