World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Hi gecko,

By default, all created assets, roads, crossings, etc are individual gameobjects. So I think setting up different road networks per section should not be necessary.

One thing to double check is if SECTR STREAM expects the assets to be physically part of the project folder? Because the mesh data is stored in the scene. Just let me know if that is the case, it is fairly easy to fix that. It will probably be a buiild-in option anyway because the same thing applies to unity prefabs which also expect the actual mesh assets to be physically in the assets folder. I do receive questions about that now and then, scripts for that are available.

Also matching the roads with the sections could be something to check, does SECTR STREAM cut objects into pieces when they overlap sections?

Other than that, I cannot see anything else that could cause issues, all objects are ordinary game objects.

Raoul

 

Beta access please!

 

Hi CodeBoon,

I will send you the download link. Can you first send me a PM or email so I have your email

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Is there anyway currently to do the road fly-through thing at runtime?

 

Hi Jack62Lewis,

Scripts to do this are available for v2 not yet for v3. I will add that to the runtime API.

Raoul

 

Cool.

I just made a road in the V3 Beta and for some reason in the editor and in game it's being rendered above everything else.

 

Contrary to in v2, in v3 the white surfaces are currently not rendered on top of everything. If this is indeed related to the actual road, the default material on the roads use the same offset shaders as in v2. So I am not sure about what is causing this.

Can you double check the shader attached to the material on the road? Two ways to select the road:

1. Hierarchy: Road Network > Road Objects > select the road
2. Select a road marker in the scene > Inspector: "Select Road in Hierachy" button

When the shader "Road Edit Mode" is attached to the used road material, the road will indeed render on top of everything but that should not be the case.

Does this happen in Edit Mode and Build Mode? Can you show screenshots/


Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,

Here is an update for those having issues with custom crossing prefabs in hilly areas (the terrain pops through the road).

This issue happened for example on the custom prefab in the below screenshot part of the beta 4 demo project, the crossing and road on the other side of the crossing cuts through the hill which will not work well in the current beta when the terrain is above the road.



An alpha fix is available. Please let me know if you want to try this alpha build and check if this also fixes possible similar issues you had with your own custom prefabs.

I am currently putting the last hand on a new third side object type. Once that is done, a new beta will follow with a first version of the revised side objects system.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

I purchased the asset and sent a pm you with the information. Can you give me access to the beta?

 

Hi hakankaraduman,

Thank you, emails sent!

Raoul

 

Hi,

Yeah the roads shader was the easyroads edit mode shader so changing it to diffuse fixed the issue.
Cheers.

 

Glad to hear that! I will double check all currently available road materials.

Raoul

 

Thoughts on what might cause this? Beta v4. It appears to be caused by the standard T intersections and how they interact with the road ways. If you flatten the terrain all of those spikes becomes shorter terrain changes in the same shape. I am trying to narrow down a way to recreate it.

 

Hi CaptainMurphy,

There are two known situations that can result in those spikes in beta 4 (both indeed related to crossings only, not roads):

1. In the case you have multiple terrains in the scene, crossings in beta 4 do not interact well with multiple terrains. The heights were still taken from Terrain.activeTerrain instead of the terrain at that position.
2. Crossings do not interact well with terrains that are not positioned at y = 0.

Both issues are fixed, did you double check this with the alpha I sent you yesterday?

However, I also see the outer vertices of white surfaces surrounding the roads, snap to the wrong heights. Is this resolved when using the alpha build? For some reason the outer white vertices of crossings are reasoanbly far away from the crossings. Can you double check the surrounding distance in "General Settings > Scene Settings". Road outer white surface vertices snap to these crossing surrounding vertices when they are inside the crossing bounding box of the outer white surfaces, which explains the irregularities on some of the road white surfaces.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Yes, I tested using the alpha and the issue exists during initial placement of the intersection but can usually be remedied by changing the Y of the intersection up or down a couple of times (with the roads attached works best). It can come back during movement, but another Y change usually clears it up.

Min Surrounding under Scene Settings is 5. I have left most everything stock and was simply testing the roads at a slightly hilly area to see how they reacted. The roads were good, the intersections were not so much.

