There are several different ways to do this. It looks like you have three objects here - Terrain grass, a sidewalk plane and a street plane. You can clip the grass terrain slightly in the terrain editor (Clip min) to add some jagginess to the edges of the terrain against the sidewalk. For the sidewalk to street edge you could add a cylinder object and map it with a curb or stone texture. If you're feeling really ambitious you create the whole ground terrain including the sidewalk and the curb as a single terrain (or perhaps boolean them together) and then uses a distribution map with feathered edges to drive the location of the materials

Well, the thing is, there is no curb. This is a giant model and that's the shoulder of the road which curves quite a bit and often. I cant add geometry as there is no curb in the CAD file.

Would this have to be driven by functions maybe?

I think I either have to have multiple layers of textures (for the road I'd have the shoulder material underneath the darker concrete and then set the darker concrete to fade to transparency when near edges, thus showing the lighter concrete.) Problem is I cant find a function to drive this. I wish there was a Distance to Edge function like I created
foam on a beach with (Distance to Object Below).

I have to be precise, so I cant do the distribution map.

Any other ideas?

Message edited on: 09/15/2005 14:00

The way I see it, you have to use mixed materials for each part. For the sidewalk, use a mix of grass and your concrete texture, and drive it with a function that will let the grass appear on the out side of the pavement, like a b&w bitmap, and use the smooth blending strip. Same for the road material, mix it with the sidewalk material, and drive the proportions by the same bitmap, and then use the smooth blending strip to your liking. Might work!

"and drive it with a function that will let the grass appear on the out side of the pavement" Exactly. I just gotta find out how to drive that function. Arg! This single problem has taken 6 hrs of my life away already. Could I use a b+w bitmap iven if it's a big element?

I think so. If you make a bitmap in a paint program with a big rectangular white portion and a small one in black, or the other way round and use it to mix your materials, it should work. It's not size dependent. I know it works for distributing ecosystems on big terrains, I tried it.

6 Hours, PAH! Youv'e got all the time in the world!

Not when you're trying to blend these textures....for my job.

Had any luck yet, Ryan?

If it's your job then I'm wrong to say 6 hours is nothing. Apologies.

I was close to say that when you don't find out you have much more time - no job anymore. But that wouldn't be nice, so i don't say it.

Two options in my eyes.

#1 mixed materials, driven by a b&w grayscale mostly to handle the mixtures.

#2 you can break the object in pieces inside Infinite. Split it in the elements that are represented by the different materials. That is then easier to handle maybe. With additional geometry.

#3 of the two. Do the blending in postwork - nobody is a purist when it comes to business cases. Effective and good looking is the point, not "all in one software"

Message edited on: 09/16/2005 08:54

Haha. Yeah, I'm doing the still in post processing via Photoshop. I still want to figure it out because I'd like it for animation purposes. I'm giving it another try today. PS MicroStation users...if using ft and inches, Vue translates PERFECTLY to true scale. 1 unit = 1 inch!

You can add something else to Walter's list :

#4 - create a terrain with two altitudes, set your mapping to 'Object' (not World), make your material 'altitude dependant' and shrink the size of the object. Oh... and : #5 - postwork. Never forget postwork.

Message edited on: 09/16/2005 12:52