WIP Ra Patera Island (Boösaule Archipelago) (Fictional 10k +)

[Pangaea]

Set on the fictional infant volcanic Ra Patera Island part of the Boösaule Archipelago chain.
A 10k+ stage covering only a 1.3 square kilometre island.
Progress = 40% complete.
Eventual road surface will be sandy dirt with patches of rougher gravel.
Right now the track is a bit of a mess, lots of sharp corners and crests that need to be smoothed out.
Will also feature 3 short tunnels, 3 crossovers. (1 crossover flyover) .. a pier, and some other things.

The aim here was first to see how well importing mesh converted into btb mesh would be like, and also getting the most out of the the small (1.3ksq) terrain piece by getting the most amount of track onto it without destroying too much of the original mesh detail and look.
Ide like to get this done as soon as possible so ill estimate next weekend for publication.

(vid was cut short due to incomplete track to terrain merging towards the end)
Bad vid quality, select 480 for best.. and double click vid to goto youtube so you have access to fullscreen button.

 

[Pangaea]

heh, rbr flight sim.. ..
and yea, funny that you mentioed the affection for tunnels.. it so happens i was asking myself the same question today "how come I end up with tunnels"....
I guess when i come to some awkward terrain, rather then divert, go over or do to the side.. ill drill through the dam thing
But in the case of this island track, a tunnel or two meant adding a few more k`s to the track, otherwise the cliffs where too steep to put a track on. Anyway, ill try not use tunnels in the future

Regarding merging the track, its a surprisingly easy and painless thing to do.. all u do is topview. then trace out a route. then pop into 3dview and adjust there. Then simply carve out the the mesh to say 2 meters outside the track.. etc (which im sure you know already). ... I did make a fundamental mistake on this project though.. I traced out a rough track first, and then went ahead and merged it in, but I should have neatened things up and got rid of those sharp bumps and corners, added smooth cross sections..etc etc before I merged it into the terrain.
Right now im having to ripp out merged road with terrain areas just to smooth the road out and merge it back. But hey, its all a learning experience
I most certainly will never make terrain in btb again.. certainly not for detailed terrain like this. It literally took me from creating the terrain, right through the conversion process then into btb in less then 30 mins... so never mind the detail of the terrain the time saved is a huge plus.

Yes it would be pretty easy to prep the mesh, in many ways.. and also you could make real tracks fairly good this way too, bryce (and other terrain software im sure).. has tons of options to generate terrain based on various sources.

Another surprise also is the smoothness of btb handling the detailed terrain (considering the poly count)... I thought it would be sluggish, but right now its still running as smooth as if i just started a new fresh track.

Ide like next to try this method with a proper large terrain piece.. this was only really a test, but i thought the terrain looked nice enough to make a track out of , so thats what im doing. Sure its a bit crazy looking, but Im in btb for the creativity and fun mostly
I know many of you already know how to do this, and how to use the various 3rd party things you'll need, but in any case Ide much like to make a series of vid tuts from start to finnish, Going though everything, like a project diary. Im sure others would regognise the potential of this and try have a go at it themselves.

May i thank you and zaxxon once again, you guys really have opened pandoras box, for me at least.