I do have one complaint, I constantly hit Shift+D (WASD to move the camera, Shift to speed it up) when moving my view around the scene view and that also happens to delete the last selected road point. I have deleted more roads and intersections by accident that way than I care to admit.

 

Does this also happen on X-Crossings? And does this indeed happen in a multiple terrains setup only? Can you duplicate the scene, remove all terrains but one and test this?

I do see one small issue with T-Crossings, the outer surrounding vertices of roads connected to the back end of the T-Crossing connect to the wrong crossing surrounding vertex. I will fix that, but it is snapped correctly to the ground. It doesn't result in spikes like in your screenshot.

So I am unable I to recreate this spikes issue (tested on a multiple terrain setup with 6 terrains in the scene). All vertices snap to the correct terrain height at that position. And when moving crossings, including Y changes the white surfaces update correctly.

If you want you can send the project (scene) to me, stripped down to terrains only if you want so I can check your specific situation.

A Min Surrounding value of 5 looks just fine.

Yes, more people reported Shift + D deleting selected markers etc. when using the fps controller in scene view. This is actually updated in the alpha and should not happen anymore when starting the fps movement with right click followed by Shift+D. I now see that Shift+D+right click (in that order) also activates the fps controller. So there is no way to fix this properly using Shift + D, I will change this to Shift + R. I belief that is save to use.

Raoul

 

Hey,

Is there a way to increase the size of the current default crossing prefabs I.e have them use roads of a greater size and increase the pavement size?

 

Hi Jack62Lewis,

The first section of the manual describes the recommended workflow. Before building your road network it is recommended to prepare crossing prefabs matching your specific scene. These prefabs will become available in the same list as the current dynamic X and T Crossings. You will be able to reuse the created new crossing prefabs. You can customize crossings in several ways, bigger connections and pavement size are one of the options. See the below video. Once instantiated in the scene you can still update these crossings, select a crossing and click the “Select Connection in Hierarchy” button. You will now have access to the same Inspector options as in the below video.

But it is recommended to prepare these crossings beforehand. The crossings are Unity prefabs, this is not implemented yet (I will see if I can do that for the next beta), but the idea is that you can further customize them, add traffic lights etc. to the original prefab and have these additional assets part of the prefab every time you add an instance of that prefab to the scene.

Raoul

 

Hello,

I was testing this asset out. I would like a tool to create a river.

Does this tool allow for varying widths like a real river? The road width is very uniform. I wish the river to not look so uniform. I couldn't find a way to do this with the free version when making a road.

Dennis

 

hello deshewmker,

The river tool in v2 is a bonus tool it is fairly basic. But you can change the width of the river by tweaking the indent values per marker. You can test this in the free version. The indent values control the shape of the white surfaces surrounding the roads which are also used to shape the river bed for the river tool. So for the river tool the white surfaces will have the shape of the river bed which can have varying widths.

The river workaround for v3 (discussed on the previous page) is functional and fairly simple to achieve, this one will be uniform though with the current implementation of the side objects system. Using the terrain smoothing tool it is quite easy to add variation though.

Raoul

 

Hello, can easyroads save generated meshes to project folder (as asset file) , or does it just save it in current scene as a scene asset?

 

Hi Meceka,

Currently the roads are stored in the scene data. For v2 I have a script available that will save the data to a mesh asset in the assets folder so you can use the roads in prefabs. But this will also be part of v3 as I get this question more often.

A new beta with side objects is about to be released. I will add the mesh asset feature to the next beta. After the upcoming beta, next updates will follow quicker as all the main functionality is implemented now, but just let me know if you need it urgently and I can sent alpha builds. Also let me know if you are looking for something specific.

Raoul

 

It's not to use roads as prefabs, but when using dynamic loading (loadSceneAdditive), road meshes generated by easyroads won't appear if not saved in project folder.

Sorry but I couldn't understand your sentence ("But this will also be part of v3 as I get this question more often."), Are you going to implement save mesh assets feature, or will you implement only if more people request it? This feauture is crucial to me. Right now I am still stuck with road architect and stuff really gets messed up if I don't use "save as project assets" and I use dynamic loading.

