Customize Generated Road

[SkullAndSmile]

Good Evening, 

I finally finished satisfied and have test driven a number of times, but there is one element that is bothering me. I want to edit the mesh of the road that gets generated. 

For this, particular road, I don't want to use Extrusion Pro because the junction for the normal roads looks better than the hard junction that Extrusion Pro produces. But I actually like the mesh for the road that I can configure in extrusion pro much more than the fix road mesh. Is there a way to get the best from both worlds? 😄 

 

Sincerely,

Felix Schmidt

[SkullAndSmile]

I don't wish to bump my post, but I would just love to hear if my post is still on the radar. 🙂
Did I just simply miss a feature, or is there currently no way of achieving that result? 

[Clyde]

Currently, there is no interface for changing the cross section that the Road Extension uses, other than the option for 'Use Sloped Cross Section' for a smooth edged cross section.

The code that generates the road mesh can take a cross section, which is not as complicated as the Extrusion Pro cross section.  The road cross section is simply a list of points and a list of normals, which are assumed to be in order of left to right, from -0.5x to 0.5x. 

Without coding up an editor for the simpler cross section for the roads, perhaps a hand edited set of values for the points and normals could be exposed to create a RoadCrossSection (already a public class) from in the Road Extension and passed down to the road mesh creation code.  We could add an 'advanced cross section' option that exposes 2 lists of Vector2's to allow for entering the cross section information.  It would not be elegant, but would be workable for advanced users.

This is what the default road cross section is defined as.

        private static readonly Vector2[] _standardRoadCrossSectionPoints = new Vector2[]
        {
            new Vector2(-0.5f, -0.02f),
            new Vector2(-0.5f, 0.015f),
            new Vector2(-0.49f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(-0.38f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(0.38f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(0.49f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(0.5f, 0.015f),
            new Vector2(0.5f, -0.02f)
        };
        private static readonly Vector2[] _standardRoadCrossSectionNormals = new Vector2[]
        {
            new Vector2(-1.0f, 0.0f),
            new Vector2(-0.707f, 0.707f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.707f, 0.707f),
            new Vector2(1.0f, 0.0f)
          };
 

What do you think about that?

[SkullAndSmile]

It would be really help to customize that part. For the arrays of points and normals, that would work fine. Just to make sure that I understood you correct, I could override these by writing my own editor or hard-code an array in the editor and set these and in the build and play mode it would use my collection of vectors and not the default once? 

That would sounds like a good workaround and would help me a lot :). 

[Clyde]

Yes, you undestand correctly.

Perhaps I could allow you to create a RoadCrossSection instance in a component to just add to the spline and it would use that one.

I'll find out when I can be allotted time to get that done.  I'm currently knee deep in another project.

[Clyde]

@SkullAndSmile, something like this should do it:

We will release a new version of GeNa Pro that will support the following scenario:

using UnityEngine;
using GeNa.Core;
public class RoadCrossSectionOverrideExample : RoadCrossSectionOverride
{
    RoadCrossSection roadCrossSection = new RoadCrossSection(_points, _normals);

    private static readonly Vector2[] _points = new Vector2[]
    {
            new Vector2(-0.5f, 0.04f),
            new Vector2(-0.48f, 0.04f),
            new Vector2(-0.47f, 0.026f),
            new Vector2(-0.4f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(0.4f, 0.025f),
            new Vector2(0.47f, 0.026f),
            new Vector2(0.48f, 0.04f),
            new Vector2(0.5f, 0.04f)
    };
    private static readonly Vector2[] _normals = new Vector2[]
    {
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.707f, 0.707f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(-0.707f, 0.707f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f),
            new Vector2(0.0f, 1.0f)
    };


    public override RoadCrossSection GetRoadCrossSection()
    {
        return roadCrossSection;
    }
}

Just place a component derived from RoadCrossSectonOverride into your Road Spline Object.  Be sure to uncheck (disable) "Use Slopped Cross Section".  The number of points/normals must be even.

Note that you will need to modify the spline or some parameter on it or one of it's extensions to cause the road mesh to be rebuilt, then you will see the change.

[SkullAndSmile]

That sounds really good 🙂 I happily await the release. Thanks for your time! 

[Clyde]

One change that I did make at the last minute:
Added an Object field called Cross Section Override to the Road Extension inspector.

So, you will attach your override component to the spline object, and then drag it into that new field.

I did this because some users have attached more than one Road Extension to a single Spline Object.  This allows them to assign, or not, an override to a specific instance of the Road Extension.

Note that you can disregard the comment from my previous comment about changing something on the spline to see changes reflected in the mesh for the override. This is taken care of now.

[SkullAndSmile]

Thank you for your time and changes. The patch is not yet available over the asset store, is it? 

I am really looking forward to the changes 🙂. 

[Manny]

Hey there @SkullAndSmile,

The patch is nearly ready for the Asset Store, it's just currently in testing phase but keep an eye out for new package updates in your Package Manager 🙂

[Clyde]

@SkullAndSmile, GeNa Pro v3.3.21 is released.  You can now customize the road cross section, and also separate the Y scale from the width scale.

There is an example  at \Assets\Procedural Worlds\GeNa\Asset Samples\Script Examples\Scripts\RoadCrossSectionOverrideExample.cs.

To see it in action, add this script to the Road Spline, then in the Road Extension, drag the instance to the field "Road Cross Section Override".