QUESTION What's the best way to add painted lines on track surface?

[chrisallen76]

Hi guys,

Very new to track building, but using Blender following LilSki's tutorial series (which I'm hoping gets more videos at some point)

I'm capable of creating the track and modeling some terrain but I dont know the best way to add in painted lines on the track (grid boxes, track lines, pit entrance/exit etc)

I've tried 2 methods:

method 1: subdivide the visual road serface and assign a paint material to where I want the lines. (this works but looks a but unrealistic for some reason.. could be my textures.

method 2: create new 2d planes to "sit" on the roads surface, which then causes z fighting, causing me to have to raise the lines above the serface, but then they look like they're floating.

anyone care to share any best practices for this?

Thanks

 

[Johnr777]

Hi guys,

Very new to track building, but using Blender following LilSki's tutorial series (which I'm hoping gets more videos at some point)

I'm capable of creating the track and modeling some terrain but I dont know the best way to add in painted lines on the track (grid boxes, track lines, pit entrance/exit etc)

I've tried 2 methods:

method 1: subdivide the visual road serface and assign a paint material to where I want the lines. (this works but looks a but unrealistic for some reason.. could be my textures.

method 2: create new 2d planes to "sit" on the roads surface, which then causes z fighting, causing me to have to raise the lines above the serface, but then they look like they're floating.

anyone care to share any best practices for this?

Thanks

The second method is the most common, and it just needs a bit of trial and error to find a height that won’t cause Z fighting and won’t look like it’s floating. I work in meters, so mine are usually 0.03 - 0.05 above the surface

 

[maruto]

i also used that second method recently, 0.03m above visual surface

here are the settings i used:

ksperpixelAT shader
alphaBLEND opacity mode

another way you'll find is to paint the lines directly on the road surface texture, beeing the easiest's one, you get some kind of a blurry effect at a far distance... but it works, some older games like gtl and RF used that method a lot... I recently helped on the Siracusa conversion and was lazy redoing the lines as mentionned above, i simply reworked on the original surface texture, cranked up the resolution (original was 256x256) and with a good multilayer shader, the result is not that bad....

use object inspector app to explore kunos's track and others to see how it's done, quite helpful

 

[chrisallen76]

use object inspector app to explore kunos's track and others to see how it's done, quite helpful

Thanks for the info, much appreciated.

 

[EKO Sim-Racing]

Yup, 2nd method is the one that works the best for me

 

[fughettaboutit]

make those line-objects not CAST_SHADOWS, then they look less like floating

shader ksperpixelAT
blendmode alphaTEST
without setting object to transparent is a wee bit better for performance, but looks a wee bit worse

 

[fughettaboutit]

And I would put them 1.5cm above the road
then you can put the groove/skidmarks 3cm above it all

 

[EKO Sim-Racing]

I put them even 1cm off ground but whatever works for you that way you don’t see clipping of the wheels on the decal

 

[Ariel Suraniti]

I'm finishing some tracks, but I'm having problems with the white lines on the track. I read that I have to separate them into a separate k5n file. The issue is that I don't know how to create them in 3ds max or render. Does anyone have a good tutorial on how to make the white lines of the track? I try to do it like I do the groove. But when importing the ai, the lines on the edge of the track are imperfect. I don't know what method to use to be able to do them well and quickly. Thank you