A nice road collection

http://www.turbosquid.com/FullPreview/Index.cfm/ID/254728



This is a nice road collection. Some people might find it pricey, but I reckon £40.00 was okay for the variety you get - baring in mind you can construct whatever you like with the sections.

Some people might think that it is easy to do this type of thing, but I think it is great for those people who cannot.

Where I think it stands out, compared to roads used in some AAA games, is the detail when you are using a low camera (bumper cam) - you can see the little individual stones things in the tarmac - very nice - evident in this picture (not my bumper cam):

I hate to say it, but they look rubbish... They've taken a tarmac texture and put lines on it, not even made the lines semi transparant to give some feel of texture on them.

Here's something I knocked up in around 30 seconds.



Using an existing tarmac texture I had, added a layer, drew a vertical line, set the line style so it's dotted, then set the alpha of the layer down a bit so you can see texture through it.

I think it looks better, certainly more realistic, maybe the underlying texture isn't as good, but it's one I had laying around...

True "Rob Farley", he's sort of made it look like a very new road. The lines are not in the texture - they are (I assume) part of the model???

The lines on his road sections do sort of 'shimmer' when in the distance - I suppose because of the method he has used to apply them (coz they are not in the road texture itself).

I might have a word with him to see if he can fix that coz the 'shimmering' is okay but some people might not like it.

I still reckon it looks good though.

They're a bit crap, really. You simply don't get whole cities where every bend in the road is 90 degrees. This, imho, makes them virtually useless. Not that it'd be difficult to make your own additions, but then, if you can do that why pay for them in the first place?

Rob Farley's texture is better.

I wouldn't think they were used in AAA games. Yes, Rob's are better at least for the simple fact that his one has texture to the painted white-lines.

Perhaps if they had a little more detail like this, and the bends were cut in half, 1/3 or 1/4 then maybe... but it's not ofr me. I could do better with me camera and sprites. :) (That's a joke!)

sniff, still, I quite like it - it's sort of like having your own Scaletrix track set with unlimited pieces.

I think the author is probably US so they are more for US type cities that are built on a block basis.

When I was talking about AAA games - I mean some games have uninteresting washed-out textures for the road, especially when you change camera angles to a low one - pixels can become blocky. In the 'Road Collection' the road actually looks better with a low camera.

looks fine to me. just need a bit of dirt overlaying on them to break up that clean look.