Thank you, but I need a stable build as I will re-do all roads from stratch on easyroads. I want to get it when it's stable and has all crucial features.

 

Hi Meceka,

Ok, the mesh asset feature will be part of v3 anyway. What I had in mind is an option to simply store the mesh asset only and automatically assign it to the associated road / side object which will still be stored in the scene. Or do you ideally need each road / crossing game object stored as a prefab in the assets folder as well?

Raoul

 

I just need the meshes to be created in project folder, I don't need gameobject prefabs to be saved.

You can make a quick test to see if it will work with additive loading,

copy easyroads parent gameobject from hierarchy with right click to gameobject, and click copy,
open new scene
paste it to hierarchy

Roads will be visible perfectly if meshes are saved to project folder.
If however they are saved as scene asset, gameobjects will be there, but their mesh filter will display "missing" and roads won't appear as their mesh are saved to a different scene, and unavailable in the new scene.

 

Quick question, has nothing to do with v3 in particular (but I don't know if your older Thread is still active)...

Is there a possibility to export the road mesh to a 3D app? I would like to use a road I created as a rough guideline for building a mesh....

 

@Meceka, ok thank you, I will test that. Let me know if you want to have a look at this as soon as possible. I can send an alpha test build, probably somewhere near the end of next week after the next beta is released. Can you send me your email in this case?

Raoul

 

Hi gian-reto alig, Yes both v2 and v3 have export to .obj buttons in the Inspector in Build Mode (middle mountain tab). Depending on your modelling app you may have to rotate the object on one or more axis. Also, the object is exported relative to (0, 0, 0), this way it will import at the exact terrain position which is useful in case you for example also export the terrain object to .obj.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I hate to be the first person to finally ask this annoying common question, but do you have any close plans to make EasyRoads compatible with Unity 5 beta? I've been trying, both V2 and V3 beta, but they both seem to have a few bugs after going through the import process. Love your work and by the way, very happy to see V3 is done in C#!

 

Hi Homer Johston,

Thank you!

Probably because Unity 5 is 64bit things are working slightly different compared to previous Unity 2 > Unity 3 > Unity 4 updates. EasyRoads3D uses dll's, dlls's build with Unity 4 do not work on Unity 5 and the same the other way around.

I have been in touch with the asset store about this. They wrote that once Unity 5 is officially released, different packages can be uploaded using Unity 4 and Unity 5 which will solve this issue. So by then we will still be able to upload packages for Unity 4 for those who will still be using Unity 4.

Meanwhile, a v2 beta is available for Unity 5. I am in the final stages of preparing beta 5 of v3, when released I will also look into preparing a build for Unity 5. Both the v2 beta and the v3 betas will be added to the downloads page on the website so you can download them directly from the website.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi,

Beta 5 is now available. It includes a first build of the side objects system. The below video shows the new workflow, creating a new Side object (concrete barrier) using your own models and some other features. The provisional assets in the video are all part of the current v3 demo package.

Just like in v2, v3 can also be used to create non road related procedural objects. The below video shows different workflow options to create these type of objects and some useful scene specific options. There are only a couple of side objects used in this video but this works the same as in v2. More examples will be added to the demo package.

Additional notes for both videos can be found here, http://www.unityterraintools.com/v3_sideobjects.php.

Also part of the demo package, lamppost examples.



Also, this is the last major beta update of v3, from now on updates will be smaller and will follow in shorter intervals.

Thanks,

Raoul

 

Does that music (from the videos) come on every time you use EasyRoads?

Because I'm beginning to think it is an essential part of the experience.

 

I am sorry about that, it must be getting a bit annoying if you have seen the other movies (or anyway). The videos are provisional beta videos. Once everything is done I will redo all of them using the latest assets and perhaps other music, but I cannot promise that yet

Raoul

 

Well, for me the music isn't annoying. It's the EasyRoads music! Though maybe it would get a bit old if it was playing in the background whenever ER was in the inspector.

 

I love the new side objects! Thank you!

