Sorry for such a noob question. (just starting to learn Blender). I want to make a roadway based on a Google Earth aerial / image. I started “tracing” the edge of the road using Nurbs curves and now I want to create a mesh surface / plane between the two and cannot figure out how to do it. Any suggestions on how to do it or an easier way to make a roadway based on a scaled aerial image.
Thanks for any help
I assume you were making a road using two curves one on each side, and you assume you can generate mesh between the two. If that’s the case then I’m sorry to say that you’ve wasted your time doing something that won’t work. It’s not how blender functions. However what blender can do is generate a surface from a single curve. You can do that by going into curve tab and increasing the extrude value from 0 to something more. Also, you could extrude a curve along a path/curve.
However, I do have to point out that there once was a way to generate a mesh between two curves, but that was with the add-on called “Curve-tools” and it’s no longer working properly in the latest blender versions.
Now that I think about it there’s also a 4th way to do this. But you’ll have to merge and close the two curves in order to convert them into 2D which will give you a plane, but keep in mind that this won’t give you the most optimal geometry.
Wish you had uploaded screenshots of your work, so that I we could know exactly what would suit your needs.
When you press shift+A you have to use the nurbs curve in the “surface” category, not the “curve” category.
Once you have traced the sides of the road (if you used 2 different nurbs curve objects you need to join them, ctrl+J ) select all with A, then press F to generate the surface between the curves. The number of points should be equal between the two sides of the road.
Alternatively, i’ve not tried it but i guess you can use this addonto import roads based on Openstreetmap data.
I would actually suggest using a bezier curve. For some reason I suspect that the OP comes from Maya background.
Terrain mesh is usually more subdivided than road is and you’ll probably have problems connecting both. While you could use Bezier curve and set parameters to Fill->Front, Bevel>0, Resolution =0 and in edit mode select all Bezier points to tilt Ctl-T 45 deg, then from Top Ortho view Ctrl- RMB to trace road this will create faces which are hardly ‘stitchable’ to the terrain mesh if you convert Alt-c curve to mesh.
See if this forum thread can help you a bit more: https://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?334050-Racing-Track-modelling-(Terrain-Road)