World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Yep, that is the intended use of such shader in our case.
Thanks for sending your package anyway, I like to see another approach.

 

While going through some older projects over the weekend I noticed an experimental shader covering all this as well. It uses decal:blend resulting in full transparency while shadows are still visible.

Below is a test after updating the shader to Unity 5 "Standards". Please ignore the dirt texture quality, this is from the development project. The right side edge blends with the terrain.



Thanks,
Raoul

 

hello,
I'm kinda curious what next update for V3 will bring, and is it possible for a more detailed video Tutorial? still don't understand the custom Prefabs for X and T crossings would like a Dual X crossing for dual 2way highway. and maybe texture for Crossing with the Lines and stop lines? have lots on my wish list but its mostly an city generator that helps with the road

Many Thanks again for a Great addon

 

Hi HansKPersson,

At the moment almost all the work is done on the new demo project which will include examples of everything you can do with v3. New proper video tutorials will also follow based on this new demo project.

What exactly do you mean with custom prefabs for X and T crossings? The custom prefabs system involves importing your own mesh assets into the system. These can have any type of shape, not necessarily X or T crossings. The Custom Road Network videos in the manual (or for example here) show this process.

The dynamic crossings system will be further expanded with more options for X and T crossings and for example an Y connector. But that will happen after the public release. Meanwhile you can do specific crossings for your project using this custom prefab system. It was one of the first things that was implemented so you do not rel on what is part of the system itself. There are so many different type of situations...

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Sound good,

sorry for the bad clarification of what I'am asking about its the Easyroad 3D Application to make custom prefabs, think i seen the video part about 50times and no stick, looks easy but all i'm able to do is broke copy's of existing, but will try to challenge it more. but often easier with speech in tutorials.

other then that Im good.

many thanks for quick reply

 

Creating new dynamic X T crossings so you can quickly resuse them is done through:

General Settings > Crossing Connection prefabs

Below is the link to the section in the manual that covers this process:

http://unityterraintools.com/EasyRoads3D/v3/html/general_settings.html#sceneprefabs

and the corresponding video:

Could you give more details of what goes wrong on your end?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Many thanks for the video, did miss that Preset and did think was weird I only had 2x2 highway road to pick, and some things is easier to learn then others and thing i never learn is to use Pictures then asking about something,
it this thing I would want an crash-course in, preferable from quick create to make it possible to use as an connector, but now my lazy natures is showing, but this item is not an priority at this moment can do most of my planed things with existing items. and already learned 95% of the things i was missing. many thanks again Raoul,

 

As mentioned in my previous post, when it comes to roads and crossings, there are so many different situations. It is impossible to offer everything at once. The system is flexible, you can create your own road types: General Settings > Road Types

What you see in the provisional beta package are examples of road types, dynamic crossings, custom prefab connections based on imported meshes. The final package / separate demo project with additional side objects will include a lot more, it needs to be cleaned up but the size of the project at the moment is 6GB.

That screenshot is actually the custom prefab system I refered to in my first post. This is based on imported meshes.

http://unityterraintools.com/EasyRoads3D/v3/html/general_settings.html#customcrossings

This system makes it possible make any type of road network you want. It is recommended to start with a simple mesh model, perhaps even a quick Unity plane primitive. Add some connections by selecting vertices and test it in the scene. Once you are familiar with these steps you can try more complex meshes.

Is there anything in the videos you have further questions on?

This was in your first post. More on this will follow, but the crossing prefabs are ordinary Unity prefabs. You could add stop lines as decals. Or create your own crossing meshes.


Thanks,
Raoul

 

I apologize if this is a question with an obvious answer but is the current beta for v3, 8.5.1? I just want to make sure I test with the latest possible.

 

Hi mprivat,

That is right, 8.5.1 is the current version.

There are a couple of small issues which you may run into when digging deeper in the tool. Those who reported these issues are working with up to date alpha builds with fixes. We can release an update but we try to focus on releasing v3.

