Rather than slowly pulling terrain from the track, which can become uneven and messy pretty quickly, it would be nice to create as uniform of a terrain grid as possible. This is very desireable for covering a point cloud.
The fastest way I've accomplished this task is to draw a new straight track with two points, set it to one polygon wide by editing the profile, set the panel length to match, add 4 panels of terrain on both sides at uniform distance (no reduction), deleting the track, and then filling the resulting gap with terrain so you end up with a strip of terrain that's 7 panels wide. Repeat as necessary and join the strips.
OK, so that's the rough overview. There are a few details to consider:
1) When you delete the track, the immediately adjacent terrain panels are also deleted. That's why we end up with 7 panels of width instead of 9 panels. So the track panel should be 1/3 the width of your standard panel width and the first two terrain panels should each be 1/3 the width of your standard panel. Then, when you delete the track, the resulting gap is exactly one panel width. If you forget, then you can still hand-pull the terrain edges twice until they join instead of using the fill operation.
2) Repeating the process will still allow human error to creep in, so the grid won't be perfect. That's okay, as ultimately you will want to adjust the vertices to better represent the terrain and optimize polygon counts.
3) Rather than doing this process for each venue, make a very large grid first before beginning any projects, save it, and use it as the template for your other projects. Draw your new project track and cut out the terrain vertices so they outline the track, then add terrain to the track and join those panels to your terrain grid.
Any questions? Any improvements?
The fastest way I've accomplished this task is to draw a new straight track with two points, set it to one polygon wide by editing the profile, set the panel length to match, add 4 panels of terrain on both sides at uniform distance (no reduction), deleting the track, and then filling the resulting gap with terrain so you end up with a strip of terrain that's 7 panels wide. Repeat as necessary and join the strips.
OK, so that's the rough overview. There are a few details to consider:
1) When you delete the track, the immediately adjacent terrain panels are also deleted. That's why we end up with 7 panels of width instead of 9 panels. So the track panel should be 1/3 the width of your standard panel width and the first two terrain panels should each be 1/3 the width of your standard panel. Then, when you delete the track, the resulting gap is exactly one panel width. If you forget, then you can still hand-pull the terrain edges twice until they join instead of using the fill operation.
2) Repeating the process will still allow human error to creep in, so the grid won't be perfect. That's okay, as ultimately you will want to adjust the vertices to better represent the terrain and optimize polygon counts.
3) Rather than doing this process for each venue, make a very large grid first before beginning any projects, save it, and use it as the template for your other projects. Draw your new project track and cut out the terrain vertices so they outline the track, then add terrain to the track and join those panels to your terrain grid.
Any questions? Any improvements?
