World Building EasyRoads3D v3 - the upcoming new road system

Raoul, I figured it out. Sorry! I guess I was just talking out loud in the above thread.

Unfortunately, the roads did not serve my purpose. They seemed too pasted on and did not blend well in the terrain, even following the suggestions in the manual. I needed a rough dirt road/path but I do see that a modern road would look great with Easy Roads. I might try the next version if I don't find another road solution before then.

Thank you for all your help!

 

Hello Teila, EasyRoads3D creates the road geometry. The actual visual end result depends on the materials you use. Regarding blending the road with the terrain, Have you tried the alpha shaders together with textures with a transparency layer? Blending the roadshape directly in the terrain splatmap also helps.

Raoul

 

How do i change the size of the roads to make it bigger? because its too small

 

Hi gk104, you can change the road width in the Inspector, the General Settings tab (second tab from the right).

Raoul

 

Hi,

I have the pro version but can't figure out how to get lightmapped shadows on my roads. Is there a way?

 

Hi kenlem, in v2, the road uv2 values (used for lightmapping) are calculated relative to the terrains bounding box. So you can use the terrain lightmaps directly on the road. Alternatively you can use the export to .obj option, reimport the road and have Unity calculate the uv coordinates for lightmapping.

Raoul

 

Just bought V2 from the Asset Store, can I get on the V3 beta program please?

 

Hi jj-steele, It is not yet out but very near, working on provisional video tutorials now. Can you send me a PM or email so I can add you to the beta list?

Raoul

 

Hello Raoul,
I really need your EasyRoads v3 as soon as possible. Can you add me to the beta list please ?

Thanks

 

Hello Marduker, can you send me a PM or email with your email address?
Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hello. I bought a pro licence (1 seat). Can I buy another licence with my Unity account for my partner or he have to buy it from his Unity account?

Do I need to buy him a licence if he is the programmer and won't use 3DRoads3D? I will be the only one using it.

 

Hi Ovation,

If I remember well I have seen invoices with multiple purchases of the same product so you should be able to get another license from your own account.

Please let me know if you have problems with this! You can also send me an email or PM with sort of license specific questions if you prefer that.

Raoul

 

So I remember seeing a railroad system for Easy Roads 2, will it be making a return for Easy Roads 3 ?
I was hoping to use something like that to make something like a highly modifiable roller coaster path, would that be possible ?

 

Hi KillerKahuna, in v2 you can simulate rail roads using the side objects system but it doesn't include a full rail road system by itself. The demo project includes an example scene showing how you can create rail roads using side objects.

V3 will have additional features so you can actually also include rail road switches.

Raoul

 

As a current Easy Roads User that was not satisfied with the way the roads looked out of the box (in my case because I use a parallax terrain shader that makes the road geometry look floating above it):

You can use the Easy roads tool to paint a terrain texture around the road. By making this ultra narrow and hiding the road geometry (but keeping the road collider, if you want to have a smooth ride... the road collider can use "smooth sphere collisions", terrain collider cannot), you get any kind of road texture neatly integrated into you terrain textures.

Of course, any signs on the road then have to be applied with decals.


@ Raoul: Any ETA vor EasyRoads v3? Im still waiting impatiently for the new features... after watching your new vid, I am even more impatient

 

Hi gian-reto alig,

Thank you for your post and describing how you are using this with regard to your specific terrain setup!

As I am having a little bit of a break at the moment, I was hoping to have everything ready for the first beta last week. But, as side objects are not active yet in the first beta, I decided to change one last thing in order to make v2 and v3 work together in a single project so you can use the v2 side object system for now. This seems to be working now, I have to do some further testing regarding this and create a new demo scene. Emails for the fist beta download may go out in the next few days, otherwise next week. So make sure you are on the beta list if you want to try it!

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Hey Raoul, I sent you a message via the site as well, but just in case you're like myself and don't check e-mail often I thought I'd drop a message here as well. Just need to get my license sorted out so I can use it on my machine after updating hardware. It would be great if there was a customer section on your site where we could manage this ourselves! Just limit the machine changes to once per month and I doubt there would be any abuse.

 

Hi SNS_Case, I received your email, you should now be able to register again on the new hardware. Regarding a customer section for this, the website will be updated for v3, I will see if I can add this as well.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thanks for the fast response, I've been looking forward to v3!

 

I just saw your video!! I have had problems with ER in the past but this new update looks amazing! In my....umm..former life, I made a lot of worlds in Sims 3 World Creator and the road system is almost identical. It is truly an EASY road system. I do have a couple of questions.

The video shows flat land. Can you put it in hilly land and deform the terrain? Can you smooth the road?

Can we still use our own textures? Is it possible to make the road texture completely transparent so we can just paint the underlying area for a more rugged path-like road?

Will this also work with multi-terrain?

Thanks and can I also be added to the beta test? I will send you my email via private message.

