Alternative approach to path construction
Andrew Williamshttp://www.bolton.ac.uk/staff/adw1
First construct your track
Next, add a car
It does not matter where it goes - but I would put it on the yellow lines
Now, add a rock
Make sure the car is selected before you add the rock.(So that the rock sits in the same position)
Then, clone your rock
Now there are two rocks
I have moved the new rock forwards
Now clone this second rock
IMPORTANT
You MUST NOT use Clone Insert
Here’s my new rock
Again, I’ve moved it forward a bit and placed it on the yellow line
Here’s one I prepared earlier …
Notes
• They don’t need to be rocks specifically– Any object with geometry and a location will do
• They don’t need to be evenly spaced• One rock must be able to “see” (ie draw an
unobstructed straight line) to its neighbour• The rocks are in order– Hence Clone and not Clone Insert
Now open the properties for the first rock and open up Notepad
Look at the X,Y,Z location in the property window
This bit
What is a path?
• A path is simply a series of locations around the track.– Normally you record the path yourself by driving
round the track– We are going to use the locations of the rocks
• We don’t actually need the middle number– That represents the height above the track but we
want the path on the track, so we enter 0 for that
The three numbers
• We don’t need to include all those decimal places either
• I would suggest that this location can be adequately represented by 0, 0, -4
Enter those numbers in Notepad
Now select the next rock and repeat
That looks like 14, 0, 43 to me
Then grab the next rock
We have created trail of breadcrumbs
Add a path and delete the default nodes (ie on the right-hand side)
Copy-and-paste the stuff from Notepad into that box
Add the other bits and pieces
And the car follows the path
Easy question: Why doesn’t it crash into the rocks?