Any Unreal Engine Experts Here?

[Huntn]

Okay, here's a very slow and plodding tutorial, just for you! If you're wondering what I did near the start of the curving, I flatted the bezier curve to make the initial two nodes aligned, because by default, Blender gives you this weird bend on their beziers that will mess you up if you're aligning big objects.

Slow and plodding, exactly what I need, seriously fantastic! I’ll try this. By the way I’ll assume there is a way to merge my 3 mesh pieces into one for the purpose of bending it, putting a curve in it 90 degrees. If there is not a very easy way to do this, I can research it.

I find this forest scene to be fantastic, but do you agree that a road that just ends at the camera is ok for a non interactive scene, like a painting, but if you want interaction with this scene a better choice is to run this road around a corner out of site? Yes the scene will have its boundaries no matter what, but having a road run straight up to a boundary is not the best imo If the scene will be interactive as in you can turn around and see what’s behind you. It’s ok if you disagree.

 

[Renzatic]

Slow and plodding, exactly what I need, seriously fantastic! I’ll try this. By the way I’ll assume there is a way to merge my 3 mesh pieces into one for the purpose of bending it, putting a curve in it 90 degrees. If there is not a very easy way to do this, I can research it.

If you're talking about making a set 90 degree tile, that's easy to do. Take your road bit, set an array modifier, put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3), then slap a simple deform modifier, set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis. You'll get this:

As you can see, you get some texture pinching at the pivot point and outermost edges, but you can fix that by redoing your UVs for this specific piece, and repainting your vertex colors.

I find this forest scene to be fantastic, but do you agree that a road that just ends at the camera is ok for a non interactive scene, like a painting, but if you want interaction with this scene a better choice is to run this road around a corner out of site? Yes the scene will have its boundaries no matter what, but having a road run straight up to a boundary is not the best imo If the scene will be interactive as in you can turn around and see what’s behind you. It’s ok if you disagree.

No, I very much agree. Since you're going for an interactive scene, you'll need to do more with your environment than what's shown in the forest video to sell the illusion. Just having the road end, floating off into the void won't work for you. You'll need to do something like set up a roadblock that prevents the player from moving past it, but still having the road stretch off or curve into the distance to give them the impression that they're in a little world.

Plus, you'll need to make your road a part of the environment beyond. You don't want the road floating 10 feet above your forest floor. That'll look weird. It needs to be in the scene entirely as one contiguous whole.

For that, you might want to look at the forest video for design pointers, but hit up an environment modeling tutorial for Blender and/or Unreal to learn how to do what you want to do.

 

[Huntn]

If you're talking about making a set 90 degree tile, that's easy to do. Take your road bit, set an array modifier, put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3), then slap a simple deform modifier, set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis. You'll get this:

View attachment 9831

As you can see, you get some texture pinching at the pivot point and outermost edges, but you can fix that by redoing your UVs for this specific piece, and repainting your vertex colors.



No, I very much agree. Since you're going for an interactive scene, you'll need to do more with your environment than what's shown in the forest video to sell the illusion. Just having the road end, floating off into the void won't work for you. You'll need to do something like set up a roadblock that prevents the player from moving past it, but still having the road stretch off or curve into the distance to give them the impression that they're in a little world.

Plus, you'll need to make your road a part of the environment beyond. You don't want the road floating 10 feet above your forest floor. That'll look weird. It needs to be in the scene entirely as one contiguous whole.

For that, you might want to look at the forest video for design pointers, but hit up an environment modeling tutorial for Blender and/or Unreal to learn how to do what you want to do.

Nevermind, Got it...

• To Duplicate and mirror.
  • Select Object (Object mode)
  • RC and Duplicate, try not to move it, LC.
  • Object Mode> Object> Select Mirror and then select a axis. This will mirror, reorient the existing item, not create a new mirrored item.

A little confusion on my part because when I say mirror an item, I expect a new object to be created as a mirror, not change the orientation of an existing object.

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Ok this request might piss you off a little, but hopefully not. As I've said I have my blender mesh in 3 pieces, well actually it's 2 right now, the center road area and a side. In UE it's pretty easy to mirror a side, flip it and move it to the opposite side But in Blender, I've been dicking around with taking the side piece of mine and trying to mirror it. Sure I can duplicate it and rotate it to move it, but if I can get it to duplicate and mirror, or just mirror (not sure), then it will be at the exact orientation, just reversed.

