I will use this thread for questions that pertain to 3dsmax and how to's to help me along. This first question is in regards to something I have seen before but am unsure how to get rid of it and I am not sure I can search on youtube for it since I have no idea what it is. Once I figure out how to get rid of these lines I can move onto path deform as that video shows. View attachment 753
No and considering it came from another track just as a fill in till I get my own done I doubt they would release a texture like that..hehe I loaded up 2012 and did the same plane/added texture and looked great with no line but I have this feeling it's some setting some where's. It does not matter what road texture I use it has lines through it like above and I am following this guys tutorial to the tee. I am starting to get ticked off because this is holding me back..lol I suppose I can always change the texture later in 2012 when they get these plugins out. EDIT: I did notice that when I rendered it the texture looked fine, guess I just need to forget about it and move on.
Sometimes I will see a join where the texture edges meet, but its just a max thing and not actually anything wrong. But if you are concerned, run the unwrap uvw modifier and click the edit button.
Ok onto a new set of questions..lol I had major problems last night working on the track, I created a plane, added texture, gizmo turned the right way, collapsed all, and although the first time worked fine and then I could use the path deform on the line but I am not sure if I did something wrong but I think I might have hit a wrong button and I might have saved it as well at that point or something but after that any other plane I created and got to all the steps up to "collapsing all" of the UVW Map above "plane" it would always crash after collapsing, no matter how many planes I made it would always crash. I have no idea what I did but I got pissed and fired up Max2012. Had no problems finishing my layout there. This is the video I followed in making this track but instead of the 1 poly he showed I put mine to 6 (length segs) as per reading Luc's reply in another post about trying to make sure they were 1.5 polys wide or something since my main track is 10 meters in width but parts of that will be expanded. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=an3B_sxkppY&feature=related My problem is now since I have no new plugins yet for this version can I just delete the temp road texture I have on it (which was gizmo'd to 90 degrees as it showed in video) WHEN we get the new plugins and then add the new ones with the gmod part? Same would go for the grass texture I will have on the inner and outer mesh (that won't be gizmo'd). Also, now that I have the layout done I have to read up on joining these pits and the club track to the main track and I think I seen a thread in here about that but it was over my head reading it plus I didn't loft my track so that won't work for me. I will watch some more video's on YouTube but is there a easy method? I do know how to collapse verts because I did it following the video and had to get rid of some verts when both ends lined up just a bit to far so I had to collapse to get rid of extra and make 1 set of verts. Now, after that my other goal will be to add an infield between the track and add polys to the outside of the track as well while fine tuning the mesh. As for the first screenshot I have now correctly rotated it to what it should be as in I'm sure the top on the view port is north? View attachment 777 View attachment 778
Didn't get much in the way of help on my last question 2 days ago so I edited and took out what I had to learn for myself and getting pissed off at the same time. Guess I'm so used to helping out other people who want to design a golf course and need help learning how to use that golf course editor we use. I have a dilemma that I cannot figure out myself or maybe I can but don't want to **** up this track, your first track should be the best it can and if you go to far doing it the wrong way you might not be able to fix it so doing it the right the first time is better. I need help merging these 2 planes together (1 pit, 1 club track both editable poly), I tried following a video I found on compound shape merging and as easy as it is it is not working period, it does not merge my 2 planes together so I can delete verts and cut in some more like he shows. I don't know if it's because I am using Max12 or if he has some other option selected he is not showing but as far as I know I am doing it exactly as he is. I got pissed off last night and almost called it quits and was going to import and export a track that was already finished but I would like to make my own track. I also agree that you should try things on your own to figure it out and YouTube and the Max help file helps but sometimes you just need other help so I hope I can get some. I followed this one to a tee, great tutorial but just doesn't work for me. http://home.comcast.net/~pga.pro_golfer/compound_shapemerge.wmv Here is a screen of my areas that need to be merged, I tried collapsing last night but I am not sure if that is the best way to go and didn't save it, I already have more polys in these corners and on the main track itself since that is what I heard you must do now in the new game. View attachment 804
Your road still looks way too low-poly. You can make out the points where the road makes the "kinks" between polys and the polys look too long for real road to work properly too. As for merging those two planes, just do what I wrote in another thread. Take the orange one, right click on a free space and select "Cut Polygons". Then start cutting the orange one along the outer edge of the blue one. When done, delete the superfluous polys from the orange road and move the vertices to align correctly with the blue one. You might want to create some additional vertices that perfectly aline with the blue plane's vertices to make the edge line up perfectly. Here's how it looks in one of my tracks. Bonus points if you can spot the UVW mapping error I introduced when increasing the poly-count of the main road. View attachment 808
Edit: Never mind, ethone was quicker. Btw, with build-in 3ds max tutorials you learn much more than forums. Even if looks like they doesn't contain any usefull information, you can adapt many techniques to track modelling from them...
