World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Source object was indeed motorway. I changed it but now it appears that only collisions are there and very close to each other.(screen) I tried to change positions, offsets etc. It seems that this is too complicated for me so maybe I will just wait for videos. I don't want to waste your time.
For the second problem I did it once more and it worked.

 

What is the history of this project?

The can be set in the Side Object Manager as well for the pillar side object, "Distance between objects" which is set to 50 for this side object in the demo package.

Good to hear you were able to fix the other problem.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi there,

Sorry if this info is posted somewhere, I couldn't find it. I was wondering of there's a way to go about setting specific measurements for variables such as Road Width. I specifically need to know lane width in meters. For instance, if I wanted a lane to be 3 meters wide, is this this approximately the same as creating a road with a road width of 6 and parting it down the middle?

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

 

Hi rafvasq,

Do you mean which scaling to use? In that case 1 Unity unit is 1 meter is indeed common to use.

Regarding lane widths and road widths, that also depends on the texture, the amount of space taken by a lane (or the two lanes) on the texture. The two primary road textures in the demo package have more space on the sides then for example the secondary road texture.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

By history of project you mean what project I'm doing in Unity?

I couldn't find "distance between objects" because bridge object was marked. No it's all fine. Thank you Raoul. You're very helpful dev.

 

The "Simple Bridge" itself is a procedural side object type. The source prefab will repeat along the track stitched together so "distance between objects" is not relevant for the bridge. It is for the additional pillars.

With history I meant, have you possibly changed settings in the side object manager? That has happened before, changing values does not have an immediate effect on the scene unless you press the "Update Scene Instances" button. These changes can result in unexpected behaviour in a later stage. Your settings, like the pillar distance, seem different from the default settings in the demo package. That is why I was asking.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello Raoul!

I've recently recieved an error message when opening my project.
"Empty markers found - do NOT save the scene, close it and try reopening it. Please report with details....."

This happens when I start up my project, so it is to late for the not saving part
I do not know what I did before this started showing up.
Is there a way to find out what/where those markers are, and perhaps just delete them?

There is also another problem.
I want to change the texture that is applied under the roads, but for some reason, I can not do that.. I have chosen a different texture in the "Splatmap Texure" dropdown (After selecting the road type in settings).
This seems to be a problem when it comes to updating the scene instances, as I can deactivate the splatmap settings, and the raods will still apply texture, and yes I have pressed the update scene instances button

 

Hi SveinEven,

Not necessarily. This message was raised in all cases for the early 3.1 beta 2 and can be ignored.

In other situations where this is actually relevant, it seems related to package upgrades and possibly with a road network selected but so far we do not have suffcicient info to reproduce it. The fact that it happens after upgrades means that simply reloading the scene WITHOUT saving the scene first will fix the problem.

Do you still get this warning on start up?

You mean the terrain texture does not update for baking the road shape in the terrain? I belief changing this in General Settings > Road Types like you described indeed does not update the roads in the scene. I will double check if this is fixed meanwhile and otherwise add it for the next update. Let me know if you need it urgently.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I changed them several times (that x and y distance because I couldn't find anything that would change pillars distance. But like I said, it was because checkbox "bridge object" was marked. Now it works almost perfectly fine (screenshot_10).

There are two things that I want you to ask. They are no big deal but maybe you will know.
First, in some places I have bridge overlapping road (screenshot_13). When I'm refreshing roads it appear in different position. Is it because amount of segments?

Next thing are "shading lines" on texture. On one road it looks fine, on other which use same material it's not (screenshot_14). Im using easy roads standard specular setup.

 

Just bought the tool and it's more than helpful. I just need a bit of help. Could someone direct me on a quick tutorial or step-by-step on using my own meshes for roads (in my case a railroad). I have separate mesh modeled which I would use instead of default one but spent couple of hours and still no luck importing it and assigning. Sorry and thank you in advance, keep up the good work!

 

Reloading the scene without saving does not fix the problem no. But I am on the beta, so I'm going to ignore it for now

As for the terrain texture, I am not in urgent need to be able to change the texture, but at least turn off the option to apply the texture would be very nice. If not, I can just change the texture to somthing else in the terrain for now.
EDIT: Its not that many roads, so I just manually turned them off for now

 

Nice screenshot

Screenshot 13. Does you road use noise (the "Road Smoothness" foldout in the main road settings and the same foldout in the specific marker settings. When the road resolution is more detailed then the bridge the bridge cannot be generated exactly according the the road smoothness settings. But the system should set all the Road Smoothness values to 0 for brdige segments to avoid this situation. Can you check this on the involved bridge markers?

I am not sure about the other screenshot, it seems material related. Something must be different between the two roads.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello aleksejfongrozni,

Have you seen the custom road network tutorial videos? It shows how to import connection models and prepare them for the system. The demo package includes a railroad example, you could use that as a reference.

