Decal Road - How to make go over a bridge

#1 not sure if I understood your question right, but I have a bridge in my game, I created a mesh road after each end of the bridge, instead of going over the bridge. Unless of course you don't have a road texture and mesh on the bridge already created with an art program, which I do. Any screenshots you can show?

#2 So I guess the issue is, we have code specific to both roads: mesh and decal. We utilize the decal road for everything on the terrain and we always use just "one" of them (not multiples stringed together). Is it possible to get the decal road to "go over" a model instead of always following the terrain?

The main reason we are using the decal road on the terrain instead of the mesh road is because the decal road "follows" the terrain. This is important to us for the effect it gives.

If the mesh road can be made to "follow the terrain" then I guess we can switch to using them exclusively but I havent found a way to do it.

Thanks for the reply!

PAR

#3 That's an interesting use of decal roads. It never occurred to me to use the roads themselves as paths, pretty clever.

Unfortunately, you can't make a bridge using decal roads. The are just decals applied to the terrain and nothing else. Mesh roads do follow the terrain to a degree, but not to the degree that decals do by default. It may take some fine tuning of node placement to get the effect you're after.

#4 As for you original question, why are you not just using the decal that matches what you used in the road tool, as decals can be sized to any-size just about, and project fine of DTS, and COLLADA objects....or (looking at peoples responses), are you just trying to make the road decal acts as a solid object?, that of course cannot be done.

#5 Thank you for your responses. We are trying to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

We are using the decal road as a way to determine our "path on the terrain" and also using it as a spline for limited AI. The precision at which the decal road follows the terrain is perfect for both as our "decal" follows the terrain exactly and the nodes on the path do as well.

I tried using the mesh road and had a tough time getting each node to match perfectly on the terrain. It can be done, but its way more tedious of a process. If the decal road can "only" be made to go on the terrain and not any objects then I guess we're stuck w/ the mesh road.

Thanks!

PAR

#6

Quote:Mesh roads do follow the terrain to a degree, but not to the degree that decals do by default. It may take some fine tuning of node placement to get the effect you're after.

Would it be possible to have the mesh-road points act like the decal-road points when it comes to snapping to the terrain? But not snap to anything if the terrain is cleared...


I noticed that the mesh-road points will SNAP when moving the point and when the "Toggle grid snapping (G)" is ON in the Object-Editor.

It would probably be a benefit if the river, decal, and road editor points worked with the built in snapping tools in the object editor.

#7 I have used both mesh and decal roads with the same problem when it comes to bridges I've used mesh all the way to avoid having to model the terrain with decal roads so that it blends as close as possible to the mesh road, and even then you can't let them touch each other as you get a flickering/merging of the textures. What would be good is like you have said a snap in effect between mesh and decal roads, or I guess in the short-term you could go for a flat section of the terrain where you can link the two together.

#8 Why not just place a decal (not decal road) on the bridge? I thought decals snapped to the object you painted them on, am I right?

#9 I'll give that a go :)

#10 nope, decals go on terrains, so I can't overlap them between mesh and decal roads.

#11 The decal should go on the bridge OK. Assuming the bridge is a TSStatic, try setting decalType = "Visible Mesh" for the bridge model.

#12 thanks Guy. I was trying to place a decal on a mesh road, would only work on decal paths. I'll take the mesh road ramp leading up to the bridge out and see what effect it has by building up the terrain and then applying a decal. (I've also sent you an email).

#13 Just to point out ... in my previous attempts I've not had my decal roads go over TsStatics (using visible mesh ... probably in beta2)

#14 I believe it was mentioned at one point that it was possible to add a flag so that the decal road would render on TSStatics, but don't think such was ever done officially -- it's at least a possibility to experiment with.

#15 feature thought...
a built in spline editor? It would work like the decal-road and mesh-road combined... could just replace them really.

Mesh-road and decal-road could be a default setup in the spline editor features... custom setups could be saved/loaded. Attaching any Mesh objects and animated along the spline would be nice... you can tamper or stretch the object that is on the spline...
I am sure with each Vertex of the spline you could add in stuff where one vertex is attached to a object and the rest of the vertices move with the wind simulator.

Lots of crazy things could happen with a spline editor ;D

just a thought.