freew67, I have made a few 3d models before for use in our golf course we made but nothing to extreme and nothing had anything to do with cutting or moving poly's or anything, just a simple wall with rock texture over it, simple chain link fences. Not sure what this has to do with me modeling my own track, I'm 45 and don't exactly have the best brain anymore so sometimes you need help even if it's the simplest of thing to someone else that has been doing it for ever. And the Help file in Max is not the best if you don't search it with the correct word. ethone, I see no mapping error, only thing I can see is beauty + the white line on your track that I thought we were suppose to make another shape with and raise it 1mm over the track so you can set that up for the different physics that are more slippery then the main track. I also had no idea I had to have 12000 poly's or more just in the track that really ain't finished. I created my planes watching the video and that guy only did 300 width segments and 1 length, I knew I needs 6 length segments from listening to one of Luc's replys to sam moss that looks like the same way he made his track as well by path deforming around the line. I also knew about having to have more polys around the corners as well so I figured I should up my width segments to 500, well I guess that is not enough either so I'll have to go back to an earlier version and redo it with maybe 1000 width segments for the main track and see how well that is because shift selecting faces and adding tons more connects then re-align them might take way to long and would take less time redoing it. I just checked and with doing 1000 width segments for Brainerd's 3.1 mile road course it should be good but I can always add more in the corner because you don't need the straights with a whole bunch of polys right? Jka, I do search YouTube, I do search the Max help files but sometimes I just can't make sense of it and you never know that maybe one of you can word it better or something so I can make sense of it. Maybe it's because of where I come from and helping out so much that I don't see the problem with asking for help. I mean if you guys don't want to help you are not obligated to, I have seen others in our community of golf designers shun others because there not the IN CROWD that they have known for ages so they just want nothing to do with them. Either way I will finish this track if I have to do it all by myself, I just hope I don't waste all my time doing this for nothing. This is something completely different then I am use to and way tougher then I have ever used before. It's not fun banging your head against your desk trying to figure it out, 3dsmax is the hardest thing I have hard to learn in quite sometime.
That shapemerge tutorial looked like a fine way to go. Where exactly are you having difficulty with it? You don't want to actually 'merge' the two meshes together. To put what the video tutorial showed into text, the process is as follows: Select Road Mesh Go into Edge-mode Select the outside edge loop where you want to join the two meshes together Click 'Create Shape from Selection' Select your 'link road' In the 'Create' tab, under Compound Objects click 'Shape Merge' Click on 'Pick Shape' Select the line that was just created from your edge extraction Covert the 'link road' to an Edit Poly Delete the overlapping polys Go into Vertex mode "Connect the new vertices that are created along the border to the inner vertices for better edge-flow" - paraphrasing "Remove the unnecessary verts. i.e. The ones that don't match up with the verts on your main track." - again, paraphrasing *Not in video - adjust the z-position of your verts to snap to the verts on your main track. They happen to use the Cut tool. Personally, I don't really care for this tool when you're just adding edges between existing vertices. I prefer going into Edge mode and using the 'Create' edges tool. The Cut tool can sometimes add extraneous verts when you don't mean to, at least in my own experience.
SmokingJo65, No, no. I didn't mean don't want to help you, ethone was just faster on his reply.. Personally I have gone through max tutorials in the past and found out that they are useful, even if they are not exactly related to track modelling. Feel free to ask and we try to help you. Its sometimes hard to understand each other, if we use different terms on same item.
