I have a small cross section of road with a model of lights attached to it. This is joined together as 1 object.
i have then added an array modifier and a curve modifier to this and made a track out of this object using a curve.
Seperately I have created a landscape for this road with hills etc. using a displace modifier.
So my question is how can I get this road array to sit on the landscape with all its hills and dips?
When I’ve tried following the curve to the contours of the landscape, it twists and turns the road and as much as I try its difficult to get it to sit flat on the surface.
If I start again with the landscape is there a way to either manipulate the plane with the same curve thats making the track, or apply the array and curve for the track segment and manipulate it as I pull the landscape up and down to make hills etc.?
This is one way (maybe not the best) assuming you have a Bezier curve controlling the array:
Go to a top view, select the curve’s handles (verts) in edit mode.
Turn on the snapping tool with snap to faces as the method.
Press G, then move the mouse slightly to get the handles to snap to the terrain.
You can do this with one handle at a time or the whole lot. You can also move the whole thing around on the terrain to get it in the right spot.
A couple of caveats: You’ll most likely have to turn off the snapping tool and move the handles around manually to get things above the terrain. The accuracy of the snapping is dependent on the resolution of the meshes involved.
Let me know if this works for you.
Thats a great tip and something that I didn’t know existed, but the problem is that while it sits the vert at the correct height, it doesn’t account for the fact that the object array is wider than 1 vert so doesn’t orient exactly right. I’ll keep playing with it to see if I can make that method work somehow. Great tip though. Thanks
I’ve managed to get a bit further by separating the lamp posts from the track, but leaving the base of the light with it, then using the shrink wrap mod and setting the object to the hills. I’ve then applied that and separated the lamp base from the track to a new object and used the dupliverts option to put the lamps back. Only problem is when you have a big curve or tight corners the lamps base is a bit skewed from the curve mod. So when you use faces with dupliverts it skews the object your duplicating.