Version 1.5.1.0 is still sitting in Beta waiting your feedback.
I’ve done all the coding that I expect to on this, so it’s only your user feedback I am waiting on before release. So far only one person has provided any feedback – thanks ebrich The Great!
v1.5.1.0 is MUCH faster in performing calculations so I was hoping more people would be keen to test this and provide greater confidence that it works on their project. If you already are using the Beta and it’s producing good results, that’d be great to hear too. ;) It’s easy to switch back and forth between the Beta and latest release by opting in/out on the Beta tab of RTB properties and there’s been no change in file format so projects will load in either version.
In the meantime progress is going well with version 1.5.2.0 which will include some direct editing of the Terrain Points. Initially this will be limited to vertical editing only, but a future release will allow freedom of movement in all directions. Most of the coding for vertical Point movement is complete; it’s pretty cool to grab the points and lift them up/down and I’ve added another little feature that helps visualise the terrain better when doing this. There’s a few options, similar to track cross-section shapes, for how points are affected by the movement.
Much of the existing terrain editing code (and more) relies on the mesh being uniform with the division of triangles occurring by dividing an existing triangle into 4 child triangles of equal size, and splitting neighbouring triangles in half. This has the great benefit of providing a very fast method of getting a higher detailed mesh in the areas it is required, but the obvious limitation is the lack of fine control desired when closer to the road. Manual editing of the Terrain Points in all directions will alleviate this limit, however it will also present some potential issues with overlapping terrain, downward facing triangles and how these would interact with objects that rest upon them.
In future releases I am considering several possible Terrain editing improvements.
The first phase will allow horizontal movement of the Points, but restrict the movement of “inner” Points (Points that are NOT on the outside edge of the terrain) so that they cannot be moved outside of the polygon that surrounds them. This has the benefit of allowing finer control whilst retaining the ability to easily auto-subdivide polygons when using the raise/lower/paint tools. The algorithm to police this this may turn out to be rather slow if 100’s of points are selected, but this is what I’ll aim for initially.
The second phase would allow the Points to be moved anywhere, just like a regular boring unproductive run-of-the-mill 3d editor (j/k). Triangles & lines could be divided and points dragged to form new shapes, or points merged to remove existing triangles. To do this means the current simple method for subdividing triangles would have to be replaced with a more manual method (eg. holding Control whilst clicking on an existing triangle edge). This would be a one-way trip; once the terrain is edited in this form, then it could not be reverted back.
Please feel free to offer your thoughts. I am happy to steal your ideas. In the meantime, please try the 1.5.1.0 Beta!