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Quick tunnels with splines


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This tutorial is how to create natural style tunnels and man made style tunnels using splines. This method is very fast and makes modeling tunnels extremely fast and efficient.

 

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First create a spline with the line shape, this is in the 'Create' tab. Click on the 'Shapes' button and the Splines will show up. Click on 'Line'

 

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Start creating your tunnel shape. Here I am creating a linear tunnel that has sharp angles. More akin to man made tunnels.

 

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After finishing my spline shape, I will expand the 'Rendering' tab and adjust the spline for my tunnel mesh. Make sure to enable both render viewport and renderer. Then there is two choices of shapes of tunnel, radial and rectangle. Both have uses, here I am wanting more of a rectangle shape for my tunnel. I have set the scale to 6m by 6m. Totally up to you on your tunnel scales!

 

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You can also have rounded corners with the rectangular shape. Holding down the mouse button will create a bend. Releasing will continue linear shapes.

 

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Here I am using a radial shape instead for more natural type tunnels! Using the rounded corners can achieve great looking natural tunnels.

 

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Once you are happy with the shapes of the tunnels you can invert the mesh to give you a tunnel mesh! Simply convert to a editable mesh and select the mesh with the 'Element' button and it will select all polys, after that navigate to the 'Surface Properties' tab and click on the 'Flip' button under 'Normals' rollout.

 

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Repeat above step to achieve the same results on the man made tunnel!

 

In conclusion, this tool is very powerful and can save hours of development time. This method is just a basic introduction to the splines. You can also edit the spline and have the tunnel follow the xyz coordinates to have multi-level tunnels that go up,down, and all around! Another great tool to use with this is to use 'Soft Selection' and truly have awesome looking tunnels that aren't all linear and have random dips and rises! Experiment and enjoy!

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This tutorial saves both time and polygons :)

 

Those tunnels would also not be able to have proper looking light solve, due to the lack of polygons.

 

It's better to have more polygons in your mesh than too little. At least on W3D.

 

I do prefer to hand craft my terrain, personally.

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This tutorial saves both time and polygons :)

 

Those tunnels would also not be able to have proper looking light solve, due to the lack of polygons.

 

It's better to have more polygons in your mesh than too little. At least on W3D.

 

I do prefer to hand craft my terrain, personally.

 

you have the ability to have as many polys as you wish just need to play with the settings to up the amount

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