Loft items

Loft items

Postby callum112233 » Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:02 pm

Hi all.

I figured I would try making a lofted item and opted for a safety rail. Problem is. It won't export correctly.
http://imgur.com/a/OpW2e
http://imgur.com/a/5kkTj
http://imgur.com/a/JRs4P
http://imgur.com/a/OYBTC

Any ideas where I went wrong?

Thanks.
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Re: Loft items

Postby TrabantDeLuxe » Sat Jun 24, 2017 6:40 pm

Yes, I have. Not using blender, though the principles should be the same. In essence, you haven't fully understood what a lofted object is. A lof in itself is any object that can ben extruded with a certain cross-section. Tracks, roads, certain brick walls, embankments, those sort of things tend to be lofts. See the image below for an embankment loft I made a while back. Pay close attention to the axis (X = red, Y = green, Z = blue).

Image

In your 3D modeling software, the model you export only needs a certain length to tell TS often to repeat the texture in the loft. I've included the UV layout in the picture. As you'll see, the texture needs to be in the vertical direction. On this model, the texture is mirrored across the middle, to conserve texture space.

Not very helpful, but fortunately there's a bit of a hack to make what you're aiming for. TS supports lofts with 'intermediate' geometry. Intermediate geometry is just a regular scenery asset that you specify in the loft blueprint, and it will repeat at set intervals. This way you can have a wooden fence with actual 3D posts (the fence itself just being a couple of lofted planks, the posts being the intermediate geometry).

Now for the hack, set the single element you've just made as the intermediate geometry, create an invisible loft (there's the LoftBumpTrans shader for that), and presto! You'll be able to specify the distance between the intermediate geometry in the loft blueprint. There's also an option for starting and ending geometry. This is how you can do nice platform ends for instance.

Railsimilarity did a couple of blog posts on lofts, well worth a read (the entire blog is).

Hope this helps a bit.

Final nitpick: Seems you're losing quite a lot of space in the UV unwrap. Unwrapping is no fun at all, but in terms of performance you really want to use as much of the texture space so you can use as small a texture size as possible.
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Re: Loft items

Postby callum112233 » Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:35 pm

Ah. I see. I reckon the best thing for me would be to try making a simple loft first then instead of running before I can walk.

Cheers.
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Re: Loft items

Postby TrabantDeLuxe » Sat Jun 24, 2017 8:52 pm

There's never enough walls, hedges, and the lot. Getting the safety rail to work shouldn't be much of an issue though.
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Re: Loft items

Postby Rockdoc2174 » Sat Jun 24, 2017 9:29 pm

Be very careful with the length you choose for the repetitive element. Keep it as short as you sensibly can or the loft won't work on anything other than straight lines. To try to give enough variation, some hedge-type lofts have elements that are too long so if you try to make a curve with them the result is a complete mess.

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Re: Loft items

Postby callum112233 » Wed Jul 05, 2017 3:10 pm

Hi again.

I've come back to try again with more of a simple loft. Correct me if i'm wrong but this geometry should work well as a loft?
The origin is at 0,0,0 and the textures are laid across the Y axis.

http://imgur.com/a/bAIeT


EDIT:

I kind of answered my own question :)

http://imgur.com/a/oZfSd
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Re: Loft items

Postby TrabantDeLuxe » Wed Jul 05, 2017 9:25 pm

Good job! Now try adding some intermediate geometry, to see how that works :D
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Re: Loft items

Postby callum112233 » Thu Jul 06, 2017 4:19 pm

Thanks.

I'm trying this rusty rail loft, which looks good except I can't figure out how to do the start and end geometry.

http://imgur.com/a/Ixgjm

I'm assuming (probably wrongly) that I can add this mesh as the start geometry in the blueprint editor?

http://imgur.com/a/BuGbQ

Thanks again :)
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Re: Loft items

Postby callum112233 » Fri Sep 15, 2017 4:04 pm

Figured out the intermediate geometry lark.

Image


Now I want to do something which I'm not sure is possible. I'm wanting to have a completely transparent loft plane with bollards as the intermediate geometry. I did try messing with the LoftTexDiffTrans shader to no avail.
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Re: Loft items

Postby TrabantDeLuxe » Fri Sep 15, 2017 5:13 pm

Good to see progress. What you want is certainly possible - and a neat way of using lofts. What exactly isn't working for you? Getting transparency in textures to work can be a bit of a hassle sometimes, and the solution would be blender specific. I'm sure others have done this so they might chime in here.
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