World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

ok! I made some other test about the normals... maybe that my shape is too smooth to be viewed in difference!

 

The example indeed results in a mesh with smooth normals. For hard edges vertices need to be duplicated, the bool array controls the triangulation if that makes sense

This way you can for example also make a motorway with terrain in between. This part is currently primarily used for the custom prefab system which supports all this. But both built-in road types as custom road types use the same system so they integrate well together.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,
i would ask about the integration between RAM and EasyRoad .. the new version is labeled "EasyRoad Compatible" . .is that something bring more feature ? thanks a lot ..

 

Hey . thanks a lot .. .. it helped a lot .. keep up the great work ..

 

Hi John,

We are looking into this at the moment, screenshots will follow. The setup is simple. All that is necessary is dropping the R.A.M. water material in the material slot for the River Surface side object in the Side Object Manager: Terrain Tab > River Surface

The Target Object for the default river points to waterPrefab in the project folder. This slot can be kept empty. It is not required when using the R.A.M. materials.

Depending on the used shader the flow direction can be sideways. This is corrected by setting "UV V Direction(1) U Direction (0)" at the top in the material component to value 1.

Full integration of the R.A.M vertex color options and shader behaviour will follow. The river options wil also be further expanded with previous requests in this thread.

As a side note, the river bed shape can be adjusted in the Shape Editor Window of the respective side object. The upcoming additional terrain smoothing tools will also be useful here.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I got it .. I am sorry, but I missunderstood . the guy published a road shot . so supposed was something related to road
So, in that case is just the material from his asset.. We are following a new thread related to a really new amazing water systems with a new apporach for the shader .. it looks like that asset is under asset store review . so it would be nice use even that other ones .. Can i assume that every material can work with easyroad or only the one you mentioned ? I am thinking to the project we discussed as I would not push users to specific water asset . .as is not releated with the core of the project.. . leaving early for the weekend .. so will read your reply only next week .. have a great weekend ...

 

Yes, sorry, the road materials can be used as well. Any road material can be used with EasyRoads3D that is why I thought the question was more water related. But we are looking into that as well.

For water materials it depends on the setup. R.A.M. only uses a material, so it integrates well.

Have a great weekend too,
Raoul

 

Hello! The answer to my question is probably in an image or something, but I have not been able to see it.
How are the intersections handled?
If I got a road going straight, and I want a road at 45 degrees, to connect to the straight one.
Like this (Not the best example, I know)
I
I\
I \

And how is 90 degree turns handled?
All I have tested is the free version, and it didn't handle a 90 degree turn all that good.

Thanks!

 

hi @raoul !
will EasyRoad Support even the new water system Cascade ? it looks really AAA quality
https://forum.unity.com/threads/submitted-cascade-rivers-lakes-waterfall-and-more.514871/

 

Hi SveinEven,

You mention the free version. What exactly is this related to? Crossings or 45 degree road turns? Iam asking this because I belief crossings are not yet supported in the free version.

For roads it is recommended to use the circular controler type for a smooth 45 degree turn.

The built-in crossing types do not yet support 45 degree angles.The T crossing is flexible but more over the straight section. What you probably want is a more Y type of crossing with flexible angles. This is being worked on. A prototype for the mesh generation is ready. It is currently being improved to support custom road shapes as discussed above. At the moment we can deliver generated meshes ready to import in the system. Last week we prepared a 6m wide Y connection for a user. Here is a 45 degree example



How is the 90 degree turn not handled good?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi ghiboz,

Check my previous post as a reply to the same question by jlocke

The river options in EasyRoads3D really are a bonus. It is primarily a road creation tool with additonal options to create fences, walls, power lines etc.

The R.A.M. solution is material only, fully supporting cascades by slope, which makes integration very simple. Further support is pure mesh generation related, providing mesh data that can be used in the respective shader. We also looked at AGUAS, it does work but creating an AQUAS object in the scene is more complex then just a mesh and a material. This makes full integration slightly more complex although we will check that again.