So, in general for anyone, with regard to updates please report issues you are having. If that doesn't happen I assume all is good.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hey Raoul,

Someone asked earlier if it was possible to update the resolution on a pre-existing road. You offered the following script as a solution:

1. var roadNetwork = new ERRoadNetwork();
2. ERRoad road1 = roadNetwork.GetRoadByName("Default Road 0022");
3. road1.SetResolution(4);

How would I go about using this to update resolution? By attaching it as a script somewhere?

 

Hi Clay,

That script is for when you are using the scripting API, for example for runtime road creation or when you are writing extended editor functionality. It seems that is not what you are doing, or are you?

Inside the editor itself you can change the resolution for the road type in General Settings > Road Types. You can also change the resolution of the selected road road directly in the Inspector, look for the "Resolution" field near the top and you may want to experiment with the "Angle Threshold" value just below the Resolution field, this can be used to reduce triangles while preserving the overall quality.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Changing the resolution/angle threshold from the Road Types section doesn't seem to update the existing road in the scene. In the Road Types section there is only one entry titled "Default Road."

 

What are the values?

When I change these values, the verts and tris stats near the top in the Inspector below the road name update accordingly. Does that not update for you?

You can use the Road Types section to create your own road types so you can quickly reuse them in the scene. The beta package comes with a selection of road types. It seems you clicked "No" when you were asked whether you want to import the example Road Types and side objects when you created the Road Network object. You can still import them by pressing the "Add Project Road Types" button.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Awesome, worked perfectly!

 

Hello Raoul,

Sorry it took a while to get back to you, but this is the first of a few repro cases I want to give you for problems I'm having in 8.5.1 beta and Unity 5.6.1p2.

Issue 1 - Dynamic crossing snaps to world 0,0,0 when added to road.

Repro Steps:

1) Create new project, import EasyRoads3D beta package 8.5.1.
2) Create new terrain, set to 200x200m, center in world (X -100, Z -100)
3) Create new road network, choose yes to all prompts, set to Default Road, width 10, and add.
4) Draw U shaped road on terrain.
5) Select marker at one end of the road U, and add T intersection (Connect to Dynamic Prefab).
6) Turn off sidewalks on T intersection by clicking green markers at corner and sides
7) Select marker at other end of road U
8) add T intersection, it shows up at world 0,0,0 and stretches road behind it.

No console error is generated.

 

Issue 2 - "X" Crossing dynamic prefab does not appear in "Connect to Dynamic Prefab" list.

Repro Steps:

1..4) Same steps 1-4 from above post (3516)

5) See Connect to Dynamic Prefab, "Default X Crossing" does not appear in list.

(attached screen)

 

Hello triptic,

Thank you for the clear repro. That is strange, all works fine with sidewalks on. But after switching sidewalks off indeed the T crossing is added near (0,0,0) when attaching the prefab directly to the selected road.

I will check what causes this. Meanwhile, you can instantiate crossings exactly where you want though the 3rd tab from the left instead of directly attaching them to the selected road.

Thanks,
Raoul.

 

The road is a a little bit zoomed out, it is not clearly visible what the shape is.

In general, by default all crossings should be visible for a new road. Once the road is attached to a crossing only those prefabs with connections that match the shape of that road will be visible. Does that explain your situation?

Does it appear in the list for newly added roads like mentioned above? I just tested this and it does on my end.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

I'm sorry can you clarify how that works? I click on the dynamic prefab, then click in the Editor but no prefab appears.

I guess that's the part I don't understand. This was a new Default Road set to 10 width as described in the repro steps. My assumption would be that I could then connect T or X to either end. But in this simple example the Default X Crossing does not appear.

Thanks,
Heinz

 

Hi Heinz,

On which dynamic prefab do you click, which object do you have selected in the hierarchy? What I meant was, if you have the main road network object selected in the hierarchy you will see the main EasyRoads3D toolbar in the Inspector. The 3rd tab from the left, the one with the X crossing icon, lists all available dynamic and custom prefabs in your project. Select one and do shift + click in the scene where you want to place that crossing.

You can now attach matching roads to one of the crossing connections and/or you can pull out new roads from these connections.

