Modeling a spiral ramp with flat quads?

Support Basics & Interface
1

Hi I’m new to Blender and the Blender community.

This is my first thread so I apologize if there is anything wrong.

>>> Question: How can I make a spiral ramp with the top face being planar quads?

I am modeling some simple race track pieces for unity.

I made a spiral ramp with a simple face and the screw modifier.

spiral_1.jpg2300×1294 266 KB

But… as you can see the top faces are distorted non planar.

This is what happens when I select Mesh > Clean Up > Split Non-Planar Surfaces:

spiral_2.jpg2300×1294 220 KB

They are converted to tris and I would like to keep the top faces in planar quads.

I’ve tried array on a spiral curve (made from spiral curve mod), but it seems to deform strangely…

I have heard one can use the array modifier with empty, but I haven’t found a tutorial on how. :frowning:

Deadline is tomorrow so I’m really short on time and very frustrated :frowning:

Would really appreciate any help :slight_smile:

Here’s the blend file just in case:
track_none_i.blend (736 KB)

Thank you in advance!

2

Should be enough to control the shading. This one has auto smooth option enabled, edges marked as sharp, and shading adjusted with normal edit modifier for top faces. Applying the modifier stores the normals as custom split normals data.

track_none_ja12.blend (699 KB)

3

Thank you JA12, I’m new to blender so I’m not familiar with a lot of things. Will auto smooth still apply when exported as fbx and imported in unity?
The reason I want the top faces to be planar quads is when I import this model in unity, the mesh collider automatically forms into tris like in screenshot #2. This is causing the car to rattle through the spiral ramp part.
Will auto smoothing help this issue?
And if so, does auto smoothing make more verts and polys? My game is already overheating a bit so I need to keep my resources low poly :frowning:
Very new to blender AND unity so apologies if I may be asking some very basic questions.
Thank you again for helping me out !

4

Never mind! There was something wrong with Unity settings… the model works just fine. Thank you JA12 <3