Featured TUTORIAL Build your FIRST track - BASIC GUIDE

Discussion in 'Tracks' started by luchian, Jun 14, 2014.

  1. Ricardo Rey

    Ricardo Rey Active Member

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    Image1.jpg @LilSKi. At least where I'm at now in the learning process, what I have learned from you is the importance of cleaning up the track mesh before bothering about anything else. I can see a mess coming otherwise.

    What I was doing was deleting overlapping faces, then using F to join faces. It made a mess.
    What I was working on is overlapping..
     
    Last edited: Aug 5, 2017
  2. Willy Wale

    Willy Wale Member

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    I would say it's use is limited to sections with a fairly constant gradient. It won't work on the crest of a hill like in your example. Bit it does avoid the track edges curving.
     
  3. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    Yes, you just need to cut the mesh in multiple pieces. How many, depends on your track length. To give you a range, something between 10 and 20 should fit most of the tracks I guess. Yes, pressing P in Edit Mode is ok. And you could split selected polys, for example. It'll make separate mesh out of them. Which you'll have to rename. Example below:

    single_mesh_road.jpg

    ..and after splitting:
    split_mesh_road.jpg

    Should be clear by now that name suffix can be anything, but this proved to be very easy in keeping the scene hierarchy organized. Good luck, have fun :).
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2017
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  4. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    That's a pretty amazing track you got there! Looking forward to the release :p
     
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  5. Ricardo Rey

    Ricardo Rey Active Member

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    @luchian
    I must be doing something wrong. I have a 1 piece mesh. I go into EDIT mode, if I just hit P, it says something like "nothing selected", so I click a track section, hit P, then asks; Selection, Material, or Loose Parts. No matter what I choose it does not split the mesh, just new layers.
    I can choose (in EDIT MODE) B, high-lite a section, MESH, VERTICES, SEPARATE, SELECTION (Capital letters for emphasis). However, it does not always divide straight across the track. I assume I am missing a step.
     
  6. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    You break it up by hand. In edit mode and nothing selected hold CTRL and then click and drag over a section and it will select that section. Hit P and choose selection. That selection is now a new separate object. Stay in edit mode and select another section and keep going until you split up the whole track.

    I find it best to work in Faces mode when doing this.
     
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  7. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    wait to see my physics layer.. 400k.. all made by hand :D

    @Ricardo Rey : play with different selection options: try pressing B, or C while in edit mode for example. While selecting with C-mode, scroll makes the "brush" bigger or smaller.
     
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  8. Ricardo Rey

    Ricardo Rey Active Member

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    Thanks @LilSKi & @luchian !!!

    My head hurts so bad at figuring this stuff out. The good thing is it wears me out and I sleep good at night, except on those nights that I'm still wrestling in my mind how to do something. When you help, I sleep better!! :lol:
     
  9. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    :D
    If it's any consolotation.. Blender has this "organic"/"natural" feel about it.. once you'll get used to it, everything makes sense and you'll love it !

    Sent from my phone using Tapatalk
     
  10. Ricardo Rey

    Ricardo Rey Active Member

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    I got the splitting down. The "C" method works best for me.

    Question: Blender names the new track section following a 1road.000, .oo1, .002, etc. convention. I have not researched this on my own, but is there a way to set Blender to start naming the sections with .001? Or is 000 ok?

    EDIT: If not, it is easy enough to split all the sections with the last section; .025 and just rename the first section (the .001 section) .026.
     
    Last edited: Aug 7, 2017
  11. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    000 is fine. I personally have never cared what is after the . as it does not matter at all.
     
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  12. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    ..and I have updated the post so that any doubt leaves these waters :D
     
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  13. fbiehne

    fbiehne New Member

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    Hi guys,

    one question regarding the track layout with paths/beziers: how do you approach tight corners? What is the best way to get the layout right? Right now I have a problem at this section:

    [​IMG]

    Do I have to clean that up "manually"?
     
  14. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    I can't see the image (maybe I am alone ?), but this sounds very similar to what @LilSKi was writing here.
     
  15. fbiehne

    fbiehne New Member

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    Ok, I’ll just attach it. Hope you can see it now.
    It is indeed quite similar to LilSkis explanation, however I don’t understand this way. He draws a seperate path inside of the curve instead drawing it in the middle? Is that right? And if so how do you let the plane follow the curve just attached on the left or right side?

    [​IMG]
     
  16. luchian

    luchian Administrator Staff Member

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    See it now.
    Yes, in @LilSKi 's solution, you'll just treat that specific curve like a separate mesh (so with it's own bezier).

    However, not sure your case is so extreme. Coming back to your example, it seems there is a twist along its axis in the first part of the bezier (right side). Maybe try to play with handles before anyhing else ?

    Sent from my phone using Tapatalk
     
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  17. Mitja Bonca

    Mitja Bonca Active Member

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    @fbiehne: This is not a good solution. Best way would be to do 2 splines (inner and outer of the track), connect all the vertices, and add surface modifier.
     
  18. LilSKi

    LilSKi Well-Known Member

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    Blender doesn't really work that way sadly. At least not that I have found.
     
  19. fbiehne

    fbiehne New Member

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    Thanks for your answers. :)
    What I did for now was making the spline, let a plane follow it along via array and curve modifier and then convert it to a mesh. After that I adjusted the track width and curves manually with proportional editing. However now I have the problem that I cannot add for example camber that easy (via ctrl+t). So I wonder if my approach is a good one…

    I need to get used to the Bezier/Pathtool in Blender. In Illustrator or Photoshop it’s easy to use but it works a bit different in Blender.
     
    Last edited: Aug 17, 2017
  20. N7 RiZe

    N7 RiZe New Member

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    Anyone know how to fix 'TRACK NOT FOUND'?
    I've got my track good in 3dsmax and looking good in kseditor, and before I do all the numbers on the materials I want to test it so I copied the 'Drift' track folder as a template and edited it to suit me. I kept the .Kn5 file as 'drift.kn5' to be lazy as it's just a test. Even I'f I rename the .kn5 to something different in the .ini and the file I get the same result.
    Thanks in advance.
     
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