Blending track textures

[spamsac]

Sorry if this has been covered before; I did a search of the forums, Google and watched some vids, but still can't see an answer.

What's the best way to merge two track textures together? Eg, if you want a transition from tarmac to gravel. I'm aware of the texture merging tools in BTB for the terrain, but haven't seen (or have missed) an equivalent for track textures themselves.

The most obvious way I can think to do it (if BTB doesn't have a function for this) is to make an intermediate track section with a transitional texture. Is this the way to go?

Also, with RBR in mind, is there an easy way to merge the track properties too?

Again, sorry if this is covered somewhere already/has an obvious solution.

Any help much appreciated,
Simon

 

[woochoo]

You can't blend track textures the same way you can with the terrain... just yet. i think i read a while back that Piddy had made some sort of progress towards that end, but it's not mentioned as something for the 0.8 release so don't expect to be doing it in the very near future.

best option i would go with is a traditional transitional texture just like on road edges, but going across the road, as you suggested.

I have only worked with rFactor so i'm not sure about merging track properties. do you mean you want grip levels to vary across the transitional texture? in rfactor at least it would probably be a case of defining a new road material for the transistion texture with intermediate grip levels.

 

[spamsac]

Thanks for your reply Woochoo.

Yeah, what I meant with merging the track properties was grip. So say for example you have a gravel road turning onto an asphalt road, I want the texture to merge to show gravel carried onto the asphalt, but also the grip levels to reflect this.

Whilst I can imagine it wouldn't be too hard with one road surface merging into another along the length of the road (like I described above), I can see it being a bit more difficult at a junction or on a bend. I might try placing a semi-transparent texture of one surface over the beginning of the next surface and see how that looks.

I'll just have to have a play around and see what I can achieve. If anyone has any good tutorials for blending two textures together I'd very much appreciate a link.

Cheers,
Simon

 

[woochoo]

yeah, i've made transparent maps for the wall tool 'decal' trick. the problem, in rF atleast is recieving shadows. if there is a tree next to the area, it looks silly if only the underlying track picks up the tree shadow. you can have the decal recieve shadows too, but it gets printed across the whole polygon, not just the visable part of the texture, so you end up with a strange multiple depth shadow in a square or triangular shape. well, that's how it is with chroma anyway. havn't tried with alpha cause i just assume it would look messy with with shadows, lights, skids, windscreens and such. i'm just too lazy to find out for sure.

 

[spamsac]

yeah, i've made transparent maps for the wall tool 'decal' trick. the problem, in rF atleast is recieving shadows. if there is a tree next to the area, it looks silly if only the underlying track picks up the tree shadow. you can have the decal recieve shadows too, but it gets printed across the whole polygon, not just the visable part of the texture, so you end up with a strange multiple depth shadow in a square or triangular shape. well, that's how it is with chroma anyway. havn't tried with alpha cause i just assume it would look messy with with shadows, lights, skids, windscreens and such. i'm just too lazy to find out for sure.

Hmmm, I understand the problem you describe, but am not sure of the best work around. Might go for a blended texture and be on the safe side.

Thanks for your help.
Simon

 

[woochoo]

I'd go for a blended texture too. if you are using photoshop or something similar, try putting a tiny drop shadow on some of the gravel layer to make it look a little higher than the tarmac.