Well if you look at 23 seconds when he clicks on the shape it seems as if the mesh actually does merge with the shape but with me nothing merges so I can't delete the extra overlapping polys. And like I said in my last reply that I was following this tutorial to the tee so when I try 10 times and nothing merges to the shape somethings wrong..lol, it just seemed so simple of a tutorial plus it was so simple to follow as well. I'll follow ethone's advice, I know he talked about this in another post but it seemed different then what he explained here so that's why I didn't follow it. Jka, I knew what you meant As far as learning Max yes you should try different things yourself but asking if you get stuck is always better then banging your head trying to make sense of how to do something you still can't figure out.
...and thats basically why I was asking. You were complaining it took 2 days and didnt get an answer? It took us 6 years to get another tutorial from ISI If you have noticed theres only a dozen or so folks on here who have answered questions that have to do with max. We are just a small slice of the pie. Max isnt easy, if it was there wouldnt have been a need for Bobs Track Builder. I spent 2 days working on something and in the end it doesnt work with rf2 anyways. Welcome to the world of tracking making! If you dont get pissed off, you're not trying hard enough. I have made 20 or more tracks for rf1 and not 1 of them I had to do what your trying to do. Im sure a few others are in the same boat. 99.9% of us do this as a hobby, so checking the forum everyday isnt a high priority. Im Mr. Mom, so I dont have much else to do if the kids are being good. lol Of course if you get stuck ask away. You just cant expect every question to get answered. On that note, has anyone tried to use ProBoolean to join 2 track pieces like this?
I've used Boolean previously, not for track pieces though. Since objects needed to overlap three dimensionally I didn't think it would work for what's essentially 2d planes of track segments. If they're just at a slight vertical angle wouldn't that make it not work? Or is there a way to "project" them onto the same plane? I spend two days trying to increase the poly count of the racing surface to the point where RealRoad works sufficiently well (from a loft that wasn't the latest one I used four years ago, requiring manual adjustments, ...). I have spent another day today re-doing the unrippled curbs into full 3d ones and am barely a third of the way through with that. 3dsmax is complex and we are few indeed. Most of us are also terribly ambitious in the quality we want from our tracks. And I too can get frustrated with it. Like right now. The whole components/rfmod thing doesn't help either.
I did redo the roads again and this time with the main road at 1000 width segments but couldn't go any higher, I tried to keep my club route and my two pits the same width, all corners are much smoother but I might have to go in and add some on some corners or take some away. I'll figure this out later as I'm starting to get a little upset again because things just ain't going my way and I need to back away from this program right now. I'm trying to follow what your saying but cutting means nothing if you can't cut from the orange one to the blue one, I can only cut, collapse, delete or what have you on the one that's highlighted which would be the orange one. I don't know if it's because I am working in Max2012 that things maybe different or work differently but when I right click on a free space I only see CUT in the right click menu but I would imagine that's the same thing. I can't do anything in Max2010 because every time I try to collapse all something it crashes so I had to move to 2012. I know what you mean by cutting but it's just not working..lol I did try to delete and add some verts and then I was just going to collapse them to the other piece but I can't select 2 and if I do you don't get the tools you want. I'm at a dead end I think. I have no idea why this is so hard, it should not be this hard, all these tutorials I have watched or read should have worked. View attachment 817
ethone- prob correct on the if they dont touch 100% but possibly if they were flat pieces it could work. maybe lol SJ65- Ive never seen Max 2012 but I could only guess the same basic funtions would not change. Cutting is cutting from Max 6 to Max 2012. I have an idea that will be easier to show you then type out. Give me a bit and I will post a link.
Oh sorry, I am working with editable meshes. When you have an editable poly it is indeed just called "Cut". Makes sense, since you're editing the polys already. What do you mean by collapsing? To me collapsing is when you select several objects and collapse them into one. Is that what you're talking about?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y142jmwL5xI&feature=youtu.be This video is unlisted but if it helps I can do one of my normal full vids on it. Let me know if it helps.
You're almost there! All you really need from what you have there is to select the verts you want to match up one-by-one, turn snapping on, then go into a 3D view (orthographic or perspective) and move them to the ones you want them to snap to! Sounds like you're maybe trying to weld vertices on two different objects? If there's any way you can do a screen-capture and upload to YouTube or something, maybe we can help you out a little better if we see exactly what you're clicking on and such. Just a suggestion, though...it is a little bit of work to do, but it'll be the best way we can help you out.
