I could really use some help on this. I have made numerous attempts at this and have NEVER succeeded in finding a way to do this. It is a simple thing, yet sometimes, its the simple things that give us the biggest problems. My problem is that I have never been able to cut a path/road into a terrain that follows the contours. I have played with the flow and strength settings to no avail. All I want to do is create a scene with rolling hills and a dirt road. I dont want the road to look like it has been dynamited through the landscape. I want it rolling with the hills but slightly lower than the banks on either side of it. I cannot find an example to show you, but am hoping that you understand what it is I am trying to do. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated... Gareth:)

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This looks like it might help you.

I have thought about something like that for a long time too. So you are not the only stupid one here Gareth. My proposition is to do it in Photoshop. Create the grayscale image for the rolling hills and then do an extra layer (not lawyer) for the road so that it just slightly modulates the underlying gray levels. Like using "multiply" or something like that instead of "normal" for the road layer. Could do. Another option might be to do a grayscale image for the road "as usual". Then do a terrain in Vue for the hills and overlay the road grayscale in the terrain editor. And play with the percentage of overlay to (hopefully) make it follow the hills. Just my 2 cents, hope someone else has a more clever trick. Could be a dirty trick of course too, Gareth asked for a dirty road anyway.

Do you mean somthing like this, if so I just setup a simple mixed material with the grass as material 1 and as wabe says the road was created in photoshop as material 2 and also used as the distrudution of materials 1 and two. videodv.

Kind of.... Let me see if I can find an example

This is the best example I could find... From Shrek 2

Sorry just seen the "cut into ground" ok I have now got this but as you can see the channel in the ground and the "road" are not lineing up not sure why yet, will test some more. videodv.

Ok I got it now just had to turn the picture on the terrian 180. videodv.

How to do it. Just setup a picture of your road/path ect in photo shop psp ect, use this picture on the terrain this will put the cut into the terrain you can adjust the depth from the preview (you may need to turn it to match the material), then use the same picture in a material to set the road/path look ect (see pic). hope this helps. videodv.

I think it will. Thank you for this. Like I said, simple but a huge problem...lol Thanks again, I'm going to test it out and see how it goes. Gareth:)

If you check 'Full blend (cubic bumps)' you should even be able to make a small indentation so that your road doean't look like painted on your terrain. Make sure that the bump value of material 2 is set to -1.

If in the mood I draw on the terrain lowering and raising the terrain resolution so the road blends into the land. Much can be accomplished by this. Then I use a mix material that is adjusted by altitude. The Photoshop way is easier but sometimes the challenge is part of the fun for me.

Tried doing what Gareth is asking about several times before. Could never get the material maps to line up with the terrain indent. Didn't think to set the material to object parametric. Thanks much for that screen shot, videodv! That did the trick. The main part of what Gareth is asking, tho, is how to get the path to follow the contours. I've been using 'copy' in the terrain editor to get the image into a paint program. That helps, but its still hard to see exactly how the terrain is shaped. Using the technique recently posted for getting Vue to show contour lines might help. I'll try that as soon as I can find the post.

There is maybe a solution in using two terrains. Duplicate the terrain and use the 'minimum' tool on the copy to cut the upper part to the level you want the path. then globally enlarge this clone : a ledge appears following the contours. Then you can work on its rim to tune it with the sculpting tool, it is easy to see where to work. could even extract the images of both terrains at this stage and make a combination of both in PS. then create a new terrain with this compo. Just an idea :) Paul