I've been reading tutorials on it, the Blender documentation, and so far I've not been able to mirror it. As I see it the advantage of mirroring is that you've got a mirror image that maintains orientation. My concern here is tiling. I want additional pieces to tile properly. Frankly I'm wondering why this is so difficult. Whimper...

 

[Renzatic]

Ok this request might piss you off a little, but hopefully not. As I've said I have my blender mesh in 3 pieces, well actually it's 2 right now, the center road area and a side. In UE it's pretty easy to mirror a side, flip it and move it to the opposite side But in Blender, I've been dicking around with taking the side piece of mine and trying to mirror it. Sure I can duplicate it and rotate it to move it, but if I can get it to duplicate and mirror, or just mirror (not sure), then it will be at the exact orientation, just reversed.

I've been reading tutorials on it, the Blender documentation, and so far I've not been able to mirror it. As I see it the advantage of mirroring is that you've got a mirror image that maintains orientation. My concern here is tiling. I want additional pieces to tile properly. Frankly I'm wondering why this is so difficult. Whimper...

Yeah, I'm pretty furious right now. How dare you ask me such a question!

You can find mirroring in the modifier tab along the right side of the screen (the little wrench icon), and it's easy to set up. Just keep in mind that it mirrors according to the position of your origin point (the little orange dot you usually see floating around), rather than world space.

Oh, and if you want to mirror the bank, make sure it's it's own object, rather than attached to the road mesh. If they're both a combined object, it'll try to mirror both the bank, and the road, giving you some messy results. You can separate objects by hitting L to select one continuous mesh, then hitting P, and choosing Separate By Selection.

 

[Huntn]

Yeah, I'm pretty furious right now. How dare you ask me such a question!

You can find mirroring in the modifier tab along the right side of the screen (the little wrench icon), and it's easy to set up. Just keep in mind that it mirrors according to the position of your origin point (the little orange dot you usually see floating around), rather than world space.

Oh, and if you want to mirror the bank, make sure it's it's own object, rather than attached to the road mesh. If they're both a combined object, it'll try to mirror both the bank, and the road, giving you some messy results. You can separate objects by hitting L to select one continuous mesh, then hitting P, and choosing Separate By Selection.

Do you think I'd be better off merging my 3 pieces into one mesh for this curving?

 

[Renzatic]

Do you think I'd be better off merging my 3 pieces into one mesh for this curving?

You could keep them separate, but it's a little more busywork to manage, since you'd have to set the modifiers on both models.

 

[Huntn]

You could keep them separate, but it's a little more busywork to manage, since you'd have to set the modifiers on both models.

Easiest way to merge? I'm online right now looking at descriptions, you can't just pick two objects and use the merge command on them?

 

[Renzatic]

Easiest way to merge? I'm online right now looking at descriptions, you can't just pick two objects and use the merge command on them?

You join them together in object mode. Select the objects you wanna merge, and hit Ctrl-J

 

[Huntn]

You join them together in object mode. Select the objects you wanna merge, and hit Ctrl-J

That easy? Shoot me. I've looked up several articles on merging and none said that...at least not where I saw. Thanks I'll try that. This is when I get frustrated when something like this comes up and I spend an hour researching the simplest of things.

I also figured out I don't want mirror, because then it makes the opposite sides of the road look the same. So instead I do want to duplicate and rotate....

 

[Renzatic]

That easy? Shoot me. I've looked up several articles on merging and none said that...at least not where I saw. Thanks I'll try that. This is when I get frustrated when something like this comes up and I spend an hour researching the simplest of things.

I also figured out I don't want mirror, because then it makes the opposite sides of the road look the same. So instead I do want to duplicate and rotate....

That easy. It ain't your fault though. These programs are so endlessly complicated, finding exactly what you need without knowing the magic keywords can be a chore in and of itself sometimes.

As for your mirroring conundrum, what I'd do is mirror both sides, work on one, then apply the mirror, and readjust the opposite side so it doesn't look the same at a casual glace. It might save you a couple few minutes doing it that way.

But if you want to duplicate your mesh, you can do this...and I'm amazed that I can do this entirely by muscle memory by this point...

Select the object you want to duplicate, hit Shift-D, then R to activate rotate, Z to constrain the rotate to the Z axis, type 180 on the keypad to rotate it a perfect 180 degrees, then move into position. If you want to further constrain it, you can hit the X or Y keys to constrain the move to that axis.