Can you try the above and instantiate the X crossing in the scene, can you attach the road to one of the connections?

There is one small glitch known resulting in what you describe. Sometimes straight after creating a new road indeed that specific list with available crossing prefabs is empty, the list you mention, not the one in the crossings toolbar tab. A simple road deselect / reselect fixes that. It is not entirely clear when that happens, it didn't happen yesterday when I tested all this. Could you try that?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

My apologies, the issue was shift-click that was my mistake. It worked and I could attach the road to it.

Just deselect/reslect did not make the X intersection appear. However if I instantiated the X Crossing prefab & connected a road to it, then it started appearing on the list from there on.

Thanks as always for your prompt responses!!

 

Ok, then this is indeed purely related finding connection prefabs matching the road.

I tried some things. This seems to happen when creating a road with no road type selected from the dropdown. When doing that the list of matching crossings is not populated, neither upon reselect. Does that match your situation? I will check why this happens. Meanwhile you can use the other approach you tested, instantiating prefabs directly in the scene.

In general it is good practise to work with road types which will illiminate this issue. You can also create new dynamic crossings with that road type selected for the connections. This way you can both easily create new roads of that road type in the scene and you can reuse the specific crossings.

Thanks for reporting this!

Raoul

 

Ok, then this is indeed purely related to finding connection prefabs matching the road.

I tried some things. This seems to happen when creating a road with no road type selected from the dropdown. When doing that the list of matching crossings is not populated, neither upon reselect. Does that match your situation? I will check why this happens. Meanwhile you can use the other approach you tested, instantiating prefabs directly in the scene.

In general it is good practise to work with road types which will illiminate this issue. You can also create new dynamic crossings with that road type selected for the connections. This way you can both easily create new roads of that road type in the scene and you can reuse the specific crossings.

Thanks for reporting this!

Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

Ok this is my 3rd issue and is the most important of them.

Summary: I built a large road network which was fine until it reached a certain size, but then as more roads were added it would no longer build completely, and build results were not consistent.

I have made a short video with narration that shows the specific problem, as the project is too large to easily share. Please let me know if I can provide any additional information as this is blocking me on a project currently.

Thanks as always for your time and help thus far!!

 

I don't think this is directly related to the size of the road network. There are no known issues with that, the new demo project for example, has over 150 roads and they all build well.

At this point there are three things to check:

1) Terrain Composer: It is not clearly visible from the hierarchy what the terrain setup is and I am not 100% familiar with Terrain Composer. But TC has an optional control to lock the terrain heightmap. I would think this is a universal setting and I cannot really match this with sometimes one area not being flattened and other times another area, but perhaps something to verify?

Is this indeed a single terrain? Because you do have a specific terrain selected in the Build Settings instead of All Terrains. It seems this too is unrelated but just checking...

2) Can you switch off "Hide White Surfaces" in Scene Settings and check these surfaces for the involved roads. Are they build correctly in Edit Mode, following the shape of the roads?

3) When exactly does that error appear? Do all crossings look alright, especially those in critical areas? This is also with regard to the white surfaces.

One strange thing in the video is that the terrain near the road that has focus in Scene View updates well. Was that coincidence or does this always work that way? I can't match this behaviour with how this works.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Turning off "Hide White Surfaces" checkbox seems to have fixed terrain building in those bad areas. And the console error no longer appears when selecting "Back to Edit Mode".

If that was the issue all along, I'm going to lose my mind haha!

 

"Hide White Surfaces" should not affect terrain building by itself but it can be used to visualize how the terrain will be flattened. Is that where things do actually go wrong on your end? Do you still have the same issue when turning this option back on?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Sorry, to be clear, when I uncheck "Hide White Surfaces" and build the terrain/roads, they build correctly vs. they don't when this option is checked.

 

Yes, I think we are saying the same thing

It is still strange though, that option has been there since the first beta. No issues with that have been reported before.

