(Released) UltraScenery Road Works - Road and Path Materials for Ultrascenery Terrains [Commercial]
Martinjfrost
Posts: 375
Pleased to say that my set of road and path surface presets for Ultrascenery is soon to hit the store!
Its pretty simple to use : select your Ultrascnery terrain (Scene Tab>Ultrascene>Ultrascene_Terrain) to select it). And apply your new materials. Remember if you regenerate the terrain you'll have to re apply the road or path textures and these materials will only apply to terrains with roads or paths in them. Youll fid the ultrascene terrain nestled in your scene tab under the ultrascene group.
Its a handy little set with material presets that should work well with decals for puddles etc, and has various options for the road edge materials too to blend them in with the kind of scene your creating.
Its worth remembering that some materials will work better on paths and others on roads, so a bit of expermentation is in order. ( there is also another set of ultrascenery presets which will allow you to resurface rocks, stones and pebbles in the works).
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Comments
Martin,
Best news I've heard so far this week! I particularly like the the road surface in the second promo. It should work very well in my cod-tolkien universe.
Cheers,
Alex.
Looks fantastic.
For UltraScenery, the more the merrier! Keep those new products coming.
Oh very nice! Thank you.
Is there an asphalt road with yellow lines too?
There isnt im afraid, the way that the ultrascenery terrain shader applies makes that impossible as the same basic shaderis used all of the possible road 'maps' or layouts as its part of the layered terrain shaderso it needs to be tilable to do so as there is no set path for it.You would need another layer on top of that to apply the lines and the mapping to go with that. There is a worn tarmac texture here, which i suspect you could use with some decals of the lines ( maybe using the road layer mapping as a guide - i think that i have seen something like this done in the ultrascenery thread here. What ive tried to do is produce a set of tilable materials that will work with most layouts - some work better on the path or rutted track paths and some on the wider roads. But puddles, and road markings would need to be decals of some description specfic to the scene you have set up.
Hope that helps.
Thanks.
Maybe we could get a material preset for a geoshell that would be just the lines for roads of different US features? Just an idea. Still, I don't think the current US roads are wide enough for two lanes of traffic.
EDIT: I forgot to add that this looks amazing and I want it now, but, well, it's kind of a given with your products and US.
Bought and downloaded.
Cheers,
Alex.
That is the other thing that occured to me. I think a geoshell is a good idea using the distribution maps uesed on the terrain as a guide and a bit of time in an image editor. That way you could apply something with a really good displacement map too and get that raised effect.
Could it be used also for UltraSceneryXT?
https://www.daz3d.com/ultrascenery-road-works--road-and-path-materials-for-ultrascenery-terrains
Never mind, I have seen your answer in the other thread.
instant cart addition. Looks very good. I haven't tried yet but will, there are several products that add puddles, rain, etc to a scene. Perhaps one of them would work for the puddles on the trail.
I was wondering the same thing, thanks for the explanation! Maybe there could be an add-on pack with decals and/or a geoshell? Some roads other than US would be quite cool also, I think.
Bought the recent set nevertheless, great idea and very useful!
Question: how to make the path not look so repetitive and unrealistic? I tried with just clicking on the material, then added tiling at 85x85, which was worse, the next is 40x40 which is also unsatisfactory.
The promo images do not appear like this. using road mossy mud sandy edge. Also note the material does not go around the curve.
These are just materials - so your UltraScenery terrain need to have curved roads/paths.
I thought, that there will be some road presets or even better the possibility to create own roads/paths.
The example render with the preset: USC Road Dark Dirt Sandy Edge
And repeating patterns are really disturbing - preset USC Road Ancient Cobbles Mossy Edge
Dissapointed...
this render does not have the repeating, or at least its not as evident.
yes, this one is terrible with the repeating. Hopefully there is a way to at least reduce this, but as it stands right now I cannot accept it.
As I have said in the description some patterns work better on roads and some on the tracks - at the end of the day Ultrascenery requires a tiled texture for the ground textures so some repitition is on larger bare surfaces.
That is why i have included the sand,dirt and tarmac. It also depends on the compostion of your scene/ camera angle etc. If you shoot a birds eye view, you will get a repetitive texture like this. If your camera is closer to the ground and not pointing staight down at a height you wont see the repetition quite as much.
Some of the materials are intentialy repetiative - bricks / pavers/cobbles etc.
It really is, as said in the description a case of choosing a material that works for the situation you find your self in. There is no panacea with tiling textures of any sort that will always fix this. I have done my best to make sure that there are alternatives and also to work in a way which is realistic to the use of Ultrascenery - Ie camera placement concentrating on the subjects rather than pointing at the road surface.
Addition of decals in your scene and objects on the road will also help with this as will perspective and distnace blur.
That said, if you are unhappy with the product or it does not do what you want it to do then you are of course totally at liberty to return it.
HI there, I think i answered most of this in the above post, but wanted to address your images, In this case i might use the dark dirt with the mossy edge rather than this material which may work better on the two track road patterns of the narrower paths, It really is a case with thes materials of playing till you get a result you like.
Thankjs. I will try some other materials, camera angles, etc. I noticed in your pomos, the way the light creates shadows, the angles, and all that play a very important part in how it looks, as you stated. I was hoping it would be choose a material and viola, it would just cover the USC path.
One option might be to have a posable road strip and apply the materials to that, then posing it to follow the path would bend the maps more the way a real paved surface would behave. But of course that would require manaul posing to match the path, and woudn't blend in nicely.
Lighting is absolutly critical, even with something as powerful as Ultrascenery is, light and shadow is what makes a scene come to life, get that right and you are away. I am looking at maybe making an update with a couple of very very high res textures at low tile, really the only ones that would work with are the muddy mossy road and possibly the ancient cobble ones, and quick tests have not shown conclusive proof that there is an aparicable improvement, What i hope these materials do is give you a starting block and an alternative to the standard sandy road surfce.
The nature of the tiling (as with all shaders) is on the y and the z axis so there is no way to make the pattern follow a curve unfortunatly. Again though, camera angle, terrain (slopes hollows etc) light and shaddow, and also add some debirs of your own , decals, or other smutter to make the scene your own. Sometimes making an image is instant, mostly though it takes test render after test render untill the perfect lighting, look and composition is hit.
I really do hope these materials help give some variety, and ill continue messing with some higher res ones and see if i can come up with an update at some point with a couple more in it. (No promises though)
The core conflict of environments is that if you make them large enough not to tile obviously, the maps look pixelated. There's a lot of give and take to get it right; there's just no easy solution.
I do not know, if it helps here in Daz Studio, but in Unity pretty common solution
to repeating patterns is Poisson distribution.
Thanks for the explanation, @Martinjfrost
I have a great expectations with all products related to UltraScenery,
that is why I almost count on some kind of magic, when new product arrives.
Guess, it is not always possible...
I did a refund on this product. I like the overall look of the terrains for sure, but having to do it by trial and error is not in my wheelhouse too much. Perhaps a lot of it is the fact I have no idea how all the USC is put together. I cannot figure out how the path is there, or what is it? Is it mesh or just material over a specific portion of mesh. Maybe if it were possible to assign material zones on the paths it would work better? Not sure at all, but as it is I'm not getting what I want, click and viola, beautiful paths and roads, with any material. The part of it not following curves is another thing that I do not understand. Maybe later on I'll pick it up and try it again when my patience is feeling a little bit better.