 

[Huntn]

Okay, here's a very slow and plodding tutorial, just for you! If you're wondering what I did near the start of the curving, I flatted the bezier curve to make the initial two nodes aligned, because by default, Blender gives you this weird bend on their beziers that will mess you up if you're aligning big objects.

I've tried to do this several times, but things happen differently when I do it. For example:

• Array- that part went ok, second section of road appeared, I changed the X off set from 1.0 to .95 to get rid of the gap.
• When Fit Curve selected- the second section of road disappeared as in the video.
• When Curve: Benzier curve selected- the second piece of road came back for me, but not in the video.
• So at this point I still have 2 segments of road appearing butted into each other, and in the video there is one.
• Click on the Benzier Curve (yellow curved line) attached to the road segment.
  • I had to look under the road to see it. No problem.
  • At this point you did something to make mode choice appear: edit mode or object mode. You chose edit. Since I could not figure out what you selected, I just hit Tab and I got two straight line segments angled with each other, as you did.
  • Then. you did something else to take the curve out of the road, I watched your key strokes several times but no joy, could not figure out how to get the two line segments associated with the benzier curve, straightened out which in the video made the road look straight again. In my project, the road remained curved. Of note I'm showing two road segments butted together, and the front one is straight, and the back one is curved to the left away from the camera.

I'm kind of lost at this point. When I hover my cursor over one of the line segments and hit S, I can swing it around, but the road if it grows, tries to grow away from the camera in a straight line. I want to build my road towards the camera.

Don't worry about it. If there is an easy explanation, I'm all ears. Otherwise I don't want you to get overworked trying to talk me though this. I'll also take a look at the video about making curves you posted.

 

[Huntn]

I played with it some more. Got the road growing with a left turn, selected the curve on my road, got the 2 line segments at angles.
I just need to know the keystrokes you used to straighten this road out temporarily. Then you went to a wireframe mode of somekind and started growing it. Not sure of the controls you used to set points along the curve, bend the curve, and manipulate the handles on the curve to reshape it.

​

 

[Renzatic]

So at this point I still have 2 segments of road appearing butted into each other, and in the video there is one.

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Your road is probably slightly smaller than mine, and the modifiers will output a new piece once the underlying bezier curve is long enough to account for two of them.

I had to look under the road to see it. No problem.

One thing that'll help you out considerably is to make your vertex points a little bigger. By default, Blender sets them to 3px, and I find they're easier to work with when they're double that size, 6px. To change that, go to edit in the menu at the top left of the screen, choose preferences, go to the Themes tab, expand the 3D Viewport box, and scroll down a good ways until you see Vertex Size. Change that to 6px.

At this point you did something to make mode choice appear: edit mode or object mode. You chose edit. Since I could not figure out what you selected, I just hit Tab and I got two straight line segments angled with each other, as you did.

By default, the Tab key is a toggle between Object and Edit mode. I prefer the Pie Menu setup, where Tab gives me all the options for all the various modes. If you want to change your setup to be more like mine, go to edit/preferences again, scroll down to Keymap, and turn on Tab For Pie Menu, and Extra Shading Pie Menu Items. Also, while you're there, I'd recommend changing the Spacebar Action to Search. That is really handy to have around.

Then. you did something else to take the curve out of the road, I watched your key strokes several times but no joy, could not figure out how to get the two line segments associated with the benzier curve, straightened out which in the video made the road look straight again. In my project, the road remained curved. Of note I'm showing two road segments butted together, and the front one is straight, and the back one is curved to the left away from the camera.

I watched through that part of the video again, and realized that the screencast key viewer isn't showing my keystrokes for that action. What I'm doing there is hitting A to select all my nodes and handles, Y to constrain the scale to the Y axis, then Numpad 0 to even them all out along along the same axis, straightening them up.

I'm kind of lost at this point. When I hover my cursor over one of the line segments and hit S, I can swing it around, but the road if it grows, tries to grow away from the camera in a straight line. I want to build my road towards the camera.

Your camera can be positioned freely anywhere, at any time. Worry more about building your scene as a whole.

I played with it some more. Got the road growing with a left turn, selected the curve on my road, got the 2 line segments at angles.
I just need to know the keystrokes you used to straighten this road out temporarily. Then you went to a wireframe mode of somekind and started growing it. Not sure of the controls you used to set points along the curve, bend the curve, and manipulate the handles on the curve to reshape it.

There's a few things I did there to make things easier on me. First off, I went to an overhead viewport, which will, by default, constrain all rotations and movements to the same plane.