 

Hi Teila,

Meanwhile there are more videos available, also with roads in hilly areas. I will post them here as well. I am not entirely sure what you mean with "Can you smooth the road"?

Yes, handling roads / materials / textures is very easy in v3. You can create road presets (road width and material) so you can quickly add different types of roads to the scene without always having to set the width and material.

Multiple terrain handling is further improved in v3, you can flatten a single terrain (faster and useful for testing) or all terrains at once.

Yes, please send me your email. I will add you to the beta list and send the current beta.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thank you!

What I really want to do is place the road in an area that is irregular (a bit hilly) and allow the road to indent into the ground a little so it has banks on either side, like an old English road that has subsided a bit over time. With ER2, I would often get a road that floated above the terrain in some areas and no matter how hard I tried, adjusting parameters and everything, I couldn't get it to work.

I did look at both the ER3 videos and I see that the second one did smooth the terrain beneath it in a hilly area. That is what I wanted to see. It did raise the ground though instead of indent it. Is there a way to indent into the terrain?

I rather wish I was making a modern game because the modeling and addition of various materials looks very cool!

 

Hi Teila,

You can do that, also with v2, but the results depend on the heightmapscale of your terrain. The Unity terrain object is grid based, therefore it is impossible to add points to the terrain for more precision. In both v2 and v3, EasyRoads will calculate minimum required indent values to flatten the terrain correctly and avoid the road floating above or below the terrain in certain areas.

For example, a standard Unity terrain with size 2000 and heightmap resolution of 513 will have a heightmapscale of about 5. This means that in order to flatten the terrain accurately, terrain points up to 5 meters away from the road sides must be leveled at the same height as the road near that point. So if you want these terrain indents closer to the road, you could try using a higher heightmap resolution or a smaller terrain size which will result in a lower heightmapscale.

Alternatively, but a little bit more performance heavy, you could try using the side objects system to generate meshes and simulate these terrain banks closer to the road. There are several shader solutions available to blend these meshes nicely with the terrain.

Raoul

 

Hi raoul!

Love this asset, but am waiting for version 3 before I go pro.

Any new ETA on release date? Very much looking forward to it

 

Hi furiouslol,

There is no ETA for the first public release. It is released in betas, the first beta was released about 2 weeks ago and with a Pro license you do have access to these betas. The first public release depends on the final v3.0 feature set which is undecided yet.

So, also in general, it depends on what you require? The first beta does standard roundabouts, X and T crossings with support for sidewalks. More options will follow.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Great! Basically in need of X and T crossings, I saw the demos on YouTube, very much looking forward to it

Thanks for letting me know

 

Yes, what you see in the video on the first page and the other youtube videos (more intended as provisional tutorial videos) is the first beta which is available.

 

where can i download the V3 beta? im a pro owner

 

Hi Imillionaire,

I will send a download link to you, can you send me a PM or contact me by email?

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Would you mind letting me know if you can use this WITHOUT terrain? I am using a mesh as my terrain, I like it better that way, and it would be REALLY helpful if could use the mesh as a fake terrain with this asset. Thanks in advance!

 

Hi MichaelHF15, v3 will work without a Unity terrain object and you could use it with a Mesh based terrain but in that case the terrain will not be flattened, at least not in the first versions. Perhaps in future versions because that is also what we ourselves are doing in a project but I cannot say that with 100% certainty. I don't know how you create your terrains, but the way this can work is, create the everything using a Unity terrain object, export the terrain to .obj and optimize this mesh terrain.

Raoul

 

I create it with a displace map / height map in 3ds max. I then optimize it by hand a bit, and export as .fbx. If that will work, I am buying this asset as SOON as possible! Looks great by the way

 

Hi MichaelHF 15,

Thanks, glad you like it!

The Unity terrain object is grid based which results in geometry according a certain pattern. Because of that it is possible to flatten it according the road shape. It sounds as if that is what you need? If not, then both EasyRoads3d v2 as v3 will already work for you one way or another in your current workflow. Just let me know and I will let you explain the different ways to to do that.

If you DO need terrain deformation and have the terrain match the road shape, you could add a slight adjustment to your workflow. You mention you use a displacement map in Max, doesn't that result in a grid based terrain aswell? You can do that in Unity and have a Unity terrain object generated from the displacement map. Build you roads, flatten the terrain accordingly, export to .obj, import the .obj in Max and, like you are doing now, optimize it keeping the detail near the road(s), export to .fbx and import back into Unity.

Raoul

 

I think it should be good to go with that being the case. If not, small adjustment, still have the heightmaps, so good to go. Sounds perfect for my project my friend! Excited to buy this, probably in the next week or so. Thanks a ton for making this wonderful asset! Goodness I just love when its done for you

Thanks!

 

is this ver 3 going to work for unity Free ? and do u have a release date on it ? i love to use it

 

Just to let you know, I just bought the asset! Excited to try version 3, can you send a demo of it?

