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Author Topic: Traffic Setup & Wishlist  (Read 5062 times)

Mustafa

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Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« on: March 10, 2015, 12:44:55 PM »
Hi iToo,

First thank you for your great software, It's really time saving & productive.

This time We decided to create traffic setup with RC to achieve some considerations:
- low traffic & high traffic setup (no animations required but if that's possible It will be great!).
- variations on cars displayed (more or less public transportation - less trucks - more passengers cars - .. etc)

We know RC is not designed for such cases and We have to deal with challenges like many Mat IDs required .. But thanks to great script from "Rappa Tools" we managed to create Multi-Sub/Objet Mat within few seconds! Then we converted all the cars to V-Ray Proxies in case we used "RailClone Tools" later.

So our idea for simple RC was the following:





At High Traffic Setup, We got really good results with  low memory usage!, But we have an issue at the end of the splines:



At Low Traffic Setup, We got another issue with cars on curved segments:



So our questions are:

1. Is there another method to achieve previous and avoiding the two issues occurred in low & high Traffic Setup?
2. If RC is not the good solution here .. Can we do that at forest lite\Pro with above considerations? (Can you show us an example?)

Our Wishlist from this experience:

1. We think RC really needs a very simple & useful script to create Multi/Sub Object Material from selected objects and has a feature to add more later on after adding more objects.
2. Feature to offset the segments at the start & end of the spline.
3. Feature to "Adaptive" Mode to remove over-exceed segments (like Clipping Mode in Array Generator).
4. Feature to "Material Operator" to replace many Mat IDs once instead of having series of them.

Excuse my English :)

Regards,
Mustafa

Rokas

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #1 on: March 10, 2015, 12:57:42 PM »
Nice setup!

have you tried adjusting curve steps in main RC "Style" rollout?
You could also try not padding values, but combining Empty segmens with defined or random size,- so Your cars are offested by those empty segments

Regarding end splines,
Paul demonstrated workaround in this video @2:45
« Last Edit: March 10, 2015, 01:30:16 PM by Rokas »
Rokas

Paul Roberts

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #2 on: March 10, 2015, 05:37:18 PM »
Hi Mustafa,

First let me say that that's a great looking style, thanks for sharing it!

Rokas' solutions may help with both of the issues you have encountered with this style. If however you need further clarification, please let me know.

I think RC is a better suited solution than Forest Pack for this task.

Thanks too for the suggestions:
Quote
We think RC really needs a very simple & useful script to create Multi/Sub Object Material from selected objects and has a feature to add more later on after adding more objects.
This has been requested before and is on our wishlist. We are investigating the best way to implement it but hopefully it will be available in a future release. Meanwhile RappaTools is a great workaround. I use it myself, it's a fantastic timesaver!

Quote
2. Feature to offset the segments at the start & end of the spline.
In the Current beta we have introduced the ability to add padding to the start and end of arrays. You can find this in the Generator's Properties > Limits tab.


Quote
3. Feature to "Adaptive" Mode to remove over-exceed segments (like Clipping Mode in Array Generator).
To a certain extent this is possible already using the Conditional operator as mentioned by Rokas and illustrated in the link he provided to the books tutorial. I will discuss with the team and see if there's an easier solution.

Quote
4. Feature to "Material Operator" to replace many Mat IDs once instead of having series of them.
Agreed, I think this would be very useful. I've added it to the wishlist.

Thanks again, and if you have any renders produced with this style (or others) we'd love to see them.

Kind regards,

Paul


Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Mustafa

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #3 on: March 11, 2015, 05:42:31 AM »
Thanks Rokas and Paul,

For issue 01: Yes I could solve the problem by adding conditional operator to our style.
For issue 02: I tried to increase curve steps but didn't help .. actually Rokas' solution to add empty segment was brilliant, I added only one empty segment with fixed size (small value), then exported the presence to control the level of crowd overall the style, I also want to mention result wasn't good enough so I merged it with small value of padding & random transformation. and finally issue 2 was solved :) ..

