World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Hi Mayureshete,

As mentioned, Remove marker: R key

Insert Marker: select the road, move the mouse to the point where you want to indert a marker and hit the I key.

http://www.unityterraintools.com/EasyRoads3D/v3/html/shortcuts.html

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Beta 7.7.1 is now available for download from our website

This is a small update with some bug fixes and small improvements.

You can now quickly duplicate objects. This can be useful to align objects according a certain pattern, like tree lines.

Some general Side Object settings are now also adjustable per object. Sometimes you want different random rotation values for a specific side object instance (like for older fences) or X position relative to the road (guard rails). This can now be set in the Inspector for the selected road object. A new foldout menu will be available with road specific settings for that side object.

As always please backup your project first before importing the update.

The asset store update is pending approval. If you like to already try the update but you do not have the website download link yet, please pm/email me including your 9 digit order id..

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

one question about railroads. How should I build a railroad station? Should I use custom templates/textures instead of the default "road textures" and build the railroad as a "pseudo road"? Or should I use side object?
Is there a way to build exactly straight tracks? This would be important for railway platforms. And how can I build several parallel railroad tracks?

Cheers,
Tom

 

We've found that the best way to create straight or parallel roads (or tracks) is to place one marker at the start and end of each straight, select each marker one at a time, and paste the appropriate x and z values into the marker position which can be found just under Side Object Status foldout menu. If you plan your scene in advance, it is easier if you make these roads / tracks run parallel to x or z axis.

 

Hi Tom,

Do you mean the railroad station itself excluding the railroad track? If this is a traditional straight railroad station without curves and you only need this once I would probably simply model it and don't use EasyRoads3D for this. If you do need several stations and perhaps also across scenes or when the rail road tracks are curved and the station need to exactly match that curve, then I would prepare this as a side object.

I am not entirely sure what you mean with, is this actually about the railroad itself? The main scene in the beta package includes an example of a rail road track build using side objects.

Regarding straight tracks, you can change the Controller Type per marker. The default is the Spline Controller, other options are Straight XZ (the height is still spline based), Straight XYZ (perfect straight) or Circular.

For perfect parallel tracks you could also experiment with creating a dual rail road side object track so both tracks are created in a single EasyRoads3D object, this kind of thing is also on my list of things to do.

Also with regard to what sstrong wrote, the new "Duplicate Object" in the beta update announced yesterday could be helpful to create objects parallel to each other. After duplicating the object all markers are selected so you can move the object. The tricky thing with this is terraind eformation and possible height differences. The parallel tracks must be separated far enough that terrain deformation of one doesn't interfere with the other. This is related to your terrain heightmapscale / minimum required Indent values. These surfaces should not overlap. One more advantage when using a dual railroad track which results in both tracks being aligned the same with the terrain.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Uhh... I think, this is not a practical idea. First of all I create the terrain - naturally. THEN I place any objects/assets. So I have to turn my map in order to build the tracks parallel? Hm... I imagine, that this can be painful in a complex world...

 

Agreed - go with Raoul's solution. In the past, we've calculated the offset for the start and end positions...

 

When making rivers, I've wondering if there is any way to change the width per marker, like we would when say making a fence with a different offset from a road. Is this possible in the current version?

 

Hi Raoul,

Yeah, I think, that's it. I'm not sure, if I understood you right, can I create multiple railroad side objects for now? I haven't tested yet. I mean... not only "dual", I need more then two parallel tracks... three, four, five or so..
Is this already integrated or is this on your "roadmap"?

I plan to build multiple tracks, place some custom markers and place some railroad switches in there. So I get a whole rail station railroad system - theoretical...

 

Hi Stephen,

The B key toggles on/off sphere shape node handles for the selected marker and selected side object. After selecting one of the handles you can reposition it, the shape (width) for that marker will update. Doing this while holding the Shift key will also move the handles on the outer side which is probably what you want to make a river wider.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Tom,

It is not that railroad systems are part of EasyRoads3D. But you can use the side object system to simulate this. Taking the single rail road side object as an example, it isn't limited to one solid object only (the left and right rail are separate objects).

So in theory I would think adding a second, third or fourth rail road track should work fine. But, as mentioned, it is not something I have tested yet. And this will probably result in heavy geometry depending on how detailed your final railroad shape will be .

Yes, when you add railroad switches, you should be able to create a railroad system

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I must be doing something wrong. Here's my workflow:

1. Create new "road" but tick "Side Object"
2. Under "Side Objects Status", tick "River Surface" and "River Bed"
3. Add markers in Scene view
4. Select a marker - can move on x,z axes - press B but nothing happens

 

Provided that the "River Surface" and "River Bed" side objects are the only two active for that object, which means for sure one of these two side objects is selected in the dropdown in the Inspector, these steps should work fine.

