-Concept: The tool will speed up the creation of a road/track in maya dramatically. You can either create just a road or create the road and then cut it into the specified terrain geometry
-What it does:
Creates a GUI and using the specified curves and mesh will create a road and cut & sew it into the terrain mesh. You will need to specify a road path, a road profile and an optional terrain mesh.
-Explanation of what the buttons do:
[Road Path] - *can be cubic or linear curve* This is the curve used to create the path that the road will travel along. Can be open or closed.
[Road Profile] - *Must be a linear curve, front facing Positive Z* This is the form you want the road to take. I'll try and explan this: Bring your eyes down to the ground level with the road and look along it.You'll see the road may slope down at the sides creating and arc, this is the road profile. You can incorporate edging further that the road edge or even gutters/curbs too.Can be used to make caves too, but don't specify a terrain mesh if you do this!!
[Ground Plane] - Just as the name suggests, the ground mesh you want the road to be cut into.
[Rib Spacing] - This specifies the spacing between the divisions along the road itself. It will use what ever units your Maya scene is set to.
[Road Banks?] - Will turn banking on or off for the road on generation.
[Bank Scale] - specifies how much the road will bank. Unfortunately this is not interactible.
[Clear Objects] - This will empty out the specified road curves and terrain mesh.
[MAKE ROAD] - Does what it says.
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-Notes and Known Bugs/ Limitations in functionality:
***Mental Ray is now no longer a requirement for this script. Instead it funcitons by creating a temp light map using a new UV set. None of this is left over when the script has finished.
Creating a road that passes out of the border of a mesh may result in some rogue faces left over from the road being cut into the terrain. Easy to fix, but watch out for it.
Using a closed cubic curve (nurbs circle) as the road profile (cave system) may deliver unexpected results. I'm looking into a way around this now. Just make the curve Linear for now.
In regards to the road banking scale, the only way to change this is to undo the road creation, change the setting and go again. My recommendadtion is to have no terrain selected to speed up theworkflow until you're happy with the road, then run the tool in full.
There will be some cleanup needed around the edge of the terrain where the verts are snapped to the road, but when you look at how much was done automatically for you it's not much work at all. :)
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-Updates:
-version 1.1.0:
Recoded how the tool finds the faces underneath the road, Mental Ray is now no longer a requirement.
Added a progress bar to the UI to show that the tools is actually working and hasn't caused maya to hang.