Decided to get back to my son's mage tower, now that he's approved the wall textures (I'd rather design boring little houses!). Anyway, decided the road really need some edging. Added it and it looked fine from my usual road view. Changed 3D view to see if there looked like enough space for a proper castle entry and . . . no edging! Thought I'd goofed some where. Discovered that the edging disappears from many angles, especially close up, but it always renders.
Is this normal with uneven terrain?
Abhann
Hi Abhann,
I can't say I have seen this before but I have not used edging much on rough terrain. Since it renders OK it is obviously there, so maybe it is a PC display issue. The only thing I can think of is to try going to Settings / Program Settings / Graphics and turn off Hardware Acceleration and see it displays then. If it does then you may want to check that your PC video driver is up to date. Your probably would not want to leave H A off as things will work very slowly.
Certainly is a different project. I think I would prefer boring houses too!
Allan
Thanks Allan,
I tried turning off the hardware acceleration and it still doesn't display the edging properly, and you're right, it's noticably slower that way. Spent a while on the phone last night with my hardware guru trying to do a last tweak of my new system, and we quadruple checked the video drivers three ways. This morning I discovered that Asus has a new Win 8 driver for my monitor to replace the generic one, but it won't auto-install and seems to be missing a file to do manually - need to talk to guru again :) The monitor has been working well with the generic drivers though so I'm not sure that will make a difference.
Thanks for the idea, I never think to check graphics settings for anything but lighting. Spent part of the evening updating and trying new renders on an old split-level design, very relaxing.
Abhann
Abhann,
It appears that the edging is visible in one view but not in another. Because you are working with surfaces rather than solids, in the 'invisble' view it blocks the other side of the edging making both sides appear not to be there. There also may be some confusion caused by the terrian. I think this is normal in the way 3D surfaces sometimes work.
You may find it a bit more work, but using a Pad that is set to Hug Terrain is a better option. You have to draw both the inside and outside (width) of the pad but it follows the terrian the same way a path does and I think you will find it doesn't have the surface problems of edging.
But then again, once rendered all you have now, looks OK.
Jack
Thanks Jack,
Around the entry I changed to pads as you suggested, and it does solve the problem. It actually works better as I can get more width than the edging allowed for. Great idea, thanks!
Roofs are sufaces as well, aren't they? Is that part of the reason they can be so finicky?
Abhann
All in the program is made of surfaces, there is no solid modeling available.
That is why sometimes I've seen a roof return be visible on the left of the gable and gone on the right.
Jack
Not sure if I've ever seen that exactly but I've had times where the entire overhang goes missing in sections. Usually when changing slopes to something odd, but there were a few times where redoing the roof the same way fixed it. I seem to remember that FP (before Turbo) would put yucky red marks on impossible slope combinations. I think I prefer that to the current case where the software will stall, do nothing, or sometimes crash.
Thanks for the info
Abhann