Questions for the future of Railclone

[hl]

Hello,

First of all, congratulations for this plugin.
I am working for a driving simulation software company (realtime application) and we are using 3dsmax daily. We are intending to buy Railclone soon but I would like to have some answers to the following questions.

1 - A geometry object can be added as additionnal  segment . But will it be possible to add in the future a 3dsmax container just for duplication purpose, not for modeling (like the traffic lights objects in the first demo video). I understand well that a container, as it is an "extended" external reference, can't be bended, merged with other segment based on mesh, and so on,.... But It could a great addition, especially when this kind of data may be exported for a realtime rendering engine.

2- In charge of creating and managing city and country areas, I would like to know if there is a plan in the future to manage intersections beetween several Railclone objects to easily build roads intersections (north american intersections or european roundabouts) for example.

3 - In the same scope of question #2, is there a plan to connect roads created with Railclone objects to a terrain mesh (not the native 3dsmax terrain object but simply an editable mesh/Poly object) and keep it updated.

I know these questions are far from the current goal of Railclone but I think that this powerful tool could become a great starting point for an infrastructure road (and more) editor.

[iToo]

Hi,

1.- We'll take a look to it, but the problem with containers if that they may include non geometric objects (as lights), and RailClone is a procedural geometry object which only can generate a mesh.

A similar functionality is included in Forest Pro, which lets you to scatter items along a spline (Tree Editor->Create Tools). Although it's limited to meshes and proxies (not containers), the plugin creates native instances of VRay and Mental Ray, that is a great advantage when using high-poly geometries.

2.- Yes, we have plans to include t-junctions in next releases. There are some issues that we must solve, but this feature is in our prority list.

3.- This can be done easily using Glue, our free plugin. It lets you to conform a spline to a terrain, and use it in RailClone.

Thanks for your suggestions !

[hl]

Hi,

Thanks for your quick answer.
 
2 - I feel very happy to hear that you plan to introduce the T-junctions in the next releases, very good point.

1 - About containers, maybe could they be scattered without any deformation via a special field or rollout to add in a future release of your Railclone plugin. Thanks to take a look at it, since we use intensively containers as prefabs for our realtime rendering engine.

3 - OK, I already tested Glue but what I would like is to connect the resulting mesh of the Railclone object with the Terrain and just not the contruction spline of the road, and be able to control his adaptative tesselation. It would be awesome to get this tool in 3dsmax and not in other 3rd party application again.

4 - How long time the special discount is limited ?


Thanks,


Regards

 

[iToo]

Hi,

3.- Ok, i understand. It's not easy, but i have some ideas to implement this functionality. I add it to the wishlist.

4.- We have not set an end date, but we will keep the offer several months (at least until year end).

[Kreuzritter]

Hello, like your Software very much too

I have one Point you can add in the next Release Please *g*

The Option of Padding is in my case very usefull but i ask myself why there is only a user-defined value for input and not a small "+/-" which allows to in-/decrease this valus incrementaly (to the next segment). - So you dont have to figure it out by hand where is the end of the segment.

[iToo]

Hi,

Sorry if i didn't understand your question but... why don't use the spinner controls to adjust visually the padding ?

The padding is defined as a relative distance from the segment's end. It doesn't depend of the size of the segment.