Or is this what you already have tried? In that case, what goes wrong? Does your model look similar? Can you show screenshots or otherwise send the model so I can test it?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

hi raoul
i am new user of your great asset

i have a ask in runtime api.
how get your sideObject and active them via script

thanks again for this asset

 

Hi Raoul,

I must've been looking at some older video (used Free version before). I am gonna give it another try and see if I can follow it up, I assume you are talking about this vid:

Also, when importing I was asked to update as ER is using obsolete (for U3-17.3.1f1) API. Did that, there was some warning but it does not seem to mess up the system, just wanted to let you know. Demo is available for download or purchase (if you have the base ER Pro V3 bought)?

Thank you for the fast reply and continuous presence and support, a prime example on how developer should behave.

 

It seems this emssage doesn't ereally affect the road network, and since you mention that you are using the beta it indeed sounds related to what I wrote in my previous post. In that case, impoerting the latest beta will no longer show that message.

I had a look at changes to the Terrain Splatmap options for road types. This iscurrently ignored when the road is attached to crossings. You can test this by adding a road to the scene that is not connected. This will be fixed.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi kicoloraito,

Side objects are not fully integrated in the API yet. But you can do the following:

Instead of creating the road network object through script, already put a road network in the scene. You can still use ERRoadNetwork roadNetwork = New ERRoadNetwork(). This will create a reference to the existing road network.

Next, work with road types (General Settings > Road Types). Assign the side objects you want to use to these road types.

In your script use:

roadNetwork.GetRoadTypeByName(string name)

and assign that road type to the roads.

The side objects will build that way.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Yes, the other one shows the railway example and creating new "road types" in the same window.

There can be warnings like "Broken text PPtr in file...". This is mentioned in the Known Issues page. I assume this is what you saw? You can indeed ignore this. It is related to a known Unity issue, the system will repair this as soon as you selected the road network object in the hierarchy. We are working on completely eliminating these warnings. The beta issue in the post by SveinEven is related to this as well, capturing info after the scene has finished loading etc.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

So I found smothness options are set like this (screenshot_17) and I did change them to something like this (screenshot_19). Refreshing road and side objects didn't change anything.

 

If you look at the previous screenshot, how the bridge breaks through the road, it seems related to tilting.

The new screenshots show the main smoothness values in the road settings. Did you try pressing the "Reset All Markers" button? And did you check the actual values on the involved bridge markers?

Or, do the markers themselves have manual tilting? In that case the same situation should be taken into account. Can the bridge geometry handle the tilting? If not then you can lower the bridge a little bit, "Y Position" available both in the Side Object Manager and in the main Side Object settings for the selected road.

You could also try "Clamp to Road Geometry" in the Side Object Manager. In that case you may want to match the road resolution more with the original bridge resolution to avoid the bridge sections squeezing together. But it will generate the bridge exactly matching the road.

Since some settings look different on your end, you also perhaps want to check "Alignment" in the Side Object Manager. To match road tilting this must be set to "Path Normal"

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I tried reset anc checked all markers. Clamping changes a bit but still it does overlap but in different way. Changing bridge resolution to one helps with that problem but messes with I intersetion (screenshot). Even if I match road and bridge resolutions. Alligment is set properly. I have raised bridge about 1m and because bridge is smoother overlapping disappeared.

 

What exactly did you do? How/where did you change the bridge resolution to one? Because "resolution" is not a direct side object option for the bridge.

Changing the Y position is the easiest solution but it is always good to figure out what actually happens. Does the road indeed have tilting in those areas and is that what is causing this?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello again Raoul!

I have experienced a bug that I would like to bounce off you, as I belive it can have something to do with EasyRoads3D.

The gizmos in Unity that helps you move an object around the scene, see the image I attached so you completely understand what I am speaking of.

I have a problem, that sometimes when I highlight one of the road markers, these gizmos disapear for every other objects except EasyRoad markers (The blue spheres).

A short description of what I did:
Clicked on a road in the scene, then chose road network in the scene hierachy, then clicked on a marker, and move the marker. After that I clicked in the hierarchy to deselect the road network. I then clicked on a building in order to move it, only to see that the gizmo is no longer present. When I click back to the markers, I can still see gizmos on the markers, but not on nay other objects in my scene.

After I have tested this a few times over the last few days, I do believe that it is a bug with EasyRoad3D, as the gizmos does not disapear if I never click on any of the road markers.

Have you experienced this? If not, could you investigate this for me?
In order to get the gizmos back, so I can continue to work in my scene, I have to restart Unity.