P.s When I imported beta 5, into a project already running beta 4 if that changes anything, I noticed I had to go through most of the road materials and set their shaders to diffuse cause importing beta 5 made them have empty shaders (making them appear pink). Not a problem however, just thought you should know.

 

Oh, was that actually an optional feature request ?

Raoul

 

Hi Jack62Lewis,

Glad you like it!

This same issue has also been reported by email. I have not been able to reproduce this yet. I also tested the beta 5 package in the beta 4 project and all looked fine. I will try the beta 4 from project from the actual download link as well.

The shaders are updated in the beta 5 package but the location in the assets folder has not changed, strange...

If you have a simple test project I can have a look at, please let me know.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi, we need this exact tool currently for our project, but the crossings feature is a must for us as we need to generate urban environments. How long until this version will be available? I fear it may be too late for our current project.

 

Hi Pryzmeister, v3 is released in betas and already available with an EasyRoads3D Pro license. As mentioned most of the work is done. Now it is a matter of finshing some things with the new side objects system, polishing all the bits and pieces, fix the small glitches. If you don't mind small glitches (for which workarounds are available) it may already work for you. But with this sort of reasonably complex tools it is hard to give an approximate date for the public release.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

thanks, before i go purchasing then i have one more question - does it work with Unity 5 beta? unfortunately we need to use that version due to 64 bit support

Certainly the free version i just tried had a lot of issues.
- Road does not follow terrain well at all (Goes above and below terrain, lots of gaps)
- Splat maps will not generate (i am using Terrain Composer and RTP- is this an issue?)
-After generation progress bar does not go away and exception shown in console due to unityEngine.treeInstance.get_position

I understand if it does not work with Unity beta 5 yet, but just want to delay purchasing if you do not recommend Easy Roads with this version yet

 

Hi Pryzmeister,

Yes, you mention Terrain Composer, Terrain Composer often results in multiple terrains in the scene, is that the case in your situation?

The Free version does not support multile terrains, the terrains will not be flattened correctly and indeed the splatmap feature will not work.

Multiple terrain support was implemented in v2 quite some time ago by request of a user. It was more a workaround implementation where you can manually select each terrain and focus on that terrain. Nowadays a lot more people use multiple terrains (Terrain Composer), in v3 all this is further optimized.

Unity 5 is mentioned on this page or the previous page (or the v2 thread). Probably because Unity 5 is 64bit now, packages with dll's build with Unity 4 do not work on Unity 5, the same the other way around. According to the asset store it will be possible to upload different packages for Unity 4 and Unity 5 once Unity 5 is publicly released. For now I have a beta package available for Unity 5, let me know if you want to try it. I will also add it to the website download page.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I

Hi Raoul, thanks for your quick and helpful support. I did go ahead and purchase the pro version, but yes getting access to a beta version that supports intersections, multiple terrains and Unity 5 beta 64 bit is really what i need, so a download link would be fantastic.

If you need confirmation of purchase please let me know.

 

The beta I mentioned for Unity 5 is v2. Can you send me a PM or email if you want to try it, or have a look at the _readme file in the root directory of the imported package. It includes info regarding additional downloads.

For v3 I am currently preparing a first beta for Unity 5, when ready I can send that to you too.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thanks, that would be great if we could be notified when its ready.

 

Hey Raoul, thanks for product!
I have question, why prefab editor don't see poly and how to fix it?:

Thanks, Paul.

 

Upon request, I have been busy today preparing a v2 beta for Unity 5 for the asset store, it will be included as an additional package in the v2 asset store package.

Yesterday I checked the v3 beta on Unity 5. I only have to build a final package, I will do that tomorrow.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Paul,

What does this model look like? Are the vertices on the outer side all connected (this is currently expected) or are there gaps?

If you want you can send the model to me so I can look at it.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul!

I love the new version that is coming up! I have purchased the pro license long time ago and want to give a try for the beta version3, I'll be sending you an email soon so you could send me the beta version, i have something to test it on that would be really fun to try on.

Rhod,

 

Hi Rhodnius,

Love to see that, I will send you the beta!

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul ,

Does the newest beta version of easy roads 3 work with unity 5.21 ?

Thanks,
Gareth