I just double checked the river example in the main demo scene. This works as expected.

These handles are white sphere handles. How far is the cam from the marker? Did you zoom in to the marker? Can you show screenshots?

The same functionality is available for road shape changes per marker, the N key activates this.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Ok, I was too far away to see them. Thanks. Is there any way to move the four spheres (1 for surface, 3 for river bed edge) all at the same time to widen the river? The multiple small spheres are great for fine tuning, but when I'm just trying to get the general shape a single sphere would be good (or even the resize Unity handle - although I haven't used this myself yet in an editor script). Or even just typing in a width would be great.

 

At the moment you cannot adjust shapes simultaneously for two side objects.

I could add a global scale option for the shape per marker. But in this case the riverbed nodes are laid out to both create the actual river bed and the part outside the river bed which should cover the terrains heightmaps scale in order to get a smooth river bank. When you would scale down all nodes, the distance between the outer nodes could become too small not covering enough terrain points resulting in a less smooth river bank.

Regarding moving all 3 river bed edge handles, pressing Shift will move the selected handle and all outer handles. I mentioned that in my previous reply

Thanks,
Raoul

 

moved to other thread:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/ea...gin-version-online.22097/page-18#post-2652595

 

Yes, but sometimes my markers would work weirdly and at times my road disappeared all together leaving the markers there, then my project would crash little after that. But I assume those bugs were fixed since last time I used v2 which was more than a year ago (new updates, new Unity releases).

Thank you!

Also, a few issues I've seen in v3:

1. Sometimes, when I click the road (built, but not finalized) or a crossing that is connected to a road, I get the following recurrent error in the editor:

ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Argument is out of range.
Parameter name: index
System.Collections.Generic.List`1[System.Collections.Generic.List`1[UnityEngine.Vector3]].get_Item (Int32 index) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/mono/build/mcs/class/corlib/System.Collections.Generic/List.cs:633)
EasyRoads3Dv3Editor.DOQQDSQQDQODD.OnSceneGUI ()​

In some cases, it crashes my scene and sometimes it just turns the scene window black, but I can save my work and restart Unity.

2. This one is related to the mapping on the T-Crossing. Please see below:





It seems to be more noticeable when you create wider connections on a crossing. I haven't tested it yet on X-Crossings to see if the issue is also the same.

 

Hi schala,

I am unaware of this sort of issues with v2. V2 is almost obsolete, critical issues will be fixed though so if you want me to look into that, let me know.

Regarding the v3 issues, did you upgrade to beta 7.7.1 which was released two days ago?

Since you mention, wider connections, it seems you are tweaking the dynamic crossing settings. The previous beta had a bug related to exactly that. This is fixed in the 7.7.1 update. Perhaps your issues are related to that as well.

7.7.1 is pending approval by the asset store team but you can already download it from our website. In case you do not have the download link yet, please email/pm me with your asset store order number, I will send it to you. But I will be out in a minute, I will be back later this afternoon.

How are you connecting the roads? Are you pulling out new roads from these connections? This is what triggers the bug I mentioned, it does not happen when you attach the first or last marker of an already existing road to the crossing. Does that work well for you?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Ok. Thanks. Here is an Edit mode and a river after it has been built. I've seen this before but can't remember how to get round it. What I'm after is a river that widens out at a particular point (marker).

 

Just sent you a PM for the download link. I'll wait until you are back, no worries.

And you are right, In most cases, I'm pullling the roads out of these connections. Thanks for letting me know. Connecting the roads instead seems to work fine.

 

Hi Stephen,

I cannot clearly see the position of the river surface relative to the river bed because of the top down angle in especially the second image. Is the river surface located at the marker height well above the bottom of the river bed?

This is tested in the beta package main demo scene. The river bed and rive rsurface side objects appear to be working fine. One thing I noticed, and what I also see in your screenshot, is that the geometry resolution is locked to 0.5. This has been fixed and will work well in the next release.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi schala,

I just sent a reply

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hey Raoul, just experimenting with placing roads on the edge of a slope. See attached. Is there any way to smooth (lerp) the heighmap values between the edge of the road and the outer edge or the road region?

 

The terrain at that point was pretty flat and I had "Snap To Terrain" turned on - which is what was causing the problem. Turned this off and the river surface built correctly.

 

Hi Stephen,

What you see is a logical result of the grid based nature of the unity terrain object, the steeper the edge the more noticable that sawtooth shape will get. There is nothing you can do about it regarding the the unity terrain object since you cannot add detail points. The only thing you can do is increasing the heightmap resolution so the sawtooth shape becomes smaller. EasyRoads3D does have smooth options in Build Mode which will soften that sawtooth shape but that will soften the edge as well.