 

Hi SveinEven,

Please update to the latest v3.1 beta 2

That too was a previous v3.1 beta issue

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Above bridge side objects is normal road as I understand. I changed this resolution (screenshot_23)
Road was tilted vertically and it was the reason.

 

Ok, that is the road resolution, not the bridge resolution

When using "Clamp to Road Geometry" the bridge sections will match the road resolution. In your situation the full bridge section will squeeze in 1 meter. So to preserve the same bridge shape the road resolution should change to somewhere between 3 and 5 meter.

I would probably first try lowering the Y position of the bridge a little bit to see if that indeed works better to match the road tilting.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

But I did this already. For now I don't have any problems.;d

 

I updated as you said to beta 2, but this created some more problems.
You can see the image.

After I updated to beta 2, these are the error messages I got, and my road lost its material.
And I cant seem to find out how to get it back.
EDIT: I got the material back. For some reason, the shader had changed. Though I still do not know how important those errors are.

 

Yes, I only mentioned it to summarize, also for possible similar situations in the future. Given there are various options to deal with the road tilting I only mentioned that changing the bridge Y position slightly would be the first thing to try because it is the easiest solution.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Those errors are the errors I mentioned further above . That post explains what it is and that it is harmless.

The Pro package itself includes only one road material which could have updated if that is the one you are using. But the latest package does not include changes to that material. Anyway, the roads are ordinary game objects with a mesh renderer and material attached. Materials are assigned to roads and road types. So if there is a material issue, it can be checked in that order.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Ah ok, so anyways thank you for your patience and being so helpful.

 

No problem, let me know if there is anything else!

Thanks,
Raoul

 

I just spent two days placing buildings along a simple figure-eight road, and finally thought; "there has to be an easier way" so I am starting to look into assets/code that will do this, or I'll have to do so myself. I thought I remember seeing a small list of assets that work with Easy Roads but I can't find that list.

Does anyone have recommendations?

Thanks

 

What sort of environment / buildings are involved? Are the buildings sized in a similar way?

Because first thoughts would be to do this using side objects.

1. Add all your building prefabs as childs to a new prefab
2. Create a new "Buildings" side object
3. Keep "Mesh Object" selected in the "Side Object Type" dropdown
4. Select for example "Random Mesh" for "Child Prefabs", a random building will be selected for each instance
5. Set "Distance between objects" to the bounds of your builds plus a margin with optionally also an additional "Random Distance" value added to this.
6. Optionally align the side object with the left or right side of the road which can also be fine tuned wit the "X Position" option.
7. Activate this side object for the figure-eight road.

Depending on your terrain and exact road shape the marker indent values can be increased to cover the buildings. That way the buildingswill align exactly with the terrain.

Or do you need something else?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

EDIT: You know, the more I thought about it, I think you are right. I can make a prefab that generates the random buildings and have that as a Side Object, even if I have to run a piece of code that loops through all of those side objects, that'd still be nbd. Thanks. I will report back on how this goes.

Thanks again

----------------------
Original Post
Thanks for the detailed response. I could have sworn I saw, just a few days ago, a list of Assets that work with ER3D, even if it's not this need, I'd like that list.

The Side Object idea is something I thought about, and it may work. But I will have so many different assets/buildings that this is unlikely a possibility. I started looking at your api last night as if I can find out where the road is, by the Markers I believe atm, then I can do the math on how big the building is, and how close I can fit it and other buildings. Since I am a software developer if I can find the road's position and other properties I will then be able to place the random buildings.

Once I get this working I promise to share the code.

I wrote a little bit of code to show how to integrate the Traffic-AI code with ER3D: https://github.com/Blissgig/Easy-Roads-3D-with-Road-and-Traffic-AI

 

It is still not entirely clear what your buildings look like and what exactly you want to achieve.

Do you want to create a city environment with connected buildings or simply place individual buildings / houses?

My previous post covers the last situation. Unless you want precise control over which building to place, it will work well. If some buildings should be selected more often, these buildings can be duplicated so there is more chance they will get selected more often. Like the prefab used for the bootcamp side object example which works in a similar way.

Yes, instead of using a prefab with childs you can also attach a script to the source prefab that will take care of which building to select for each instance.

Otherwise, indeed the API can be used for your own implementation. It gives access to the exact road shape, all vertex positions at the left and right side of the road, ERRoad.GetSplinePointsRightSide() and ERRoad.GetSplinePointsLeftSide().

Thank you for the link. Another user sent an unity package for AI traffic. He granted permission to make it publicly available but we first want/have to take a better look. It is optimized for left hand driving which probably is easy to adjust and it currently covers two lane roads only.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello, I have been using the pro version of this for quite some time. However, quite a old version maybe, today I updated to the newest version. One the things I have been using is the "generate waypoints" on the road, this way my ai cars can follow those waypoints. I seems the generate waypoints function is gone or moved? I guess something has changed? Is there a way for me to still generate those waypoints? Or is there a new API that should be used to "move" alone the spline of the road? I see there is no API manual at the website? It kinda broke my project now, but I am sure I am just doing something wrong?