I also switched to Wireframe Viewport by hitting the Z key, and choosing Wireframe. You can also activate by looking at the 4 little sphere icons at the top right of the screen, and clicking the leftmost one. In order, they're Wireframe, Solid, Material Preview, and Render.

To grow it, I'd both move one of the bezier points to get it to a certain length with G, and extrude a new point out by hitting E when I have one node already selected. I also added an extra point between two existing nodes by selecting two of them, rightclicking, and selecting Subdivide, which will add an extra point between the two highlighted nodes.

At this point, since you're starting to play more with Blender, I'd really recommend watching an intro to modelling video to help you out. You're jumping into the deep end before you've even learned how to kick your feet here.

 

[Huntn]

I wouldn't worry too much about that. Your road is probably slightly smaller than mine, and the modifiers will output a new piece once the underlying bezier curve is long enough to account for two of them.



One thing that'll help you out considerably is to make your vertex points a little bigger. By default, Blender sets them to 3px, and I find they're easier to work with when they're double that size, 6px. To change that, go to edit in the menu at the top left of the screen, choose preferences, go to the Themes tab, expand the 3D Viewport box, and scroll down a good ways until you see Vertex Size. Change that to 6px.



By default, the Tab key is a toggle between Object and Edit mode. I prefer the Pie Menu setup, where Tab gives me all the options for all the various modes. If you want to change your setup to be more like mine, go to edit/preferences again, scroll down to Keymap, and turn on Tab For Pie Menu, and Extra Shading Pie Menu Items. Also, while you're there, I'd recommend changing the Spacebar Action to Search. That is really handy to have around.



I watched through that part of the video again, and realized that the screencast key viewer isn't showing my keystrokes for that action. What I'm doing there is hitting A to select all my nodes and handles, Y to constrain the scale to the Y axis, then Numpad 0 to even them all out along along the same axis, straightening them up.



Your camera can be positioned freely anywhere, at any time. Worry more about building your scene as a whole.



There's a few things I did there to make things easier on me. First off, I went to an overhead viewport, which will, by default, constrain all rotations and movements to the same plane.

I also switched to Wireframe Viewport by hitting the Z key, and choosing Wireframe. You can also activate by looking at the 4 little sphere icons at the top right of the screen, and clicking the leftmost one. In order, they're Wireframe, Solid, Material Preview, and Render.

To grow it, I'd both move one of the bezier points to get it to a certain length with G, and extrude a new point out by hitting E when I have one node already selected. I also added an extra point between two existing nodes by selecting two of them, rightclicking, and selecting Subdivide, which will add an extra point between the two highlighted nodes.

At this point, since you're starting to play more with Blender, I'd really recommend watching an intro to modelling video to help you out. You're jumping into the deep end before you've even learned how to kick your feet here.

It’s your fault, you made it look easy,

What you are doing in the tutorial does not look hard, if the keystrokes are displayed, which they are not.

Another thing that is different, I am used to graphic programs where a bezier curve is easier to control and intuitive, just grab, click on, or hold the LMB button to latch onto a handle and pull it around, lengthen or shorten it. For the life of me, in Bender, I’ve not been able to figure out how to grab the bezier curve handles.

I watched another video wher the author draws a line freehand. Then he uses the Array to follow it, As he was drawing this, I was reminiscing about the days where I could do the same thing with a bezier curve. Can you draw a stand alone bezier curve in Bender, if so how? I’m thinking it might be easier to draw the line, but I want a nice smooth line, and then use the Fit to Curve function.

 

[Renzatic]

Another thing that is different, I am used to graphic programs where a bezier curve is easier to control and intuitive, just grab, click on, or hold the LMB button to latch onto a handle and pull it around, lengthen or shorten it. For the life of me, in Bender, I’ve not been able to figure out how to grab the bezier curve handles.

You manipulate the bezier curves just like everything else in Blender: left-click to select, GSR to grab, rotate, and scale, and E to extrude. If you want to grab the handles, you first select the main node, then click on which handle you want to grab. It's set up that way so that everything is relatively homogenous.

You can make freehand curves by droping in a grease pencil object, drawing out your shape, then converting your stroke to a bezier curve.