The river example in the package can be taken as an example. It is possible to add a target prefab from the project folder. This is what you want when the wanted river solution includes script components. Or you can simply assign the water material, like with R.A.M.

This is just to explain what it takes to add "support" for...

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Yes, it is not supported in the free version, and this is the reason I'm wondering how it is in the paid one before I go through the steps in order to purchase it.
In my project, I will need many different turns, a wide Y turn, a narrow Y turn, a Y turn where one road goes directly forward. Is it possible for me to create custom turns/crossings with the pro version?

The 90-degree turn had overlaps at the inner corner, when it comes to the material. But that might be the limitations of the free version?

 

I am still not sure, the current free version, is a first v3 release. It should not include crossings at all at the moment I will check, perhaps it is related to that?

Or is this related to flexible T crossings? This is intended for smooth irregular angles only. Strong angles will indeed not work well and can result in overlaps, that is more what the upcoming new Y connector will cover.

So, this Y connector is not yet part of the tool. What I was referring at in my previous post was the custom crossing system. You can import your own models in the system like the 45 degree example nin my previous post. This is fully supported in the paid version.

90 degree turns should not have overlaps, can you show a screenshot of this? But the free version does not include the circular control type so perhaps it is related to that?



Thanks,
Raoul

 

The 90 degree problem is definitely related to the circular control. I see that from the screenshot you posted.
How much work is it to create these models? Will I need to create the model in something like 3ds Max?

This is a screenshot of the kind of intersections I need to create.



EDIT: Image didnt work, no idea why.
https://image.ibb.co/ngDnvc/Screen_Shot_2018_02_05_at_2_29_14_PM.png

 

From the screenshot it appears as if the Y crossing example I posted above will serve well. I can send some variations if you need this urgently. Otherwise, it will probably be part of v3.3 as a built-in customizable crossing type.

As for other, non-standard, crossing types, the amount of work to make them in a modelling app really depends on the complexity of the specific crossing. The integration in the system is simple. Once you have gone through this process once or twice, it will take less then a minute.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi there! I'm having a good time with this tool, but in one of my scenes/projects, either the materials or shaders are screwed up, and I'm not really sure how or why. Screenshot is attached. I'm using the pro version.

 

Hi BlakeSchreurs,

The white surfaces represent how the terrain will be deformed. Optionally this can be switched of in:

General Settings > Scene Settings > Hide White Surfaces

Regarding the black road, objects in Unity turn black when the material uses a normalmap while the mesh does not have tangent info.

Can you check the following in the Inspector:

General Settings > Scene Settings > Calculate Tangents in Edit Mode
Middle Mountain tab > Calculate Road Tangents

Are both switched on?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello,

I have a project automation building question. Currently we are working on big open world game at our studio that will heavily using Easy Roads in progress in make this world. Because a large scale of world we are using the World Streamer plugin to stream in world around the player. World Streamer does this by using Unity streaming scenes as data container to store parts of world and then load them then synchronized around the player.

To get the data into streaming scenes the data world objects need to be sliced into sections, placed in a root of a "work" scene and then renamed to correct streaming data layer. Then it can be converted by the World Streamer plugin to streaming data scenes.

Because size of world, project and amount of data, I'm automating this process of converting the world data to streaming data. This makes also easier on level designer to create the world.

With Easy Roads we would like to use multiple Road Network game objects so we can build up roads network in section in the world. To make this possible we use a special working scene where a part of the terrain prefabs are loaded and a Road Network object is created. The level designer then can then build up the roads for the given area.

When the roads are placed we would like to automate the process is such a way that the we can build the roads mesh and terrain height map without changing the original terrain data and Roads Network data.

I have all ready made automated process that makes copies form the original terrain data. But when I drag in a prefab of the Road Network it doesn't seem to be able to rebuild the road on copied terrain data.

Could you give any advise on how we could somehow copy a Road Network object and rebind it to copied terrain data?

Kind regards

Tstrijker

 

Hi Tstrijker,

Are these separate road networks or will roads between road networks connect?