 

Hi manvsrice,

The waypoints option was indeed removed because of all this can now be done with the scripting API. That way waypoints can be created exactly to your needs instead of only creating waypoints in the center of the road like the previous option did.

The manual is part of the package, the most right tab in the Inspector includes a link to the online docs.

Below is a link related to a similar post a couple of weeks ago. It includes a script example simulating the previous waypoints option.

https://forum.unity.com/threads/eas...g-new-road-system.229327/page-91#post-3427646

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hi Raoul,

Thank you, that worked like a charm!

It seems I was looking in an old manual (http://www.unityterraintools.com/EasyRoads3D/v3/html/scene.html).

Thank you for the script too, it was to see an example

 

Sorry, I thought this was related to the manual and the API, which is part of the manual. The specific screenshot is indeed not entirely up to date regarding the previous waypoint option.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Actually there is one thing. Is there possibility in code that standard roads reacts different to lighting even if they share material? Take a look at my crossing, I'm using there easy roads standard (specular) shared material.

 

Are the materials and settings on the roads the same as on the crossing?

Could you double check that?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thanks by the way for your response! I only recently got back into it, and managed to make several intersections for my road network. Doing the UV's for them in something I'm going to worry about later

So far so good, I've redone the entire network to make use of intersections. However, what I'm stumbling upon now is Terrain Deformation. In some areas of the map it has unexpected results. I realize this is very specific to my scene, but I'm hoping you can give me some pointers as to what might cause this.

Its an 8x8km set up with 64 chunks, of that's of any importance.

This is an example of one of the areas that has issues:


Deformation skirts:

This is the terrain before deformation:


The difference is pretty huge, because it's extremely difficult to exert control over the terrain on such a low scale in World Creator. So I'm partially depending on the terrain deformation to do an additional sculpting pass on the terrain. Could this difference be an issue?

On another note, what do these red spheres signify?


PS: Thanks for the Vegetation Studio integration, that's going to be very helpful!

 

They are the same.

 

Just as a test, can you check this with materials part of the package?

Because for both the road and crossing material in the Pro package itself as for all the different roat type and crossing materials in the demo package, the shading is exactly the same on the roads and the crossings.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello StaggartCreations,

The angle of the screenshots make it hard to see the actual terrain deformation for the crossing areas. Also because of the particular shape of the highlighted surfaces and shadows near crossings, is there actually any terrain deformation in these areas?

Can you switch off "Hide White Surfaces" in General Settings > Scene Settings? Are the white surfaces visible for the crossings? If not, what is the crossing type? Are these built-in crossings or custom crossings based on your own models? In case of the latter, is "Terrain Deformation" switched on for these crossings in the Custom prefab Editor window?

What is the terrain scale, terrain size / heightmap resolution? Looking at the scaling of the highlighted surfaces this doesn't seem to be an issue.

Which version are you using?

Glad to hear you like the Vegetation Studio integration, more on that will follow.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello Raoul!

Is there some way to manage terrain deformation from crossings as from rodes?
I have noticed that the deformation from crossings impacts a smaller area on the terrain than the roads, so I have a lot of minor touchups to do after the road is created (not a big deal).

A think you could test is when the script is deforming the terrain, perhaps wait with the crossings untill after the roads. That way, there wont be any "competition" between the roads when it comes to deforming.

If this is the case currently, then a way to change the opacity /strength of the edges of the deformation could possibly help.

As you can see in the images, it is not a big deal, just a quality of life improvement

 

Hello SveinEven,

Crossings are deformed according the default Indent / Surrounding settings in General Settings > Scene Settings.

It is on the list to improve this so it adapts to customized indent /Surrounding values. Or at least for the surrounding values. Generally it is recommended to keep the default road marker indent values at crossings.

Regarding the spike downwards. That can happen when using another value then 0 for "Preserve Terrain Contrours" in the built settings. What happens is that this particular terrain point is covered by two roads, if the height is adjusted according the road where this point is lowest it can result in what you see. Improving this is also on the list. For now it can adjusted easily using the Terrain Smooth Height tool with a small brush size.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

So I checked your materials and it looked fine. What I did to fix it was to overwrite exisitng crossing material instead of creating new one and then change smoothness value. Now it looks alright.

 

Different smoothness values between the road and the crossing can result in what you see in your screenshots. But if both the roads and crossings were using exactly the same material, these smoothness values should have been the same.

Anyway, glad to hear you got this resolved!

Thanks,
Raoul