We have an alpha build that includes some optimizations to the terrain building process. Could you email me or send a pm with your email if you like to try that.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Dear Raoul,

I have a problem with UVs on procedural roads that extend from custom prefab. UV's are extremely distorted (screenshot attached) and I can't get them to work properly, I've tried "Planar UVs" and "Copy UVs from source mesh" and even manually placing the points in editor, however results were almost the same as one seen on screen.

I have to add I'm using a closed mesh with additional faces pointed to the ground, basicaly I need that kind of mesh for TerrainComposer's collision detection.

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks in advance,
Chris

 

Hi Christopher,

It is a bit hard to tell without knowing the actual texture, what this is supposed to look like?

First of all, it appears to be related to the closed nature of the road mesh and perhaps the tiling value?

Terrain Composer and EasyRoads3D have been here for a while working well together. I have not heard of this requirement before. But I am not 100% up to date with the current features of Terrain Composer, to my understanding the end result is still a Unity terrain object. How is the closed mesh required for the Terrain Composer collision detection?

In any case, if you do need a closed mesh you could check the highway overpass examples in the beta package. These are closed too with the connection point in the center at the bottom. What does your mesh setup look like? Is the connection point at the top in the center? And are you using a similar texture/material setup as used on those overpass prefabs and the connected roads?

Planar UVs certainly will not work in this setup, "Copy UVs from source mesh" will work when both the connection triangles of the prefab and the connected road use the same material / texture. Otherwise you can indeed set the UVs manually in the UV editor window.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Dear Raoul,

Thanks for quick response

Texture attached on screen is a color grid to show UV distortion, real texture should look like this:


This is alomst the same mesh as shown in previous post, except it doesn't have bottom faces, (in both cases connection point is in the middle) so issue appers to be caused by closed nature of the road, however it's just 2 extra faces on the bottom, so it shouldn't cause that much of a problem.

AS for TerrainComposer's requrement, collision node doesn't seem to detect the road even when it's finalized and unfortunately because of this grass pops through the road, even with "Remove Trees and Detail Object" settings selected.

As for the highway examples, I'll take a look first, maybe that will help me figure out the problem.

Regards,
Chris

 

This is related to how the UVs are defined in the UV editor and the UV tiling setting in the Inspector. It seems the UV tiling value should go a bit down.

You mention "Remove Trees and Detail Object", this sounds EasyRoads3D related. But you also mention "collision node doesn't seem to detect the road" as a reason why grass is not removed. What do you mean with that? Is grass removal handled through Terrain Composer or through the EasyRoads3D built-in vegetation removal option? Is that why you need a closed mesh?

A closed mesh is entirely unrelated to the built-in vegetation removal option. Does updating the terrain heightmap according the road shape work well? Is "Terrain Deformation" for the road object switched on, and is this not switched off for the markers (useful for bridge segments)? When this is switched off, grass will not be removed either.

Also, Terrain Composer optionally locks the heightmap, this can be switched off. Perhaps a similar option exists for terrain vegetation? It will make it impossible for EasyRoads3D to update the terrain when this is locked.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Terrain and it's detail (ie. grass) is handled with Terrain Composer, basicaly I use the colision node to detect objects and exclude certain areas from drawing the grass or other objects. I've tried playing with options in both EasyRoads and TerrainComposer but I didn't find anything that could help me fix the issue.

To further explain the issue on 1st screen I'm showing collisioon node's result, the road on the scene is finalized, yet it isn't detected, however if I rotate the road by 180° (showed on 2nd screen) so it faces the ground it's being detected by collision node, that's why I was trying to make a road with faces pointing to the ground so it would be detected by TC's collision node.

 

Thank you for the further explanation!

Using closed roads only for this purpose seems not ideal. What you could try is create a shape type of side object with just two nodes (matching the left and right side of the roads), normals pointing downwards (first node on the right, second on the left). And assign this side object to all your road types so these objects are automatically generated.

After the work is done in Terrain Composer or just before your final build you can remove these side objects from the roads by deactivating that side object for these road types.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Dear Raoul,

Thank you kindly for your suggestion! I've tried it just now and it seems to be working perfectly. It's definitely a better and less problematic solution than my previous one.

