Yes. The sidewalks are procedural meshes and the road is laid on the terrain, so the two dont always 'gel' perfectly. Try increasing the granularity of the road (a collapsible header under the Nodes List). It may help, since the road will be less 'linear'. Otherwise you could try terraforming the terrain to the road first, then rendering it. Best, Dave
More generally: I understand it can be confusing at first. It’s a large tool (over 32,000 lines of code). While we aim to simplify it, we are limited by existing frameworks, such as: The world editor, Internal tools, The rendering pipeline, ImGui. However, if you stick with it, the tool can save significant time when building road networks while offering a lot of new stuff. Much of it is automated or procedural. It does require you to "learn the language" of the tool. The documentation is thorough, but there may still be gaps that we’ve overlooked. We welcome any questions and suggestions for improvement. Best, Dave
How do you change the material of the terrain under the roads? It didn't do that automatically for me.
Would be a great feature to add (in time). --- Post updated --- Thanks. I'll give it a go, but this was along the whole road, it was like it was offset by 0.01 the whole way. I couldn't take a good picture. I think I may be missing a setting somewhere and have a vertical offset applied. --- Post updated --- 100%. I can't stress enough how awesome this is as an addition. I also fully appreciate it will likely require some finessing too. The complexity is required. I prefer to have it than to simplify, it is just that it isn't immediately obvious what is going on. Mine for example opens most of the windows too small to see the useful buttons. For a while I couldn't find them, until I realised I had to make all the windows bigger. It isn't a criticism as such, just a note to others that they may need to be in 'explore' mode when they first use it. The documentation is really useful though, and solved most of my issues once I re-read it a couple of times and actually engaged my brain. As the import function is limited to BeamNG.Tech, I'm already working out how I will automate the process using OpenStreetMap information. I have a cunning plan...
I recommend attaching it to the left or right and pulling it out a bit. Imgui is a bit limited, lets say.
OpenStreetMap is a different can of worms. It is graph-based, so all roads join up at a single point. Junctions are not like this, so work would need done to separate out the roads coming to each junction, and making the lane-to-lane flow work. You can combine it with something like OpenDEM and import a real location terrain, then lay the OSM roads down on it. Plenty of scope for exploring. You will need to figure out how to convert from WGS-84 projection space to BeamNG World Space if you do that, though. I would recommend using something like QGIS. The importing/exporting feature of this tool are just for ASAM OpenDRIVE btw - not OSM. You could export to OSM fairly easily by making assumptions (OSM doesnt have the same level of geometry that this tool does, so you would lose it). Importing it would need to make similar assumptions, on top of the graph problem described above. Dave
Well, that explains why it won't do that The trailer made it seem like it was "Place road and play" not "Place road, paint, and then play"(painting is not difficult at all which is nice). Still great stuff though!
There are some technical issues which prevent us from automating that right now. This is near the top of the list of things to do next though.
I would try to make my own map using this, but I can't figure out how to save the template map as a new map --- Post updated --- Time to dive into the world of tutorials for once.
It's been a while, but the general approach was to get everything into QGIS, then to decemate the nodes to something workable. There was a way to split the shared single junction nodes, but I can't recall right now. It might have been a step I did in excel in between. The I exported as a CSV, loaded the lot into excel, exported as a Beamng compatible JSON as decal roads. I made a pretty passable map doing that. With this tool, I could then go through improving it all and adding junctions. Definitely going to look into it. OSM data isn't perfect, but who needs perfection. It's all about getting a workable map at the end. Found an earlier post on this, although I think I improved on the method a bit, before life got in the way. https://www.beamng.com/threads/qgis-roads-and-smoothing.84330/ --- Post updated --- ] Try this. https://www.beamng.com/threads/my-map-making-tutorial-demo.82078/ But instead of high defs map, use an existing one. Check out AlexKidds map making tool. https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-tool-for-map-creators-updated-2024-06-02.89058/
I really like the road architect, I started a map recently and working on decal roads seemed time consuming. I noticed the page for BeamNG.tech a few weeks ago, and I'm really surprised and glad that we got it in BeamNG.drive, thanks! I have one complaint however, the key to remove a node seems hard-coded to the delete key. I think it should use the same key as "Delete Selection" in the "Editor" section. My delete key is bound to "Move camera (or seat) down". So every time I move my camera around, I'm deleting some nodes when road architect is active. And when I want to delete nodes I would like to use the key I bound for "Delete Selection", which is "x" but nothing happens. This might unfortunately add a few lines of code to the many existing but I think it would be nice for UI consistency. If there is a workaround in the meantime please let me know
Hello, this tool is awesome it has a great potential. I have some questions: 1) am I doing something wrong? I do not understand why the terrain doesn't match up to road nodes that have been raised up 2) is it possible to make sidewalks with it? I did not find any options about them 3) is there a way to reset the terrain after the terraforming?
Every time you move your roads you have to re-click the "form to road" (or whatever it's called) button.
Not sure what is going on in the image - if there is a terrain block underneath (and not something else like a ground plane) then it should conform to the selected road (the one in white above it). I haven't seen it not working, but it is always possible there is some bug (might be worth checking the logs). You could try the second button (conforms terrain to ALL roads and see if that works). Actually - the road just has a white outline - which type of lanes are those? If they are 'island' lanes, that may be why it isn't working. The terrain won't conform to the islands, if i remember correctly. You can make sidewalks on your roads - you need to go into the Profile selection and either choose a road from there which has sidewalks, or add sidewalk lanes to the road yourself. You can undo/redo any terraforming operation with CTRL+Z / CTRL + Y.
I'm sorry I don't understand what do you mean with island lanes, could you explain me? Yes there is a terrain below. I tried also the second button and on official maps, same problem. Then I did a deep cache cleaning and integrity check, nothing changed, even the screenshot's list of engine errors reappeared identical Does anyone else have these errors or is it just me?
Still loving it, but my issues are as follows: - roads don't save and reload, so all I get is the blank area with the deformed terrain. I can reload them in the road architect, but it crashes my game sometimes. - sidewalks are still floating with all settings. They're about a cm to an inch off the ground (yes I flipped metric to imperial...) - there was a third.... But it escapes me. I'll edit this when I remember.
I see now what is wrong from the video -- you are setting the height offsets of the lanes. This controls the vertical thickness (depth) of the lane, rather than the height on the map. This is a relic from the old version of the tool (which used things similar to mesh roads, and so had an actual vertical thickness) and is now only used for sidewalks. It needs tidied up a bit, since it is causing confusion. If you want to adjust the height at each node, you can use the gimbal: press ALT to toggle it on (or use the button on the main control panel of the tool), then move it in the Z dimension. There are various types of lane you can use with roads, and you can set them from left to right across the road. These types are: road, shoulder, island, and sidewalk. This is part of the road's "profile" or "lateral profile" and describes what type of road it is. eg a street might have a left road lane and a right road lane, surrounded by sidewalks on either side (so from left to right, you'd have sidewalk, road_lane, road_lane, sidewalk). Island lanes are for gaps between other types of lanes, eg a highway where the left and right side are separated by an island. Dave
Yes - it needs to be saved as a 'session' in the tool. If you find that this is crashing, logs would help. I haven't seen it crash on save or load. Not sure about the floating sidewalks. 1 cm or inch must be quite hard to see. You could try manually lowering the road (all at once, using the 'rigid translation' button), and see if it helps. Dave
