ScriptSpot

Forum topic · General Scripting

Move vertice to a surface

By ddustin · 2007-08-27

Description

We make a lot of terrains and therefore roads.
Is there a script that will allow me to pick some verticies and have them move in a -Z direction till the uppermost vertise is a preset amount above the horizontal plane below it?

For example:
I have a road profile that has been converted to editable polys.
The terrain is below the roadway
I select 2 verticies that comprise the edge of the road (one directly above the other).
Currently I move them down manually but would love to be able to just run a script to perform this function.

Thanks,
David

Comments (4)

tommo111 · 2008-05-27

I know your problem EXACTLY!

How to conform a complex piece of geometry (with road, and verticle gutters ect) to a complex terrain (gullys and peaks).

Conform just flattens the height of curbs and road into a single flat plane that maps over the terrain.

We want to retain height detail like curbs ect.

For example Map a 10mm heigh segmented rectangle to a terrain and have it remain 10cm heigh and bottom verticies touch terrain.

I have found no way to do this appart from days of manually selecting vert segments and moving them on the z axis to match.

IF YOU KNOW A SOLUTION... PLEASE HELP!!!!

Untill I can write my own scripts this problem might remain.

Cheers
Thomas
thomas-withers@hotmail.com

JimHoux · 2008-09-12

Louis Marcoux shows a process for simplistic conform of a road to existing terrain. His process uses SkinWrap and maintains thickness information for the road. It might be of help.

http://www.louismarcoux.com/MaxTips.htm

tommo111 · 2008-09-17

Yes, thanks Jim
After much trial and error I cam across the page you have mentioned a shortly after my last post.

I used the second "Road And Terrain Part 2.wmv".

Worked with a very high detailed road, rollover kerbs ect.

--**My Process**--:

1. Road must have enough divisions on x&y axis to conform smoothly.
I extruded and welded my road on a level z axis, moved it to the closest point to my terrain and followed Louis's process.

2.My Terrain was imported from cad contour lines.
Max's terrain tool produced a triangulated and jaged mesh.
I also used the tutorial process to project a uniform high res plane onto the generated terrain. **Be carefull with settings in order to preserve as much accuracy as possible!!!!

This provides a lower polycount and neat a uniform mesh to match the resolution of my road. - This helped imensly when projecting road to terrain. Use brush tool on uniform to smooth out abrupt sideways slopes and abnormalities in your road.

3. When done, terrain will most likely protrude through your flat road at some points (Roads are allways smooth and flat, and should not slope sideways or be bumpy like the terrain)(Also curbs should be flush with ground and ashvelt level should be below this cutting down into terrain approx 15-20cm!). Clone Road in place & extrude down z axis so that the entire road form cuts through terrain at all points.

Booleen this with your new terrain and delete polygons to remove terrain within the road areas.

4. Extrude terrain down to conceal any small gaps between terrain. (The better you model your road with the process in mind the less evident this will be.) Remove the new horizontal surface the extrude will create to eliminate unecessary polygons.

Save each object out (meshes ans roads before and after conform process) as a clearly labeled x-refference and remove meshes no longer needed from your scene. You will need these as both guides and meshes to reconform if your roads or terrain change signifficantly in plans.

- I know this is crude, however it was the only process I could develop in order to accuratly model a very very large scene (masterplanned development) with roads and terrain.

If you have a better process of this or have improved on this please poste here or send me info or a link to another poste at thomas-withers@hotmail.com

Best Regards
Tom