Help Creating a Highway That Follows Terrain

davedawriter

Hi all,

I'm scripting a graphic novel version of a short story I published a few years back.  The opening panels are establishing shots of an East Tennessee landscape, with mountains in the background, farms and rolling hills foreground, and a road winding through it.  I'm having no problems creating everything else in Carrara or Infinito for Daz Studio, but I'm having trouble even finding a web tutorial that explains how to create a decently realistic winding road that follows the terrain (I say "decently" because I'll be processing the imgaes in Photoshop and inking them to give a sort of cell-shaded feel).

I'd far prefer modelling the road to adding it in Photoshop, as the panel sequence for the first page will be more or less like a storyboarded crane shot, with the camera lowering and pulling in.  Hand-drawing the road consistently from at least three different perspective points would be more difficult than modeling it (for me, anyway).

If someone has tried this, I would greatly appreciate you sharing your workflow for it.  It's very important to the story, which starts and ends with these landscape shots.

Thanks!

 

argus1000

Mark Bremmer has a tutorial called "Road on terrains" here: http://www.markbremmer.com/3Bpages/tutorials.html, Hope it works for you.

3DAGE

HI :)

It's not as easy as it sounds ,.. especially the part about the "decently realistic" ..that means detailed textures, and normally much more detailed than the overall terrain texture.

you should have a look at howie's "Country Lane" series,... It sounds like that's what you need ready to roll

http://www.daz3d.com/country-lane

http://www.daz3d.com/country-lane-hedgerow

http://www.daz3d.com/country-lane-2

most of the objects and plants in those scenes can be moved, shuffled, to randomise within the replicators to personalise the scene.

Alternatively,..

You could use the 3D Paint functions to paint onto a model, or a terrain ,. Carrara's terrain editor also has a basic terrain painting function,(importing a greyscale image or height map is generally easier) ... but the terrain editor has some nice filters, such as Terrace or Plateau filters which can create step or level cut-in areas on the side of a slope if you just want a nice flat section of surface with a sceneic view.

Mark Bremmer also had a tutorial on exporting terrain maps, editing in Photoshop and returning to Carrara's terrain

Depending on the shot distance,. you could get away with a "painted on" road,. especially if you're post processing  as line art

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mistara

do you have a photo reference of what you looking to make?  

imagining would need mesh tweaking so cars dont slide sideways

 

 

WendyLuvsCatz

Shapemagic guy has roadmaker that works on heightmaps

WendyLuvsCatz

http://www.shapemagic.com/products.htm

Mistara

something like that would be good for dinosaur foot prints

That Other Persona

Draping a road... Mark Bremmer's vid comes to mind, but that is an undertaking.  

A nice road building model set would be great to have in the store.  Straights, curves, up/down slope, etc.  Another set for highways.  I've seen them on other sites . . .  Then create the lanscape around the roads.

I just tried making a simple curved road in a drawing app with a transparent background.  Used it on a plane in Carrara and it looked OK, but lacks depth.

MarkIsSleepy

davedawriter said:

Hi all,

I'm scripting a graphic novel version of a short story I published a few years back.  The opening panels are establishing shots of an East Tennessee landscape, with mountains in the background, farms and rolling hills foreground, and a road winding through it.  I'm having no problems creating everything else in Carrara or Infinito for Daz Studio, but I'm having trouble even finding a web tutorial that explains how to create a decently realistic winding road that follows the terrain (I say "decently" because I'll be processing the imgaes in Photoshop and inking them to give a sort of cell-shaded feel).

I'd far prefer modelling the road to adding it in Photoshop, as the panel sequence for the first page will be more or less like a storyboarded crane shot, with the camera lowering and pulling in.  Hand-drawing the road consistently from at least three different perspective points would be more difficult than modeling it (for me, anyway).

If someone has tried this, I would greatly appreciate you sharing your workflow for it.  It's very important to the story, which starts and ends with these landscape shots.

Thanks!

 

Maybe use something like Mark Bremmer's tutorial to create the more distant parts of the road and model the close up parts, including a bit that matches up with the terrain in the vertex modeler?

Roygee

There is a method I have used - simple, a bit fiddly, if Carrara doesn't crash during the process!

Make a copy of the terrain and convert to other modeller - this is where it sometimes crashes.

Take the copy into the vertex room and use a very clever function Carrara has - draw a curve along the surface of the terrain (this is the fiddly bit - you need to click on verts) where you want the road to be - if you do it carefully, the curve will conform to the surface.  Make a flattened rectangle to the width and depth of the road and do a path sweep (be sure to have the rectangle at 90 degrees to and positioned at the start of the curve- viola, a road which conforms to the surface!

Delete the copy of the terrain.

WendyLuvsCatz

Sounds cool,

never had it crash doing first step, do that often to make an invisble editable by deletion of bits terrain for surface replication,

unless have my octane window open, believe it or not you can model in vertex room and watch it in real time render but that is indeed crashy

Headwax

this is probably straight out of mark Bremmer's tut, but this is how I would do it.

Make a terrain

convert it to an obj mesh

export the materials - name the diffuse file 'terrain' - save it

in photoshop make a new layer on the terrain image and draw the road in black with a soft brush 

put a white layer under this

saves this as 'transmap'.psd

go to the layer with the black road, make the edges hard with filter>threshold

save this is "displacment" psd

make another layer and make it the colour of your road - eg tarmac texture

save this as 'road' psd

go back into car

in the shader room make your terrain object texture tree "Multichannel" (not terrain)

use the displacment map in the displacment section of your this new terrain texture

in the vertex room you tick smooth and give it a rendering level of two

fine tune the softness of the 'diplacment map file until you get it right - try adding a little noise to it even in photoshop

for the terrain texture use your orginal terrain.psd

but instead of just a texture in the colour section use the operator 'mixer'

source 1 will be your terrain.psd

source 2 will be your be your 'road' psd

blender will be your 'transmap.psd

this will place your road texture in the right place

soften the edges in photoshop even more to fine tune if necessary

- when happpy with how it looks in Carrara export this as an obj again, tick 'convert procedural shaders to textures'

in photoshop paint in the details you want - eg white lines on road, or graduations from tarmac to terrain

save this out and use it as your terrain texture

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Headwax

here's a close up with a smooth factor of 3, i think you could get it a lot neater

also a plainer jane one

davedawriter

Thank you all so much for the suggestions and ideas.  I appreciate it!