Problem with custom road

[lecholas 2]

Hello. I'm trying to create a road which is not flat but sticks a bit out of the ground. Something similar to Finmod's Al Maldajah roads for OFP. But I'm running into all kind of troubles.

The first thing is than the road is semi transparent i.e. you can see objects behind it that should be occluded by it (see the screenshots):

http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/2227/armakocielby3.jpg

http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/5483/armakocielby2.jpg

http://img838.imageshack.us/img838/1100/armakocielby1.jpg

I've found a similar problem reported in this topic. Tried the solution proposed there ('Move top') but with no results.

The other problem is that I can't make the road driveable. I can make either a road that sticks out of the ground but vehicles go through it and stick to the ground below the road or a road that is flat (no matter the model is not flat!) or a road that lines up well but its invisible roadway lods do not line up properly.

I've tried with no luck:

- setting geometry lod's named property 'placement' to 'slope' while all the vertices in all lods were set to 'normal' - result: the segments do not line up properly,

- setting all the vertices in all the lods to 'on surface' with a separate geometry lod (named properties class=road and map=road) and without the geo lod (with the same named properties added to 1.00 lod) - result: vehicles either go through the road model or the road is flat and sticks to the ground,

- setting only 1.00 lod's vertices to 'on surface' and the rest to 'normal' - I could drive on the actual surface of the road but there were steps between the road segments (I guess roadway lods did not align) and it caused the car to crash into invisible barriers between the segments.

- setting the vertices that should stick to the surface to 'on surface' and the other to 'normal'/'keep height' - result: disaster, strange graphical bugs all over the map...

:j:

Any tips?

[[aps]gnat 28]

- setting geometry lod's named property

??

How did you come up with these road designs? ArmA roads don't contain GEO lods.

Your CA/Roads directory contains dozens of example roads in MLOD format.

If you haven't already, suggest you open many in O2 and examine how they are built, then make your own.

In fact you should be able to copy a set, make them your own with new textures, new file names and a config.

[lecholas 2]

Gnat;2131504']??

How did you come up with these road designs? ArmA roads don't contain GEO lods.

I know that roads in Arma don't have Geometry lods' date=' (as well as fire geo, view geo...) but none of them is a real 3d model so there's no need for it. The first test I made were without the geo lod, but then, when it didn't work I started trying some other things. And I found some clues that roads may contain geometry lod, so I decided to give it a try:

To view the roads correctly, all their models should contain Named Property map in 1st Resolution LOD or in Geometry LOD.

source: http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Map_Symbols#Roads Emphasized by me.

Gnat;2131504']Your CA/Roads directory contains dozens of example roads in MLOD format.

If you haven't already' date=' suggest you open many in O2 and examine how they are built, then make your own.

In fact you should be able to copy a set, make them your own with new textures, new file names and a config.[/quote']

I, of course, examined some of the roads available for A2 (BIS mlods and some custom ones) but , as above - none of them is a real 3d model, they're all flat. And as a matter of fact I used on of the BIS roads for a base reference for my meshes.

[Sealife 22]

Hi,

You are missing a trick ,

A road is laid under a false road so ai will use it , the false road is actually an object placed over the road .

It's a lot of work but worth it,

Anything classed as road will auto assume by engine on surface and as such will be flattened , so don't use class road in the model you want to stick up.

I think today with custom tools it's easier to lay the objects above road , ask homer if you can config your objects for his road painter .

Big trial is do you have roadway lod in object model or not , ? Sometimes ok sometimes not

Good luck

[lecholas 2]

Hi,

You are missing a trick ,

A road is laid under a false road so ai will use it , the false road is actually an object placed over the road .

It's a lot of work but worth it,

Anything classed as road will auto assume by engine on surface and as such will be flattened , so don't use class road in the model you want to stick up.

I think today with custom tools it's easier to lay the objects above road , ask homer if you can config your objects for his road painter .

Big trial is do you have roadway lod in object model or not , ? Sometimes ok sometimes not

Good luck

Thanks for the input. It's very interesting.