 

[Huntn]

If you're talking about making a set 90 degree tile, that's easy to do. Take your road bit, set an array modifier, put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3), then slap a simple deform modifier, set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis. You'll get this:

View attachment 9831

Regarding the above I’d like to try this, based on what you said:

• array modifier- understood
• put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3)- iterations? Please be more specific. At least 3 of what, road pieces? How to ovoid overlapping geo?
• then slap a simple deform modifier- I’ll assume this an additional modifier like a curve but something else? I’ll look to see if there is something called deform.
• set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis- I assume these are parameter within the deform modifier.

You manipulate the bezier curves just like everything else in Blender: left-click to select, GSR to grab, rotate, and scale, and E to extrude. If you want to grab the handles, you first select the main node, then click on which handle you want to grab. It's set up that way so that everything is relatively homogenous.

You can make freehand curves by droping in a grease pencil object, drawing out your shape, then converting your stroke to a bezier curve.

This might be a case in the Blender world where something is considered so obvious that it is not mentioned. Last night I watched a couple of tutorials on curving and the original issue I was running into, not getting handles I could manipulate, that was because I had the object selected with the select pointer versus using the move selection. I mean DUH. I spent quite a bit of time watching videos where no one seemed to say “select move”, including you. During a video, I just happened to notice “move” was selected instead of “select”.

Other programs, selecting the object alone pulls up manipulation handles by virtue of being selected allowing you to manipulate them. Ok now I know how to manipulate curves.

Also last night, I made a road using road segments, using the “array” and “fit to curve method”, following a curve I drew. Please confirm that at the end of this you must save this as a mesh?

The problem I had is when I exported this road into UE, I ended up with sections that had no surface to apply texture to, so I went back to Blender, saw that one of the coordinates was negative (normal flipped) and fixed that, but what I got back in UE was kind of messy looking, and part of the surface was still invisible. So I have no clue.

So at this point, I’m spending too much time on this. I’ll try to do the 90 degree turn as per you example above, that is good enough, and see if that works and if it does not, I’ll just forget that aspect for now and get back to doing the forest scene as is,

Btw, I’m not frustrated at anything you have done, I appreciate your bounty of help.

 

[Renzatic]

array modifier- understood

Woot!

put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3)- iterations? Please be more specific. At least 3 of what, road pieces? How to ovoid overlapping geo?

Yup, at least three iterations of your road on the array modifier to provide it enough room to smoothly bend the road 90 degrees without overlapping your geo. If you want to see exactly what I mean, you can try the Simple Deform with two iterations, and see the results.

then slap a simple deform modifier- I’ll assume this an additional modifier like a curve but something else? I’ll look to see if there is something called deform.

set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis- I assume these are parameter within the deform modifier.

Yup. You can find it here in the Modifiers tab.

Look at the right side of my screenshot. That's my modifier stack. The array is on top, and the simple deform is on bottom

FYI, the modifier stack does perform actions in the order they're stacked. Like if you were to add the Simple Deform First and bend it, adding the Array Modifier afterwards would give you copied iterations of that bended piece of road. You have to array first, then bend the results of the array.

...yeah, it's confusing starting out, but there's a logical flow to everything you do here.

This might be a case in the Blender world where something is considered so obvious that it is not mentioned. Last night I watched a couple of tutorials on curving and the original issue I was running into, not getting handles I could manipulate, that was because I had the object selected with the select pointer versus using the move selection. I mean DUH. I spent quite a bit of time watching videos where no one seemed to say “select move”, including you. During a video, I just happened to notice “move” was selected instead of “select”.

Yeah, the way all 3D editors work by default is you first select your elements, then you transform them with a command. It's probably doubly confusing for you, since I don't use the transform gizmos to do anything, preferring the freehand method Blender defaults to.

You can activate translate (move), rotate, and scale with the gizmos by choosing one of those three from the toolbar on the lefthand side of the viewport. When they're active, you'll automatically have the appropriate gizmo pop up when you select an element.

Also last night, I made a road using road segments, using the “array” and “fit to curve method”, following a curve I drew. Please confirm that at the end of this you must save this as a mesh?

Yeah, if you're sending it to Unreal, you'll need to apply all your modifiers. You do it by clicking the little downpointing chevron symbol on the top right of the modifier box. Like so...

The problem I had is when I exported this road into UE, I ended up with sections that had no surface to apply texture to, so I went back to Blender, saw that one of the coordinates was negative (normal flipped) and fixed that, but what I got back in UE was kind of messy looking, and part of the surface was still invisible. So I have no clue.

