Looking for modern-day highway onramps and offramps
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I'm looking at FirstBastion's Divided Highway, and his other roadway products... and Divided Highway looks about perfect for a story project I'm planning. Problem is, I need highway onramps and offramps... well, mostly an offramp... which fits the same look and scale seemlessly. Doesn't look like Divided Highway has offramps, though, but I don't own it yet to check.
I found something that sorta, kinda looks like an ONramp (but not an offramp) in CyberCity Roadkit (which I have)... but the style is too different, and the ramp isn't the forks-off-from-the-main-lane sort of offramp I need. Glancing at X-BIT Fiture Space Road (which I don't have), it looks like it doesn't have one of those splitting-diagonally-off exit ramps either.
Any idea where I might find what I'm looking for?
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An off ramp could be an on-ramp with a scale of -100% in the traffic flow direction & a stop line texture added as a LIE, decal or modified texture. However, if the style's not right, that won't help much.
I'm afraid I don't know of any, sorry.
Regards,
Richard
Actually, the bit I was calling an offramp in that scifi road pack wasn't really an offramp, and was more of a sort of roadway where a raised section of road, say for a bridge, is descending down towards ground level from that... but is then curving off to the side as it does... but it doesn't split off into two roadways, it continues as the same two lanes the whole while. It isn't really what I need, since what I'd want is something that forks off from a straight section of road, and where the part that forks off fom that straight section then curves off to the side to then merge into a side road somewhere... such as you'd see when getting off the highway to get to a gas station or to where the fast-food places are.
It's strange that I haven't found any obvious examples of that sort of splits-off-diagonally highway exit road for Daz or Poser anywere, but maybe I'm plugging the wrong search words in.
I'm not sure you are looking wrong. If you look at most Poser/DS models, they're not very big. An on-ramp and a bit of road is a long model, very expansive, lots of grass/plants etc. Not too many PA's do big models, fewer still big models of roads. IstBastion is about the most frequent modeller I know of of such things, and if there isn't one in their catalogue I don't know where to look.
Sorry I can't help.
Well, could model one up, just not in a sensible period of time given the other things I need to do. Same as not being able to help. Sorry.
Regards,
Richard
There are a handful of build-pack type thingies, consisting of lots of short sections of road that one then joins together as needed. Those two sci-fi roadway packs, for instance. Oddly, neither of them seem to have offramps or onramps, though. Basically, you'd want a merge-in-with-traffic sort of reverse-of-a-fork sectiion, or a split-off-from-traffic fork-in-the-road section, which one could then join that road-segment with another road-segment as needed, Just wierd that no one seems to have build-packs with those merge or unmerge lanes in it, that I can find.
I really don't mean to keep pushing KB3D sets, but https://kitbash3d.com/products/props-highways
Kitbash3D models are excellent. Not cheap, but excellent.
For a free alternative try searching for something like 'highway' in Sketchfab. This turned up - https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/free-new-york-highway-interstate-95-f668f36f01d44a6cae4b6bfa2f9b3021 - which might be of interest. You'll be spending a lot of time in Blender and/or the geometry editor to bend it to your will, as well as figuring out whether to keep the vegetation billboards or scatter instances yourself. Lots to do if you go down this route.
I like the look of those kitbash models too.
How easy is it to import that (SketchFab) NYC highway into Daz, with the textures intact? That is, without having to manually apply them all post-import? If I'd have to mod it in Blender -- say, to split it up into moddable sections -- I'm not really all that experienced in Blender, beyond loading something into Blender and then saving the whole thing back out in another format.
Anyway, if its fairly easy to import that highway as is into Daz Studio, textures and all, then presumably, with tight camera placement, I wouldn't have to mod anything, I could simply place cameras such that all you see is a section with an offramp for the relevant renders I'd be doing.
If it comes in FBX format, then you're at the mercy of DS's inadequate importer. DS only imports OBJ as single objects, and as a general rule, textures beyond base color almost never survive being transferred from one program to another.
Here's the quick answer - import it into Blender (it's a native .blend file), export it in Collada format which preserves the grouping and is usually problem-free in Studio. The texturing will have to be done manually - if you want free, you'll have to put in some labour of your own!
As I suggested it I'll have a look at it later on this evening for you and see if I can get it started for you but it's not going to just simply slide into Studio with zero work. Even with the textures applied, you'll still have to sort out the materials, decide if you're keeping the billboards (which you'll have to convert) or use something like Ultrascatter to place new greenery. And that's just the start.
When I said 'lots to do' I did actually mean it!
This is what you'll start with:
First impressions are this is actually really quite good. The textures are all 1k which means it's lightweight, but rules out closeups in certain areas. I'd be looking to change some of these out for much better store-bought materials or create your own. I'll need to re-do the export part again as I forgot to uncheck 'triangulate' which has resulted in some distortion in curved surfaces. Most of it is modelled in quads (this is not common with Sketchfab models!) which can be subdivided nicely in Studio.
The city part of it is a non-starter unfortunately due to the texturing which appears to have come from something like Google Earth but you could easily drop in a set like one of Stonemason's Urban Sprawl items to replace it if you need a skyline, or use a backdrop to keep it lightweight. Throw in some street lighting, some signage, traffic signals - this could be really, really nice.
I'm going to keep this myself. I have no use for it right now but you never know and with a couple of afternoon's work, this could be something very good. It's licensed with a CC BY 4.0 which means you can use and distribute it for any purpose with attribution so if you don't mind waiting a little while I'd be happy to put mine up in the Freebies section. If you can't wait, roll up your sleeves and get to it!
Actually, the problem with the lack-of-usableness of the included buildings doesn't matter for the project I have in mind: I'd need to replace them all, anyway, since part of the plot of the comicbook narrative is "We gotta get to that gas station over THERE..." (so I'd need to insert one or the other of the gas stations I already have) while they're coming from the middle of bumper-to-bumper traffic. And most of the story is going to be focussed on what's going on INside the car that the characters are in, so no real need to see the surrounding scenery other than some bits of it through the car windows, with maybe one or two outside shots of the car itself as they try to get to the offramp.
That said, I'm not in a huge hurry, since I already have several other projects ahead of this one, in various stages of completion. Take as much time as you need. I'll be happy to see your results.