Long track: Dividing into pieces. How to merge them?

[Erwin Greven]

I have read once that it is possible to build a track in separate parts and merge them later.

I would like to know how that is done.

 

[martinez]

You cannot merge them for good - they will be separate forever, unless you use some 3dsSimed I guess - there was a video tutorial of it here. (will check later where exactly, no time now).
But in BTB, if you want easily merge them (I mean get their control points on the same spot), in 2D press "m" key and click the first cotrol point of another track. They both must have the same number of these little blue dots /vertex

 

[R Soul]

Create the track as one piece, then add a few surfaces. For each of those surfaces, select 'set material'. You can also deselect 'set the shape' to stop it interfering with the track's profile. Even though the materials for each section are the same, it'll cause the track to get split up.

 

[martinez]

I also found that it's better (for me) to have independent sections for material and other for shape. If they are both in one section, moving the small blue vertex horizontally "destroys" the texture order in the next section. That can be boring to make corrections all the time later. But now I'm starting to make tracks where the road and roadside (close terrain) belongs to one croos section. Then I'm using much more profiles now, but it's very easy to control the terrain's vertexes now. One thing I'd love would be a possibilty to merge road's vertexes...

 

[Erwin Greven]

I mean something different. For example the Targa Florio. Is this track build out of one track? Because it is that huge. I want to build a high speed track (65km) over the "Afsluitdijk", that is a 32 km long closure dam in the Netherlands. When i want to edit something simple it takes loads of time.

 

[mianiak]

I'd suggest for you to lay your track out as one closed circuit piece first and set up your corners and elevations with that (dont bother about shape, materials or camber yet), then add new point to point pieces bit by bit and like Martinez says, hold M and grab each node on each point to point piece and snap it to the closed circuit track nodes you laid out first. Best to make the joins on a straight part of the track.

 

[Raido]

I have a similar question as a follow-up to this one...

I've got two basic tracks in BTB, one the main racetrack, one the smaller kart track. Both separate projects. Can I import the kart track somehow and merge it with the main racetrack project?

Doesn't matter if it's imported after the main track is finished, but I'd rather not release both as totally separate tracks. The kart track only needs to be driveable, not necessarily raceable (could always include that as a separate sub-release added to the .rar file).

 

[Johannes Rojola]

I mean something different. For example the Targa Florio. Is this track build out of one track? Because it is that huge. I want to build a high speed track (65km) over the "Afsluitdijk", that is a 32 km long closure dam in the Netherlands. When i want to edit something simple it takes loads of time.

AFAIK Targa is not built with using BTB, so I cannot really answer on that. I believe it is the old GPL version that has been brought into 3D modeling software and built from there. That is completely different method than BTB of course.

But coming back to your problem, it is much more useful to build such a long and big track from several road pieces. I happen to know that editing can be slow if road section is many tens of kilometers. I believe longest sections in Cannonball track were something 60km's, and it is too slow to work with those all the time. So mostly it is 30-40km sections combined. Also there was a limit in BTB of the length of one road, but I don't remember exactly what it was. Panel length affects too. Try also close all walls, objects and sobjects from the radio buttons top right. Thou you've probably already knew that And then always hide all the other roads than the one you are currently editing. With these procedures you can ease up the editing quite much.

Problem with section based circuit building is that you probably cannot do the AIW in BTB, but you have to use external editor for that. I never learned to do it...

If you are using EMEL method like I've learned you do, it will slow down the editing ALOT. I can't imagine how hard it can be on such large tracks like you've talking about...

 

[Erwin Greven]

Problem with section based circuit building is that you probably cannot do the AIW in BTB, but you have to use external editor for that. I never learned to do it...

That is easy. Build the track first in one piece and create the AIW. Back it up and use it later when build the track in pieces.

I am thinking about it to build it in pieces because it decreases the length of the track enormously. Almost 50%.

 

[Johannes Rojola]

That is easy. Build the track first in one piece and create the AIW. Back it up and use it later when build the track in pieces.

That is clever, i'm stupid

 

[Johannes Rojola]

1,000km is the longest track length BTB can handle as one section. That comes to 400,000 polygons @panel length=5/surface shape points=2/Surface count=1

Yeah I mixed up BTB limit and rFactor export limit which in this case was the point. I never tried in BTB how long section can be made, and I don't where you got the information from, but 400 000 polys sounds plausible I guess. But in 0.8 version of the BTB the rFactor limit definitely was there somewhere, or then it was a bug and might have been issued in current beta version.

For example I tried to export 200km track section with original 5 (counting outer points too) shape point surface, panel lenght 5, to rFactor and it did not succeed. After I reduced panel length it went there, but I don't remember how much I reduced it. Anyway I calculated that original 200km section was only 160 000 polys. I think I remember that optimal length for section was 60-70km with panel length 5 (I only had 5 surface points too). I don't remember being able to add any longer roads to Cannonball track, I would if I've could however

Seems like new beta has fixed this issue what I am currently experiencing...

 

[Johannes Rojola]

Johannes, I’m not sure why you couldn’t extend your tracks further in the past. I’ve exported 500Km+ tracks long before the beta.

Then it is just a bug, however I cannot add multiple materials to road surface either... So there is some things I can't do

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

I have a similar question as a follow-up to this one...

I've got two basic tracks in BTB, one the main racetrack, one the smaller kart track. Both separate projects. Can I import the kart track somehow and merge it with the main racetrack project?

Doesn't matter if it's imported after the main track is finished, but I'd rather not release both as totally separate tracks. The kart track only needs to be driveable, not necessarily raceable (could always include that as a separate sub-release added to the .rar file).

Check this thread too, it's for Evo but some techniques can be used with other titles too: http://www.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/47255-several-layouts-one-mas-file.html