The latter will not be possible, a scene can only have one road network object.

How exactly is this done?

In general, road network objects are not linked to a specific terrain object. When updating a road it will simple look at the world position and the matching terrain object whether this is the original terrain object or a copy.

Also, it seems this involves working with road networks stored as a prefab in the project folder, is that right? That may not work well since by default road data is stored in the scene file.

Perhaps another approach, road network objects (roads and crossings) can be moved across road networks. Untested, but in theory it should be possible to store all objects in one road network in a specific scene. When working on a specific terrain tile, an editor script could extract all relevant data from the main road network and place it in a temporary road network object. Afterwards the main road network object (or the scene with the main road network object is removed) is removed. Once the work is done, the new road network objects can be moved back to the main road network object through another editor scripts.

The final scene specific "road networks" can be created in a similar way.

But the question here too is, will roads between scenes connect? That may require an additional editor script to reconnect these roads.

Usually I Connectors are used on terrain tile edges.

Please let me know if I misunderstood something or if you have further questions.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul

Thank you for fast replay. Answering your questions:

For connecting roads from separate road networks together where planning to just outline them by dragging them at right place at end of a terrain tile. Then when the roads mesh's are baked they shut align together. Where not planning to connect multiple road network together.

As for coping the terrain data. I have the terrain tiles in prefab. I load these prefabs in to empty scene and then remove the connection to the prefab. Is also then copy the terrain data in these terrain tile objects in code so it does not have any reference to the original terrain data.

In my attempt at automating the build process I indeed made a prefab from the Roads Network object and dragged into the to scene with new terrains. After reading that the roads network data is stored in the scene and that roads network is not bound to terrain tiles but to the world position. I think I have new plan to try. I'm put the roads network object in a separate scene. Copy this scene and then load this scene beside the copy terrain tiles scene and see if the roads drawn then. Let you now how this work out.

Regard

Tstrijker

 

Is this actually related to the finished road network prefab missing the road meshes?

In that case, indeed the road data is stored in the scene file. That is what Unity does by default. Prefabs require the mesh data to be physically present in the project folder. In Build mode there is a button "Store Mesh Assets in Project Folder". This is what is needed. If possible, it is recommended to use this option after work on the road network is done.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

That was it! Thank you so much!

 

Hey Raoul. We're having an issue with a build. Win10 Unity 2017.20f3 and DX11.

Shader error in 'EasyRoads3D/Terrain/ER Terrain Mesh Tesselation': maximum ps_5_0 sampler register index (16) exceeded at line 147 (on d3d11)

Is this a known issue? Any workarounds?

 

How do we work out which computers ER3 is registered on, and how can we change that?

 

Hi Stehpen,

David asked yesterday about this by email, later he wrote that all works well. I also offered another license key for our website version. I can reset once again.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

All good now. Just wondered what the process was.

 

That is not a road shader. It is a more complex shader used for terrain rock detail blended with the terrain on the mountain road near the coast line. Can you check that? The error is strange, the shader doesn't use more then 16 texture slots.

It should look like this, with tesselation on the rock part



Thanks,
Raoul

 

It is just our website version which is still using the initial beta protection. We can always reset the activation like we did yesterday or provide additional licenses.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello again Raoul!

I noticed another thing with the free version. When zooming far enough out with a camera, the terrain bleeds through the road. Is this something that can be addressed, or is addressed in the pro version?

 

Hmm. Here's want I've found, although I can't explain it. By default Unity 2017 (and earlier) has Auto Graphics API for Windows on. So I disabled that and removed Direct3D9 (DirectX9). However, even restarting the project didn't seem to detect the changes in the Editor (which is running in DX11).

The only workaround I could think of was to make a small change to both ER Road Splat4 UV4 and ER Terrain Mesh Tesselation shader and force them to recompile.

Not that it's causing me an issue but I do get two shader warnings on the later shader.

Shader warning in 'EasyRoads3D/Terrain/ER Terrain Mesh Tesselation': texcoord1 missing from surface shader's vertex input struct (appdata), disabled lightmaps and meta pass generation

Same for texcoord2 variable.