My email: michael@craftedark.com
My Skype: yearsofwardeveloper

 

Hi adde210, yes it will work on Unity Free. There is no official release date for it because there are still things to implement and it is undecided yet what the final feature set for v3.0 will be. It is released in betas meanwhile. So I think it more depends on what you require, also because even if it is released there will be v3.1, 3.2, etc. with new features as well.

Raoul

 

Hi MichaelHF15, I see you also registered, I will send you and email with further v3 info...

Thanks,
Raoul

 

so i can get the the beta/alpha of V3 ? and if i can , is that also working in unity free ? in your videos it look so easy to put roads together (that you take the roads end and drag it to another roads start/end and it snaps together) is this use working in unity free as well ? more general Q all that i see in your videos is recorded with unity pro butt all that you are doing and all functions is that gonna work as well in the free unity ? thx for the reply

 

Thanks a ton my friend! Already proving to be a fantastic purchase, one of my best on this store! When I say that by the way, note that I own nearly half the assets on the store lol..

 

Sorry to double post here, but my god! I just got around to trying out V3..... It is.. Amazing. Hands down, best work.. I don't know what to say! Its simply fantastic! I HIGHLY recommend everyone buys this while its on sale, this is already an AMAZING asset! This should be inside Unity itself regardless, Unity should buy this out! This is an amazing tool!

 

Hi adde210, yes, both v2 and v3 do work just fine with unity free. The workflow, snapping roads to crossings and start new roads from crossings work the same in unity free and pro.

Let me know if you have further questions.

Thanks,
Raoul

 

Thank you Michael, much appreciated, glad you like it!

Raoul

 

No problem, I sent an email by the way

 

it is 2 more things i wondering can i in some how split my road into different pieces . way i want to do that is because i building a world that is 20000 X 20000 big and i gonna have a main road that is going a cross the whole map . but then thing is when i have this big map i know that its gonna start to jittering from far from the origin i know the solution so fix that but i cant have that object (the road) that big it is the same with my terrine i have to split my terrine in too many chunks. so the first Q can i do the same with the roade (cut it in too many objects/roads) ?

Q 2 : I'm a little worried because I usually get this when I use your tool: (i'm bad to explain this so you get a video on it)

how can i fix this on easiest way?

 

Yes, you can cut the road in segments. You can start a new segment per marker.

I cannot see any reason why the road should disappear below the terrain in the first part. It actually seems the terrain is not deformed at all. Do you have multiple terrains in this scene? In v2 each terrain must be handled separately. What is the terrain size and heightmap resolution? The bigger the heightmapscale the less flexible you are with curvy up and down road shapes because there are less terrain points to control the terrain shape.

But it looks like this first part of the video definitely should have better results. If you want you can send the project / scene to me so I can look at it myself.

The part at 0:44 is quite steep (how steep is it? Is it realistic?). That is harder to control, bigger indent values can help here.

Also. by default the road is raised about 1 cm above the terrain which should be enough in reasonably flat areas. To deal with z-fighting issues like at 0:44, you can easily move it to up to 3 or 5 cm above the terrain without this being noticable.

Raoul

 

Haha first of all i'm sorry for the sound i didn't know when i record that i have a movie on hehe . i have 4 screens that is all over the house and some1 look at the move on my pc when i recorded the issue

okay so my terrain info is this
1. no i don't have multi terrain i just have one terrine.
2. terrain info:
Whidth: 20000
Length: 20000
Height: 2010
heightmap reso..: 4097
Detail reso: 1024
detail reso per patch: 8
control tex: 512
base tex: 1024

and how do i get the beta of v3?
i can send you, but this you se in the video was only a test to show you but if u want i can send the project that i am building on only with the terrine and the roade whit same issue ? ?

 

Based on the size and heightmap resolution, the heightmapscale of your terrain is about the same as unity's default terrain (2000 size, 513 heightmap res), looking at the shape of the road, it is unlikely the heightmapscale causes the problem. That said, usually it is not recommended to use a 4097 heightmap resolution and such a big terrain, instead use muliple smaller terrains.

Do you get the same terrain deformation issues also on smaller terrains? If you could send me an example of that by email, so I can look at it, that would be great!

Please contact me anyway by email or PM for v3 beta access!

Raoul

 

Hello adde210, I received your test project. Overall everything looked alright. But for RoadObject06 the road indeed slightly disappears below the terrain between markers 2 and 3. Unity stores terrain heights in decimals between 0..1. This means it does not accept negative values and it is impossible to deform the terrain below its Y position. Between markers 2 and 3 the terrain height is about 0. The road moves just below 0 between markers 2 and 3, therefor it slightly disappears below the terrain, it is impossible to lower the terrain because it is already at 0 height. To avoid these situations, please make sure that the road is always above the terrains Y position, in this case, moving marker 3 upwards will solve the issue. Please let me know if you need more help with this!

Raoul