Thank you once again!

Regards,
Chris

 

Hi there,

I was curious if you can build roads with your asset on mesh terrains. Basically, on geometry objects imported from Blender, Maya, etc. I read this in the Road Architect thread. If this is possible, are there any limitations?
Thanks in advance for your answer.

 

Hi Mark,

You can indeed build roads on mesh terrains. But one of the main features is updating the terrain to the shape of the roads, that will not be possible on a mesh terrain at the moment.

So it depends on the nature of your mesh terrains whether this will work. If the terrain area where you need roads is reasonably flat or gently rolling, no problem.

Do you need crossings? Alternatively you can use side objects for the roads at a safe height above the terrain with the edges snapping to the terrain.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I tested the free version (Unity 5.6.2f1) and I was impressed.
Even though, feature wise, it`s not possible to compare v2 with v3, I was impressed how easy and intuitive was to draw the road. I managed to build a pretty long one on a 4k terrain resolution heightmap. No other assets i the scene. Rock solid.
I checked all the videos I could find on youtube, and of course, the natural next step? I went for the Pro version.
Also, being such an old developer with great support was an important point in my decision.

I tried using the free version to make a road on a mesh terrain but is asking me for a Unity terrain in the scene. The same with the Pro version.
I`m reading the manual now. May I ask you, if you don't mind, to point me in the right direction, just to quickly test the roads on mesh terrains?

I understand your questions but I need a bit of time to get used with your asset. And to see how the custom objects are made&integrated. Then, I'll be back with questions, if you don't mind.

Thanks! I'm very happy with my purchase!

 

Hi Mark,

V2 and v3 indeed cannot be compared and if you want to get the most out of v3 it is very much recommended to import the tool in a new project and just play around with all the options, settings etc.

The release is getting very close now, it includes a new demo project with examples of all the features.

As for the Mesh terrain integration, have a look in General Settings (3rd tab from the right) > Scene Settings. At the bottom you will see "Mesh Terrain", drop your mesh terrain in the slot and all should be good. It has been a while I tested this, so please let me know if you experience unexpected behaviour.

Thank you for your purchase and please let me know if you have further questions!

Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

I really need your help creating a custom T crossing for my dirt roads & highway.

I have watched your video "customizing intersections" closely but cannot get the settings to work. There are two main problems as I will outline below.

Initially I created 2 custom T crossings that transition from dirt or gravel to highway. Everything worked ok as long as I didn't change UV or material settings. But naturally the look of these wasn't great:



So I wanted to create a smoother transition using a custom texture map that looks like this:



I set out to create a new version of the T that used Planar map and this texture/material. So I created another new T crossing prefab, and turned on Planar mapping with a tile of 0.08 that seemed close to 1:1. Here it is before my custom material & texture were added:



Now, the "Connection Material" here needs to be set to my Custom material on both sides. Here is where my first problem happens. The UV offset is different every time I go to create a new prefab, so I can never get the texture to map correctly.



It will be different the next time the prefab is created or placed in the scene. Here is the same exact creation process yielding a different UV offset with the same tiling value set (0.08):



The second problem is bigger, if I now "Save Changes" on the custom prefab and exit, it does not actually save these items:

1) The UV Planar flag
2) The UV Tiling value
3) The Left/Right road type
3) Any connection materials that were plugged into the prefab material slots

I later discovered that it will always use the Connection material specified in the road and ignore whatever connection materials are plugged into the prefab.

So when I place it into the scene it default back to this:




Any suggestions or help would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks,
Heinz

 

Hi Heinz,

The current geometry layout for dynamic crossings is not ideal for asphalt / dirt tracks. In the settings you see a dropdown with geometry layouts. This is not active yet, more will be added. Meanwhile a small utility has been created to create different X, T crossings useful for crossings involving different road types. It will be part of the final package and this will be integrated in the dynamic crossings system after the v3.0 release. You can use it to create crossings like in your second screenshot.