 

Hi SveinEven,

That is probably due to the terrain LOD system kicking in. As a result the terrain will bleed through objects, like roads, on top of the terrain.

Which material are you using on the road?

I belief the free version does include the adapted version of the Unity standard shader. It has an offset added with hardcoded values in the shader itself (Offset -X, -X). This offset can be used to deal with the bleeding, the offset becomes progressively stronger when the Cam is further away from the terrain.

We recently discussed this again with the Unity devs. The next update will include sliders in the Inspector to make it easier (also through code at runtime) to control the offset based on the nature of the terrain. On reasonably flat terrains a small offset values of -1 should already be sufficient.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

To get it to build I need to set it to target 5.0 rather than 4.6.

 

Thanks again for your quick reply!
Since you said it was on the terrain, I turned the Pixel Error slider, on the terrain all the way down. That fixed the issue in the scene view, but not in the game view.
The material is the road material that came with the free version.

 

Thank you for sharing that info, that is good to know in case someone else experiences the same.

I am not sure about the warnings. I will have a look and see if I can recreate it. It does work now and the overlay looks the same as in the posted screenshot? Assuming you are looking at this in the demo package...

Thanks,
Raoul

 

No, actually was just trying to do a standalone PC build for a game which AFAIK doesn't use these shaders in any of the scenes.

 

Yes, Pixel Error controls the LOD. When putting the scene view shading mode to, for example, Wireframe, you can see what the LOD system will do with the terrain and how that will affect objects near the terrain.

With all this it depends on your in game cam positions. If your cam is high above the ground you need larger Offset values. I had a look at the free version

/Assets/EasyRoads3D/shaders/EasyRoads3D - Unity 5 Standard
line 50: Offset -3, -3

You can lower these values. But for example, with the default offset values of -3 in th shader and the default terrain Pixel Error of 5, the terrain does not bleed through the road in the hilly area of the demo scene even when the cam is sky high. That is both scene view and game view. Does it on your end?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Ok, yes, this is not a commonly used shader. It is an additional shader in the demo package hence why I thought that is what you were looking at.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Yes, the terrain bleeds through only in the game view when the gamera gets high.. It starts when the camera is at 500, and only when the camera is looking straight down on the road. If the camera has a slight angle, the terrain stops bleeding through. This is with Pixel Error of 5. I have not yet tried to chance the offset.

 

500 above the terrain is high, is that what you need in your game including a camera that points straight down?

Is your terrain indeed hilly, in that case it is the terrain LOD system that is causing this, especially when a higher terrain heightmapscale (size vs heightmap resolution) is involved. Stronger offset values will deal with that.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

i have the same shader error on build. sometimes it works, if i build the project a secondtime withut restart but the longtime solutio was for me, simple to delete the shader.

i using in my project CTS and think this colliding with easy roads

 

Hi Noa3,

We were able to recreate the build error. Can you can try what sstrong suggested? Change the target from 4.6 to 5.0 on line 58

In any case, if you do not use the shader anyway, this is demo package related. It is recommended to import the demo package in a new project as it is especially intended to get familiar with all the options. Any additional assets in the package you like to use can be exported / imported easily. Note that for road types, the unselected road types are actually exported at the moment. This is fixed in the next update.

By using this workflow your project will only include those assets you want.

It doesn't seem to be CTS related or are you experiencing other issues?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raul,

Thank you for your suggestion. I will look into the "Store Mesh Assets in Project Folder" feature if we can use it for our automated process.

I have implemented the my automated code at moment so that it uses the scenes with Road Network in it as prefabs. Then copy these roads network scenes and then build the roads network copy one by one on the copied terrain tiles. This seems to be working form at the moment.

I do have other question. It it possible to split a road into two roads at given road spline point. I'm able to find spline point were to split. But what is the best way split the road into two roads with API calls?

Thanks,
Tstrijker

 

Hi TStrijker,

I belief the split option is indeed not available yet in the scripting API. It is currently being developed based on user requests.

