Lovely BIG curves

Calm down now folks..not those sort of curves ..but seeing as I've got your attention..

Imagine I'm building something..ooh I dunno, maybe a 'road' for example, and I wanted a nice big bend in the road, how would I go about getting it ? I've tried a 1/4 section of a circular prim but this gives me a 5m radius (prim being 10m max)..which is too tight a bend. I've tried the patchwork of bits approach but this gives me a headache with the flickering. Anyone solved this problem..?

Perre

I do cut and piece (with tapered blocks flattened)

Its possible to get a 30 meter curve using the modular method.

It would take forever to post the instruction here but you can find an example and tutorial on the top floor, last lesson at the Ivory Tower of Primatives

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Natoma/173/177/44

its kind of prim intensive but it works great

Think Wulfric Chevallier may have provided me with a solution (Thanks Wulfric for that..), I'll also check out the lesson from The Ivory Tower for Primates (I'm sure I did that course at University) it sounds kind of interesting.

Hi Perre, this is a good question. I've driven around on race tracks, and the curves are definitely too large for a single normal prim.

It just happens I was looking at something on SLX today called Flower Power, a tool specifically designed for building round things:

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=226960

It certainly isn't cheap, but it might be a useful tool if you plan on building other round multi-prim items. I definitely recommend watching the videos provided, as they will give you a good idea how it works.

I also recommend looking at (or even using) Sarg Bjornson's tracks, which have lovely large curves.

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&MerchantID=5148

Sarg did the track I've driven on, and I can tell you it's really nice.

Ook.

Just in case anyone was wondering, I gave Perre a copy of a tool called ShapeGen, which creates spheres/rings out of shaped tapered prims. I think I got it from a freebie box in Harbinger Sandbox. I've not used it much, but it seems to work well.

Ah, ShapeGen looks like it does much the same as the Flower Power thing, at least for what Perre is trying to do... and MUCH cheaper! Here's a link to it on SLX:

http://slexchange.com/modules.php?name=Marketplace&file=item&ItemID=223298

It's L$100 there, not free, but that's only like 40 cents.

IIRC, Shapemaker and all of Cadroe Murphy's other great tools (such as ShapeGen... which I assume is the updated version) are free or a nominal 1L$ from his vendor. Make sure you're buying it direct from Cadroe and not a 'reseller'.

Have you tried making a 'bend' texture using alphas to create the illusion, then applying that to a monster square prim?

Or just shape a mega-prim to fit? One kinda wants megaprims to stay phantom, but for a road, if one is very very patient with terraforming, one can make a plausible road "substrate" from the land surface and just "paint" a thin layer of road-textured megaprim on top.

Actually, it Cadroe Murphy himself who is selling ShapeGen for L$100 on SLX.

You lure me here under false pretences and then expect help

Well... MY curves may not be big, but they certainly are lovely.

I like curves, all kinds of curves . . . and I was just wandering around last night looking at race-ways; noticed a water race track also.

So that's why you were lurking on the playboy sim the other day

BUSTED!!!

I read about it in the "failed corporate sims" thread, and thought I'd go check it out. If my experience is anything to judge by, the place is jumping... with guys who will follow and proposition any female silly enough to TP there!

I'm sure Perre's future racetrack will be much more fun. VROOM VROOM!!!

Lol I took my alt there after reading the same thread. You were the only other AV I saw there and I didn't say a word, honest!

I was mildly entertained by the "From the mouths of babes" video clips though.

Oh wow - I went there once. Didn't see anyone else there. Left.

To better illustrate my Playboy Island experience, I googled for a picture of a damsel running away, looking fearfully over her shoulder. Never did find a good one, but I did come up with this, which I'm sure all will agree is much better anyway.



Actually, my dicier explorations might go better if I went as a lightsaber-wielding squirrel.

That is a great picture. I now want a light-saber and a squirrel avatar.

That was pretty much my experience, except I saw Ava and thought "Ooh Ava from the forums" and then ran off in the opposite direction!

I get that a lot!

I've been trying out Wulfric's ShapeGen now for a couple of days..it's pretty good, but has it's limitations. The prog gets it's curve from pasting together a number of segments, the more segments you choose to have; the smoother the curve (each segment is of course a prim). It's given me some pretty interesting results however, my roadway is 16m wide and the max the prog seems to go to is about 12m. Also as you get up to the wider sections it leaves gaps near the inner part of the curve (which obviously need to be filled). I've been experimenting with pasting two curved sections together to get my 16 m wide road and I don't see why that shouldn't work and as the missing sections are the same shape and dimension in each segment it shouldn't be too difficult to knock up a filler. All in all..pretty useful tool..thanks Wulfric.

Perre