Planar mapping is not ideal for this either. Planar mapping can be used for tile type of textures. When planar mapping is on for both the crossings and the roads, the textures seamlessly connect at connection points between roads and crossings.So this does not really work for crossings involving different textures.

In the current beta you want to export this crossing to .obj, adjust the geometry / UVs to what you want to achieve, import it back into Unity and use the Custom prefab system to create a new custom connection prefab. You may want to have a look at the custom connection prefabs in the package.

The second problem:

In the above steps, did you use a prefab in the scene or did you create a new dynamic prefab from General Settings > Crossing / Connection Prefabs? You do want to use the latter, that way the new prefab will become available in crossings tab so you can quickly reuse it. There are no known issues related to this.

This is not what is called a "Custom Prefab" in the EasyRoads3D system. It is a dynamic prefab, using the built-in options to create connection prefabs without extrernal meshes. Connection prefabs based on your own meshes is what is usually referred to as Custom Prefabs. This is just to avoid misunderstandings

Regarding the connection materials. Please use road types and select the road type for a crossing connection from the road types dropdown. That way crossings can automatcially update after changes to a road type. It is also much easier to create new dynamic crossings. The road width, materials, etc. are automatically set.

I will check if this conflicts with manual material changes in the latest betas. Manual material changes has always worked well but recently updating crossings after road type changes was added. Perhaps that is interefering.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thanks Raoul Appreciate you clarifying the terms, I will try your suggestions and let you know how it turns out.

 

I belief the scripts of the utility I mentioned are actually part of the alpha build I sent to you a couple of weeks ago. It is not optimized yet but it includes the main functionality to create a prefab similar to your second screenshot. The generated prefab includes vertices matching the selected road type widths. So prefab can be used directly as the source prefab in the Custom Prefab Editor. Let me know if you want more info.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hey Raoul, I'm having an issue with my intersections width, I created a prefab that's supposed to be 12.5m but when I add one to the scene it's 5m. I checked the dynamic prefabs folder, dragging and dropping it into the scene from there, it's the correct width. I've tried deleting/reimporting a few times now, doesn't seem to do anything. I'm also using the latest beta.

And will there be dynamic versions of the bridge entrances/exits/a Y intersection in a future update?

 

Hi Atzig,

Since you mention the dynamic prefabs folder I assume this is a dynamic prefab. But you also mention deleting/reimporting which does not really apply to dynamic prefabs. Is this indeed a dynamic crossing or a crossing based on your own mesh?

In any case there are no known scaling issues for both dynamic anf custom connection types. Could you provide full steps of what you do so I can test on my end?

V3 is very close to being released now. After that, more dynamic crossing options will be added. Flexible Y intersections and motorway entrances / exits are partially done but need to be finished. The bridge overpass entrance and exit examples are more advanced custom road shapes related prefabs. It is very likely this will be possible with the dynamic built-in system at some point, but it has less priority at this moment.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I should've clarified that I've deleted/reimported Easy Roads a few times and it didn't fix the issue.

It's simply a wider T intersection. I created it the usual way by selecting Road Network in the hierarchy then General Settings->Crossing/ Connection Prefabs -> Dynamic Connection Prefabs-> Create New Prefab. The image below will explain it better, the right intersection is the saved prefab (from the dynamic prefabs folder), the left is what I get when add the intersection via the Road Network->Connections button. Basically, Easy Roads isn't using the width of the new intersection.

 

I just tested this in the build project. This seems related to what I also replied yesterday in the post to tryptic.

When simply changing the width it appears that indeed the width is not correctly set for new instances, I will look into that. However, when using road types and selecting the road type from the dropdown in the crossing connection Inspector. Instances are correctly generated.

Can you try that? First create a new road type in General Settings > Road Types. Set the width, assign the road material etc. Drop the T crossing back in the scene from the dynamic prefabs folder in the assets folder, in the Inspector select this new road type from the Road Presets dropdown in the Connection Settings. The width and material will auto update according the selected road preset. Save and exit the crossing editor.

Does that work?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Great, thanks! That seems to have fixed it.