Thanks for taking our suggestions, I didn't know offset end & start were exist, It's nice feature by the way ..
Sure I will be glad to share real project with this style ..

Regards,
Mustafa

Here are the quick results after fixing the two issues (I just extended the splines to make it more interesting)..

High Traffic


Low Traffic


« Last Edit: March 11, 2015, 05:53:05 AM by Mustafa »

TL1895

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2015, 02:35:48 PM »
Wow, what a great idea and setup....I have to ask, are the roads and intersection made with RC, or just standard models?
Looks awesome!

Mustafa

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #5 on: March 14, 2015, 01:19:16 AM »
Wow, what a great idea and setup....I have to ask, are the roads and intersection made with RC, or just standard models?
Looks awesome!

Thanks I'm glad you liked it :) ..
RC doesn't have a feature to make intersection and I think that should be done with other specialized software because roads are very tricky (changing width, unpredictable intersections, .. etc) ..
So for this case I just draw simple boundary at AutoCAD for the road and the intersection .. Then I draw many polylines for (white dash marking lines - yellow marking lines - center line for every lane  - pedestrian passing line .. etc)
Finally I import to Max (road Layer + 5 Layers) ready to have RC Object on it .. So you spend about 5 mins at AutoCAD preparing lines then another 5 mins at 3ds Max to finish this style above .. It's really time saving!
When I have some time I will post the detailed instructions with all parameters exported and quick project done with it :) ..

kadmaster

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #6 on: March 14, 2015, 09:42:33 AM »
Guzel setup olmuş mustafa eline sağlık...

Mustafa

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #7 on: March 23, 2015, 07:34:06 AM »
Hi,

I have a small issue here, Animation was not required in first place but for test purpose & curiosity I tired to add another transform operator to move the cars along the path, and it worked nicely even with a variations of speed on each car (of course with some limitations), The issue i couldn't resolve is at the curved splines, the transform operator get the cars out of the track (like the attached pic), It seems it's working only on segment x axis's direction and doesn't make the segments to follow the path.

Actuality It's not a big issue here as it wasn't intended to be moving  but if my conclusion is true, Is there a workaround to make a segment follow curved path while moving?


Paul Roberts

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #8 on: March 23, 2015, 10:36:30 AM »
Hi Mustafa,

You are correct that Transform will move a segment along its local axis and it won't follow the spline. One solution might be to animate the car's Left padding values instead of transform, pushing the car along the spline.  Or try an an empty (null) segment in the Start input and animate its Right Padding to move all the cars along the road as one (though this won't work with a closed spline like a circle). A combination of these techniques might get you an overall movement with some speed variation.

Many thanks,

Paul
« Last Edit: March 23, 2015, 10:38:53 AM by Paul Roberts »
Paul Roberts
iToo Software

Mustafa

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2015, 02:40:55 PM »
Hi Paul,

Unfortunately both solutions didn't work as expected (Or may be I'm missing something), They delete or generate new random instances of cars instead of pushing existing forward.
Do you think RailClone should have a feature to do that (move segments along the spline)? i think it would be useful for simple animation though RC is not designed for that.

Thanks anyway, I can push the cars a little at least to have nice motion blur effect on still image, but it would be useful if i can move them more.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2015, 02:43:34 PM by Mustafa »

Sketchrender

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #10 on: March 25, 2015, 02:31:03 PM »
Hi
 Looks great.
Can I ask what cars were used.
I am looking for a set of cars for carpark layouts and , good enough cars for distant and close up for ground eye level views also.
Can you suggest , European cars.
I have the evermotion collection 98

Thank you

philip

TL1895

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #11 on: March 25, 2015, 04:08:31 PM »
I think I see some from evermotion v55, too...Looking great mustafa!

Mustafa

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Re: Traffic Setup & Wishlist
« Reply #12 on: March 25, 2015, 07:15:40 PM »
Hi
Glad you liked it :), Yes most of the cars are from evermotion HDModels & archmodels volumes
« Last Edit: March 25, 2015, 07:46:55 PM by Mustafa »