The fact that it worked at all without you applying your modifiers is surprising as hell. The FBX exporter must try to realize all procedural geometry during the export process (and only does have a halfassed job of it). Yeah. Apply your modifiers, then try it again.

 

[Huntn]

Woot!



Yup, at least three iterations of your road on the array modifier to provide it enough room to smoothly bend the road 90 degrees without overlapping your geo. If you want to see exactly what I mean, you can try the Simple Deform with two iterations, and see the results.



Yup. You can find it here in the Modifiers tab.

View attachment 9862

Look at the right side of my screenshot. That's my modifier stack. The array is on top, and the simple deform is on bottom

FYI, the modifier stack does perform actions in the order they're stacked. Like if you were to add the Simple Deform First and bend it, adding the Array Modifier afterwards would give you copied iterations of that bended piece of road. You have to array first, then bend the results of the array.

...yeah, it's confusing starting out, but there's a logical flow to everything you do here.



Yeah, the way all 3D editors work by default is you first select your elements, then you transform them with a command. It's probably doubly confusing for you, since I don't use the transform gizmos to do anything, preferring the freehand method Blender defaults to.

You can activate translate (move), rotate, and scale with the gizmos by choosing one of those three from the toolbar on the lefthand side of the viewport. When they're active, you'll automatically have the appropriate gizmo pop up when you select an element.



Yeah, if you're sending it to Unreal, you'll need to apply all your modifiers. You do it by clicking the little downpointing chevron symbol on the top right of the modifier box. Like so...

View attachment 9863



The fact that it worked at all without you applying your modifiers is surprising as hell. The FBX exporter must try to realize all procedural geometry during the export process (and only does have a halfassed job of it). Yeah. Apply your modifiers, then try it again.

When you apply the modifiers does this in itself convert the object into a mesh? That is what seemed to happen, in the Modifier Properties, everything went away. I undid that because, I wanted the option to keep playing with it. For this circumstance, would you make a copy and then apply modifiers?

The other problem it seems if I duplicate this object that has been modified with array to follow a curve and I move it away from the curve it distorts. So how do you make an intermediate mesh, but preserve the original object as is for further editing?

 

[Renzatic]

When you apply the modifiers does this in itself convert the object into a mesh? That is what seemed to happen, in the Modifier Properties, everything went away. I undid that because, I wanted the option to keep playing with it. For this circumstance, would you make a copy and then apply modifiers?

In those situations, it wouldn't be a bad idea to make a duplicate with Shift-D, hide it by hitting the little eye icon in the outliner, then apply the modifiers on the original. That way you can further experiment without risking losing the original.

The other problem it seems if I duplicate this object that has been modified with array to follow a curve and I move it away from the curve it distorts. So how do you make an intermediate mesh, but preserve the original object as is for further editing?

You could parent the road to the bezier curve. First, select the curve, then shift-select the road, then hit Ctrl-P to active the parent menu, and select Parent to Object. If you did it right, when you move the road, you'll move the curve along with it, keeping your shape.

Though keep in mind that you can still move the curve independently.

 

[Huntn]

If you're talking about making a set 90 degree tile, that's easy to do. Take your road bit, set an array modifier, put in however many iterations as you need to get a smooth curve without overlapping any geo (at least 3), then slap a simple deform modifier, set it to bend, and set the angle at 90 degrees on the Z axis. You'll get this:

View attachment 9831

As you can see, you get some texture pinching at the pivot point and outermost edges, but you can fix that by redoing your UVs for this specific piece, and repainting your vertex colors.



No, I very much agree. Since you're going for an interactive scene, you'll need to do more with your environment than what's shown in the forest video to sell the illusion. Just having the road end, floating off into the void won't work for you. You'll need to do something like set up a roadblock that prevents the player from moving past it, but still having the road stretch off or curve into the distance to give them the impression that they're in a little world.

Plus, you'll need to make your road a part of the environment beyond. You don't want the road floating 10 feet above your forest floor. That'll look weird. It needs to be in the scene entirely as one contiguous whole.

For that, you might want to look at the forest video for design pointers, but hit up an environment modeling tutorial for Blender and/or Unreal to learn how to do what you want to do.

Ok, just tried this. My only issue is that looking down on it, it curves to the left from origin when 90d is applied. I tried getting it to curve to the right by using -90d, no worky. Is there a setting that controls the direction of the bend?

I also noticed that the original piece is rotated out of it’s orientation during this process. Is there a way to keep the backside of the original piece in place as you build this?
Thanks!