GeoControl Build 19 / Roads!!

[cajomi]

The vector is realiszed!!

You can add it in the pw-filter section, as special tool. The vector tool is able to create roads, which follow the terrain, but not only roads.
This is first a basic implementation. So only a "following" vector shape can be used, which is needed for roads. But the algorithm are solved a way, that it will be very flexible, so that rivers, ridges or other forms should also be possible in the future.

The vector tool first simply creates a line. Well, the way it is created is a bit unusual. I decided not to use bezier curves or b-spline, because both are not the easyest to handle. So I defined an own curve algorithm, which I hope, is very easy and intuitive to use.

Additional to the vector line you can set a profile, which is perpendicular to the line. The range is very high, so you can use it for experimental forms or just to get the middle line embossed by some centimenters. The profile can even be used asymentrical, so that the left and right part are different. The profile is also used to create a mask, for shading the different parts of a road.

The road follows the terrain. The range can be adjusted. A high follow range means, that the road will be more like a highway with low slope differences, while a low value create roads, which follow the terrain very close.

For realistic crossings, you need first to create a really flat terrain part, where the roads can met, else there will be visible borders.

Here the controls:

First you have to add a "vector tool" to the pw-filter list. That does of course mean, that you can use as many roads as you want.
Now you can open the "Vector".

There are four top buttons:
Add
For adding points to the end of the line. With this tool the drawing of the line starts. After clicking into the 2dview, you can move the point as long as you do not release the mouse button.
Insert
Add points to an existing line. After clicking into the 2dview, you can move the point as long as you do not release the mouse button.
Move
Move the point nearest to the mouse position. After clicking into the 2dview, you can move the point as long as you do not release the mouse button.
Delete
Deletes the nearest point to the mosueposition.After "Do_Postwork" or "Generate" use one of these buttons, to make the vector lines visible again.

The controls:
Power
Sets the power of the vector tool.
Vector wide
Sets the wide of the road, from the border to the middle.
Border width
Adjusts the width of the border, this part is outside the road, and outside the roadmask.
Follow range
How close the road follows the terrain. The lower the value, the closer.
Vector smoothing
To smooth the road
Border smoothing
To smooth the borders
Quality
Set the quality of the prependicular calculation. Wide roads need a higher qualitiy, mostly a quality of 3 is enough."Edit profile" opens the profile editor.

Profile editor controls:
Span of profile
A value from 0 to 100, which is then multiplicated with the "Faktor for span".
Faktor for span
The faktor start with 0.01, most left, and then encreases with 10 for every step, so 0.1, 1, 10 up to 10000.
The textfields shows the resulting span in m. This is the span from the bottom to the top of the profile editor.
Mirror profile
Mirrors the profile from the left to the right half.Bug fixes:
Isoline height slider crashes with higher values of terrain height.
River and lake: Smoothing of lakes produced rising waterparts at the lake borders.


GeoControl 2 is getting more and more complete. Still missing is a "paint" tool, for pw terrain work like smoothing, rising or creating a painted selection and of course missing is the tiling tool.
Nethertheless, GeoControl 2 will soon be out as a pre-release, with this both functions missing.
So here will be a small break, where I will make some tutorials, work on the new website and the shop.
After that, the paint and tiling tool will be implemented, beside bugfixing, and then the comfort of the new functions will be improved.

Have fun
Johannes Rosenberg


downloadink:
www.cajomi.de/Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build19_Setup.exe (http://www.cajomi.de/Forum/../Up/GeoControlAlpha_Build19_Setup.exe)

[digitalis]

Thanks Johannes,
Sounds great.
Will be tested soon (I also have a recent bug from the previous Build, which I will post after testing the new build).
Regards.

[monks]

C-OOOO-L!! This sounds fantastic.
Thanks for all your hard work Johannes!

monks

[mauronen]

Thanks Johannes.
I hope that, in GC2 pre-release, will be present an option that allows to import selections from an image (actually is possible only to export them as image).

[ElThommo]

Excellent Johannes,
This programme just gets better and better.

Cheers.

[cajomi]

Thank you!

@Mauronen
Just thinking about that. Well, it would not take so much time to implement it, but of course the advantage would be great. A good solution, as long as the paint tool is not realized.

Johannes

[craftycurate]

Looks great!

How can a texture map be applied ALONG the length of the road i.e. a repeating "road" bitmapped texture ... it would have to be oriented to the road vector.

Loading it as a gradient doesn't make sense for what I am trying to accomplish.

Thanks
Richard

[mauronen]

@Mauronen
Just thinking about that. Well, it would not take so much time to implement it, but of course the advantage would be great. A good solution, as long as the paint tool is not realized.

Probably (obviously, my opinion ;) ) best solution is to postpone paint tool implementation, because most of users could "paint" with other well known tools as Photoshop or PaintShopPro, among commercial tools, otherwise The Gimp, among free tools. In that case you could concentrate your efforts into other aspects (as tiling or selection imports or profile curve saving, for example).

I would suggest to you another thing, if possible: a ROADMAP linked to a TO-DO LIST in Alphatester forum, so to track all features that you think to implement, or that other alphatester suggest to you (clearly, if you decide to realize suggested features), mapped to a specific release. This could help you to measure work progress and to announce when a specific features could be implemented and, approximately, when.

[cajomi]

@craftycurate
The vector tool is prepared for such a mapping along the vector line, but it takes some time to get that work. So that will come. So far you have to export the vector selection and try to get that working in another application.

@mauronen
The paint tool will have two functions: One for painting a selection, well that can wait, and one for doing postwork to the terrain. The second is more important, to correct all those small details, which do not fit to your needs.

That roadmap is at all a nice idea. But keeping such a to to list up to date is a lot of work, which would be missed for developing. So it will be more a short list, with the key features, which will be implemented.

I hope, to get the next build out today, with imported selections.
The profile curves are saved at time with the terrain settings, and also you can save them as 8 bit greyscale as selection.

[mauronen]

I hope, to get the next build out today, with imported selections.
The profile curves are saved at time with the terrain settings, and also you can save them as 8 bit greyscale as selection.
These are GREAT news :D .
I will wait impatiently this build.

[Seven-D.]

Great Tool!
I love it.

Does the profile work as displacement too?
I just noticed it in the texturing of the road.
The road itself stays flat, when I assign a profile to it.

[cajomi]

Great to here your positive comment about the tool.

That profile works directly onto the road. But of course you have to keep an eye on the scaling. So, for example, if you had as span total 50m but only use in the profile a flat curve, you will not see it, because the 50m is the span, if you use the whole range of the profile.
For the shader the profile is normalized, so even if you set the span total to zero you can get a nice selection for a middle line and so on, but the road will be totally flat.
Simply increase the span, by a higher slider setting for span faktor or for the span.

[Criss]

This road/vector tool is just nifty to use. I have a winding road going around a mountain pass i am currently working on but i have a question. I want the road to have some splits taking two different directions. Do i just add another post-work group and start a new road for group 2.

[cajomi]

@criss
exact, simply a second pw vector tool. But you might get problems with visible borders. All crossings have the problem, that they can only work in a horizontal area, horizontal in all directions.

[Criss]

Ahh i see. I will see how it goes. It's surprisingly fast to draw and render on a 4096 terrain even with my old PC. :)

[cajomi]

Thank you.
I have changed here the way, the drawing functions are rendered. I will change the isolines also, so that they are faster and better looking.