Getting Started with WCS 6 Part 7B. Roads & Buildings


48. Bring the Terraffector Editor forward and move to the 2 Lane Highway Component. On the Elevation page, elevation is Relative to Vector Elevation.

49. Edit Cross-section profile. The centerline of the road starts at the vector elevation, at 0 meters. It has the Asphalt Ecosystem attached to render left of the point. The next point is about 2.7 meters away from the centerline and slightly lower. It also has the Asphalt Ecosystem, so it renders Asphalt between this point and the first point. The third point also renders Asphalt to the second point. Gravel comes next. Then ShortGrass. Last is TallGrass with some Ecosystem Mixing to blend the transition. At about 7.6 meters the Terraffector stops and the approach slope takes over.

50. Go to the Approach Slope page. Cut and Fill control how the Terraffector changes the terrain between the edge of the Terraffector and the Total Effect Radius distance.

51. Change the Cut to a 50% slope.

52. Save the project and render a preview. That gives us a more realistic edge to our highway.

53. We can't have a highway just end without warning, so let's add one. We'll use another new WCS6 feature in the 3D Object Task Mode, Walls. We already have the Revert Vector we can use, so add a default Wall.

54. Name it End of the Road.

55. Copy the Revert Vector to it.

56. Make the Height Relative to Ground Elevation. Increase Panel Top Height to 3 meters.

57. Go to the Panel Material page and create a Diffuse Color texture.

58. Choose the Stripes Element and View From the South.

59. Change the left pin color to white.

60. Change the right pin color to red.

61. Rotate the texture 45° around the Y axis. Close the Texture Editor.

62. Save the project and render a the left perspective preview.

63. Next comes the road for the development. Switch the planimetric view to realtime and zoom back a notch. Undock the view and drag it out for drawing room.

64. Go to the Terrain Task Mode , select Terraffectors and Create.

65. Start a little out from the highway and digitize the vector.

66. Name the vector Cabin Road when you're done.

67. Load Dirt Road from the Component Gallery.

68. Accept the scaling option.

69. Save the project and render a preview.

70. While we're here, let's add the cabins. Go to the 3D Object Task Mode and select 3D Objects. Create a new 3D Object with an attached vector.

71. Left-click each place you'd like a cabin. Everyone's going to want a view of the woods from their front porch, so add cabins around the inside of the drive.

72. Name it Cabins when you're done.

73. This vector is for cabin placement, so pick Position when asked how you want to use the vector.

74. Go to the Building page in the Component Gallery and load the Log Cabin.

75. No, we don't want the cabin's position centered in the current DEM bounds.

76. Save the project and render a preview.

77. All the cabins have the same odd heading. Switch to the realtime view.

78. Bring up the 3D Object Editor to the Size & Position page. Choose Rotate and we see that the Component has a Rotate Y value of -19°. Change it to 0.

79. The cabins are now all facing south.

80. Another great new feature in WCS6 is 3D Object Alignment, which makes housing developments like this quick to set up. Go to the Align page. Choose Align Heading to Vector along the X axis.

81. The cabins will align to their placement vector by default.

82. Select Align to this Vector in the Vector section and pick the Cabin Road from the dropdown list.

83. Go back to the Size & Position page and change the Rotate Y to 180° to turn the cabins around.

84. Save the project and render a preview.

85. Looks good, so dock the view and switch back to realtime.

86. Render a preview of the Road view. The dirt road is spilling onto the highway, which it probably would as gravel slides around during use. We're going for the clean highway look, though.

87. Bring up the Terraffector Editor and go to the General page. By default, the roads are set to Overlap. They have the same Priority, which allows them to overlap and render.

88. Increase the 2 Lane Highway Evaluation Order to 2 to have it render over the Dirt Road in the overlap area. Read more about Priority and Evaluation Order in the Interactive Reference Manual. They're very useful but not necessarily intuitive the first time around.

89. Save the project and render a preview.

90. If you find that the program is a bit sluggish, it's probably due to the detailed OpenGL cabins in view.

91. Go to the 3D Object Editor General page and change the Preview to Box.

92. Zoom out of the plan view and go to the Render Task Mode. Create a new default Camera.

93. Name it Cabin High and make it non-targeted.

94. Ctrl+click to place it south of the development at an elevation of 2800 meters.

95. Move the Camera to a nice view of the development with the lake in the background.

96. Save the project and render a preview.


 


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