I used the roadway lod in my models. I tried both to make it as a copy of the geometry lod of the road (well mostly copy - only of the surfaces pointing upwards) and to make it a little (1cm) above the geometry lod. So are you suggesting that I should do a separate models for each segment of the road - one with geometry, textured model etc. (the real road) and the second with only roadway and memory lod ('fake' road)? It can be a bit tricky but may work. I have the roads already placed on my map, so I could export them into a text file, replace names of the real road segments with the names of the fake road segmetns, and then import the file again and place the resulting road exactly above the old road. Is that what you suggest?

And btw, from my experience you don't need the class=road defined in your model for it to be placable in Visitor. I think you only need the correct named selections in memory lod.

[Sealife 22]

I haven't done it since ofp

But do a test first

Lay a road with no textures , straight to begin with but classed as road like bis as normal

Then Make your model which will have the geometry roadway etc and place above , remember there is only a finite amount you can raise ai above surface before they panic from memory it's less than 1 meter , nothing in this second model should in anyway be classed as road apart from maybe it's name sound etc .

Bhope it helps

[lecholas 2]

Thank you for the info. I'll try that and try to remember to report back the results ;)

[Sealife 22]

no problem

remember tho you dont need geoemetry under the roadway lod in model as the Roadway lod can have material file and will accept bullets same , however be careful as some may cause flickering , :)

[vasf_jeffs 0]

Lecholas,

Did you get your custom roads working? If so mind sharing how? I am trying to get my own working.

[lecholas 2]

Sorry, nothing seemd to work for me and due to no time for more experiments I put the project on hold (I reverted to using simple retexture of BIS's sample road).

[rip31st 98]

I have roadways ( railroads ) That I've sucessfully implemented into the game containing geo, fire LODs, with a raised roadway. It can be done, on a flat surface. I gave up trying on a slope.

But...

If you need it to follow the terrain you will have to use a road smoothing script to create a smooth transition from a flat surface to a grade. You will have to make a nearly perfect brake in the road network and create a custom object to link from the flat surface to the angle of your grade.

In the models properties you will have to include placement=slope.

If not done properly, you will end up with a stair step effect from one piece to another.

It's a huge time consuming process, and not worth it in my opinion. They can lay railroad tracks faster in real life.

I'm saving my track pieces for hope someday they can adapt things like railroads, streams, and rivers in upcoming game engine releases.

[lecholas 2]

I have roadways ( railroads )

It's a huge time consuming process, and not worth it in my opinion. They can lay railroad tracks faster in real life.

ROTFL... well said, well said....

I'm saving my track pieces for hope someday they can adapt things like railroads, streams, and rivers in upcoming game engine releases.

Well, the strange thing is that it WAS possible in OPF - FDF mod did it. But in Arma/Arma2 the same setup of the model won't work...

[rip31st 98]

Yeah, the game engine is doing something screwy with the geo LOD vs. Terrain. Are you sure FDF mod used a GEO LOD on slopes? Because it is possible to make railroads just by using the resolution and roadway LODs. You just don't get fire/collision detection.

[[aps]gnat 28]

Use Fire Geometry instead for fire detection ?

A Roadway LOD should be fine for "collision" detection

[rip31st 98]

Yes, but doesn't the model need a geo lod to process destruction?

[[aps]gnat 28]

You cant destroy normal (or abnormal) roads or rail lines.

..... unless thats what you trying to do ..... which I'd suggest is .... very difficult.

[Bozkro 1]

Oh, Well, good luck.

[rip31st 98]

Well like a bridge piece, but I suppose that is classed differently then a road

[lecholas 2]

Indestructible piece of road would be ok for me. I'm not 100% sure but I think I've already tried only roadway lod without geometry lod with no results (I think I've tried every possible combination of lods and their properties - of course I could have omitted some possibility by mistake). Anyway I don't have time or even ability (I don't have access to my pc with arma/BIStools/my models now) to check it.