Real life map to beamng drive map?

So I started my first map today using the in game editor. The map i am creating is based on a location irl.

I have downloaded a heightmap from terrain.party and converted it using L3DT. I put the heightmap into the in game editor and it has created a new terrain perfectly but now I need to work out where to put the actual roads.

Is it possible to import an actual 2d map and use that to work out where to put the roads? (I have a screenshot of the 2d google maps map which is the same size and will line up perfectly with the terrain if i can import it somehow.)

Or do i have to just make a guess using images for reference?

 

You could try making a new terrain material and use the 2D map image as the diffuse. Set the diffuse parameter to match your heightmap
dimensions. Will be blurry and pixelated when auto painted but probably good enough for rough road placement.

 

How do I set the 2D map as the diffuse?

(As I mentioned earlier I'm new to this so not sure how to do that)

P.s Thanks for such a quick response!

 

The 2D map can be placed as the material diffuse in the material editor. The 2D map image must be in the terrains folder in your map.

EDIT: The terrain painter material editor is where you put the 2D map as the diffuse, sorry, very tired.

 

Before you use a 2D map overlay you'll want to make sure that the 2D map covers the exact same area as the heightmap or it will be an inaccurate map. Verify this by comparing the corners of your cropped google map, positions of roads, etc, with the area you exported in terrain.party. Once you verified that and saved it as a dds from paint.net, with a resolution of 512x512 or 1024x1024, save it to the terrains folder of your map. Then all you have to do before being able to use the overlay ingame is adding an entry like this in the materials.cs inside the terrains folder:

Code:

new TerrainMaterial()
{
    internalName = "mapoverlay";
    diffuseMap = "levels/yourlevelfoldername/art/terrains/overlay.dds";
   
    Enabled = "1";
    diffuseSize = "2048";
};

If your map is 2048x2048 keep the diffuseSize as is. If not, change it accordingly.

Once you have added that entry to your materials.cs file, restart your map and you can paint with that material now. It will look low resolution but it's enough to see where roads should be placed.

I would also like to recommend using satellite imagery with roads instead of just the road map as an overlay. It looks better as a placeholder, and often times, plain road maps ingame can be hard to work with as they turn out super bright.

 

I figured @gigawert would chime in on this.

 

Thanks for this advice! I (just) managed to follow your very clear instructions and I've got the map in place properly.