The alternative is to use side objects to generate either a wall or a terrain mesh overlay, that will smoothly follow the road. This can be done with the shape type of side object which allows you to snap shape nodes to the terrain. Secondly you adjust the terrain deformation setting for the affected markers in the Inspector. This way you can achieve something like this:



The wall can be replaced with a terrain mesh as well just like on the inner side. It is not possible to get a similar smooth result by using a terrain object only.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Yes, "Snap to the terrain" will not work well here for the river surface

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello, when i make a road and wish to add crossing prefab to it , road width automatically resize to crossing prefab's width

Such as my road is motorway 2x2 , width 28

if i connect road to crossing prefab , than road width drop to 9. And i cant change crossing prefab size from 9 to anything else. Even i increase or decrease value , nothing change on scene view. Can you help me? thank you

 

Hello f1b0n4cc1,

At the moment road objects will inherit the connection settings they are attached to. This is done because you can also quickly pull out new roads from connections, so it is necessary that the crossing connection holds the data required for these roads.

Also, you can create new dynamic crossings specific to what you need in you scenes. This way you can quickly reuse these crossings. You can assign road types to crossing connections, the width of the connection will adapt and roads pulled out of this connection will automatically use the specific road type settings, materials, etc.

This workflow is explained in the first sections of the manual. The below video (part of the video list on http://www.unityterraintools.com/EasyRoads3D/v3/html/quick_start.html) shows how to create new dynamic crossings.

In v3.x, the other way around will also work, connections updating to road types.

How are you changing the width? Do you get error messages?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi again, now in v3

I've just ported everything to v3, but i cannot find the bumpy road option, its no available?

 

Hi Brocan,

Ah, you are using subdivision!

The dynamic crossing system in v3 is currently based on roads with no subdivision. That is also why the bumpiness feature of v2 is not available yet.

Subdivision can be achieved by using custom prefabs. Road objects inherit the geometry structure of the connection they are attached to. So if that connection has subdivision, the connected road will have sub division. You can also change the road shape per marker per segment. This way you can add bumpiness over a longer distance between markers to the road. Not the extreme bumpiness you can also do in v2.

Let me know if this bit is very important for you and you want some guidance on how you can quickly experiment with this.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

You can also create custom bumpy roads using LB and ER3 Integration. Here is a quick example.

 

Thanks sstrong, but i already have a custom terrain which can't change. I'll look it for future projects.

Yes, i use subdivision in v2 for making the mountain part of the truck look crappy and old; but the repetitive pattern of noise created a bad experience. Maybe i'm going to make some bumps directly in the terrain when the road was finalized; or there is some kind of way for saving this bumps from terrain smooth when the road is built?

BTW, i'll check the connections stuff. I've made three conection objects for connecting the 3 types of road, but i don't understand how use connection editor, how define custom connectors and how adding custom models for connections . I'll check them later.

Another question is texture filtering, although i've quality settings in fantastic, and anisotropic forced on, is like the road material ignores it:



And everytime i change the road shader (even using easyroads\bump or easyroads\standard unity5), the road goes black (or white some times) :\


One last question, what happens if i build the project without finalize the road object? (but with roads built)

Thanks in advance!

 

Hi Brocan,

Yes, the bumpiness in v2 does get a repetitive look on short distances. This will look more natural in v3. meanwhile as mentioned you add bumpiness (make the road lokk less flat) over longer distances by tweaking the road shape per marker.

Could you check the UV Tiling value in the Inspector of the selected road? It seems low.

You mention "anisotropic forced on", what is the Aniso Level of the texture?

Objects are rendered in black in Unity 5 when using normalmaps and the mesh does not have tangent info. Could you check if "Caluclate Tangents" in the Build Settings and optionally also in General SettIngs > Scene Settings, is switched on?

This video shows custom road networks and the process of turning a mesh into a connection prefab (examples at 0.20 and 3.10):

Let me know if something is not clear.

"Finalize" means that all script components will be removed. You only want to do this if you are not using the runtime API and just before creating the final build of your game. And probably you want to do that using a backup so you still have the original road network. Indeed this Finalize option is also available before "Building" the project. "Build" primarily updates the terrain object, v3 also works without a terrain object so "Build" is not really required. In this case you can Finalize the road network directly.


Thanks,
Raoul

 

hi,

using v3 here.
I followed your advice on creating a rectangular roundabout in a 3d authoring application.
But now I am getting some undesired terrain skirt errors that result in bad terrain topology:


Any idea how to fix this?

 

Hi Marco,

The white surfaces are not generated correctly. Are the connections added clockwise in the Custom Prefab Window (ideally starting at the bottom)?

Other then that, this involves custom meshes, it is almost impossible to say what goes wrong. If you want you can email me the object so I can look at it.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thx, that fixed it. Bottom, clockwise - yay.

