Hello guys, during last week I got into 3DS Max bit by bit. I wanted to create my own tracks since many years, but the complex nature of track modelling always stopped me before I really tried. This time I really wanna go on and create a track fropm scratch. I decided to model a simple real life track at first. After some reading I decided that I will Loft the track from a Spline. So did I. Unfortunately my mesh was fairly bugged. Lots of Polys were lying over another in the corners, creating some ugly wrinkles. Following this I discovered Marios TrackCreator and used it on my spline. Now i had some series problems getting materials on to the "surface". In the end I found the original track creation guide for rFactor1 written by Scott Juliano. He suggests working with crossections, each 10m wide. I now built my crossection containing the road (polys are about 2 x 1.5m), transition to grass (0.4m), 1st and second grass, wall, outer grass. In addition i put on a plane for the white lanes which are at the boarder of the road. Then I went on and duplicated my crossection by the Array Tool. Now i have a long straight track composed of several boxes. The next step should be to align the track with my track template using the "Bend" modifier. Using the bending modifier after turning the gizmo results in bended road as it should. Unfortunately, the bend command only bends the selected boxes, the boxes left and right to the part of the bended part remain on there position. Is it possible to fuse the parts, so that the parts right and left to the parts which are bend move with the bending? Or am I doing something totally wrong? I would appreciate any kinds of help. Greetings, Dennis P.S.: Applied textures are just to distinguish between different parts of the box.
Rotate part, which should be fused (or welded in 3dsmax) so that it aligns to curved part as close as possible. Then weld both parts vertexes together. There are many techniques, which can be used for track surface modelling. There is nothing wrong with your method (cross-section box => array => bend), but is could be tricky (and time consuming) when you add cambers to your corners. I used this methods back then with rF1, but nowdays I'm moved over to another methods. Lofting and extruding from spline - techs gives your more control over your track surface model. There are many good track modelling tutorials floating around youtube, which will help you. For instance, freew67 has made few very good and detailed videotutorials which you might want to look at. Cheers!
Thx guys It seems I should try the Spline - Loft method again. Nevertheless, creating the box and testing with some modifiers has helped me getinng into max. Will open a new Thread regarding Spline - loft - method questions if I will be stuck again.