What is available is the following and this is what other users are doing to split roads on terrain tile edges.

ERRoad InsertIConnector(int index, string connectionName, out ERConnection connection)

This will split the road at the passed marker index. It will insert an I connector and return the newly created ERRoad object.

Afterwards you can do:

connection.Destroy();

I will make a note to add the split option to the API.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul

I could not find the InsertIConnector method in the ERRoad class so I updated to version 3.0.1 trough the Unity asset store. But after updating I can't still find the InsertIConnector method in the ERRoad class. I'm still using the wrong Easy Roads 3d version?

 

Hi TStrijker,

Are you looking in the docs? It is indeed not documented yet.

I just tested this by inserting the I Connector at marker index 2 of road object "testroad", it is available.

Code (csharp):

1.  
2. using UnityEngine;
3. using UnityEditor;
4. using System.Collections;
5. using System.Collections.Generic;
6. using System.IO;
7. using EasyRoads3Dv3;
8. using EasyRoads3Dv3Editor;
9.  
10. public class ERAPITutorial : ScriptableObject {
11.  
12.    [MenuItem( "EasyRoads3D/Insert IConnector" )]
13.    public static void  InsertIConnector ()
14.    {
15.        ERRoadNetwork roadNetwork = new ERRoadNetwork ();
16.        ERRoad road = roadNetwork.GetRoadByName ("testroad");
17.        ERConnection conn;
18.        road.InsertIConnector (2, "I Connector Test", out conn);
19.    }
20.  
21. }
22.  

Can you try that?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

Found it. Is was looking at the C# ERRoad class in Visual Studio if could find the method and could not find it. But I had not restarted Visual Studio yet after the plugin update. After restarting it I could find the method. It looks like that you need restart Visual Studio when a dll is updated in Unity.

Thanks again for the fast replay and sorry for trouble you with this little thing.

Thanks,
Tstrijker

 

No problem glad you found it!

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul, I apologize if I'm being vague in saying this but I'm getting a very persistent crash when using Easy Roads in any scene. Maybe 15 minutes into using it, it will crash Unity to the desktop. I tested this 4 times opening scenes and just working on them normally. Then I tested it by going into those same scenes and adding EasyRoads to them and then working with placing roads and what not. All of them crashed within 15-20 minutes of work.

I know there is no possible way to know without some information so is there anything I could provide you with? Crash log? Editor Log? A recording?

Thanks for your time.

 

Hi ModularBuilds,

The only known situation that will result in a crash is Unity 5, mesh collider, related. A two marker road connected between two crossings, move one crossing in a way so the roads starts to overlap either of the two crossings. This is resolved in Unity 2017.

I assume your situation is not related to the above? Can you see any other pattern? Something must trigger this. Any additional info you can provide is helpful. And which version of Unity are you using?

Or do you mean Unity is even crashing after 15-20 minutes without even working on the road network? In that case, no editor scripts run in the background, that is only the case when the main road network object is selected. But you could test this in a duplicated scene and a finalized road network with no EasyRoads3D script components involved.

Can you send me an example scene with steps how to reproduce?

Thans,
Raoul

 

I am using Unity 5.6.4 because 2017.1/2/3 all perform much worse than 5.6, so I'm stuck using this version until Unity brings the performance back up. When the crash happens it doesn't seem to be related to any specific action. It seems to only happen when I'm using EasyRoads actively (placing points, dragging roads, using the editor in general, etc.)

I opened an empty scene and started using EasyRoads because I thought maybe my scene was acting weird, but it happens in the new scene also which makes me think it's not tied to anything in my scene.

What I do to reproduce it is
-Open a new scene.
-Add ER Object to scene.
-Let it back up terrain, etc.
-Add a road
-Start placing points around.

No matter what I'm doing, Unity will always crash after a certain time. I was simply dragging my mouse to look at the road and it crashed so I know it's definitely not tied to any action. I will try and reproduce it again with some video and a crash log, editor log, etc to see if Unity itself captured anything before it crashes.