 

Hey Raoul. I've been using Easy Roads extensively and I'm very happy with it. Just wondering, is it just me and my implementation or easy roads does not support normal maps on roads? Every time I add a normal map to a road material, it turns black. I'm using deferred rendering and linear lighting.

Is this standard behavior?

Cheers.

 

Hi Alberto,

Glad to hear you like v3!

In Unity 5 objects are rendered in black when using normalmaps while the mesh does not have tangent info. Could you check if "Calculate Tangents" in the Build Settings (and optionally also in General Settings > Scene Settings) is active?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hey Raoul,

Thanks! That did the trick, now all roads can have normals, this will allow us to get the looks we really want, thanks!

 

Hey raoul. We've been implementing roads with the v3 beta. It looks like you override the Standard shader, forcing it into Forward rendering and giving it an offset. I'm really scratching my head as to why EasyRoads does this. I mean I can imagine some reasons, but it seems like a very heavy handed thing for an asset to do.

Why is this done? What is it for?

 

Hi cowtrix,

EasyRoads3D uses ordinary game objects with a meshfilter and mesh renderer attached. So also standard Unity materials are used which means that you are in full control which shader to use.

The package does indeed come with an adapted version of the Unity shader, but this really only includes one additional line:

Offset X, X

I don't think that additional line will result in the rendering path of the camera being set to Forward rendering, is that what is happening on your end? Because I cannot see any behaviour like that and no one else has reported this behaviour either before.

Could you please provide steps on how to reproduce this?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Looks like I was wrong on the forward bit, was just going through a diff of your version versus the official one and saw some stuff about forward rendering. Forget about that bit, let's focus on the offset.

Okay, but I'm not really in full control over which shader to use because EasyRoads overrides the Standard shader. That offset causes a whole buncha problems in our rendering pipeline so I'm just trying to figure out why you added in this line before I rip it out and cause problems with road stuff.

 

Hi Cowtrix,

How does the EasyRoads3D version of the Standard Shader override the default Unity 5 Standard shader? How can I replicate that?

The shader is renamed to "EasyRoads3D/Unity 5 Standard". When the default Standard shader is selected I can clearly see a difference compared to the adapted version so it appears that the default Standard shader still works fine.

The Offset is used to deal with z-fighting with the terrain. Do you perhaps mean that this offset affects other objects in the scene? This usually depends on your cam angles and cam distances. You may try lower the offset values if the offset is too strong.

When your terrains are relatively flat and your cam is always close to the roads any other shader will probably work just fine. You can also raise the road network a little bit.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hmm, in our version of the beta that we grabbed the shader was defined as

Code (CSharp):

1. Shader "Standard (Specular setup)"

...and so overrode the default standard shader. Ok, so this behavior was unintended and we can rip this out. Cheers!

 

I just checked, you are right, the location for the Standard Specular Shader has not been changed and will therefor override the Standard Specular Shader (not Standard Shader).

Thank you for reporting this, this has been changed.

Raoul

 

After finalize I try to apply my own material using a standard PBS shader. And see a black surface on the road. Don't understand why, I believe the finalized road is just a ordinary unity object. Other objects with my own material work as usual.

 

Hi akastargazer,

Looking at the quote you included it seems you are using the free version at the moment, is that right? The free version is still v2. Or are you using the v3 beta, the topic in this thread?

Objects are rendered in black in Unity 5 when a normalmap is used while the mesh object does not have tangent info. Could you check whether "Calculate Tangents" in the road network Build settings is switched on?

"After finalize", do you mean you clicked the Finalize button? In that case all script components are removed. It is recommended to only finalize road networks just before you create the final build of your game and when you do not use the runtime API.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi, Raoul, thanks for quick reply!

I'm ising the v3.0 beta 7.7 21-04-2016

Yes, that is! Tangent check helps. I'm trying to recall an EasyRoads3D workflow after a long timeout. Some things was unobvious for me.

Sure, I click a Finalize button without Build Terrain step, in order to find simple workflow for quick test of my design ideas.

 

Heyo, sorry if this has been covered, I'm considering purchase.
I'm looking to use this package mainly for river generation, possible more later.
I work -purely- procedural, nothing is hand drawn, so I cannot use in-editor tools etc.

Q: Does EasyRoads3D support runtime generation via scripting?

I'm fine finding the normals and locations and everything on my end, but can I tell the tool to place markers, depress the terrain, and generate river meshes all from code in runtime?

Thanks!

 

Hi akastargazer,

Glad to hear you got that resolved!

In that case, this is probably also useful for you: General Settings > Scene Settings > Calculate Tangents in Edit Mode

This way there is no need to switch to Build Mode first to get the normalmap working.

Thanks,
Raoul