Smoothness Issues

Hello fellow enthusiasts. I've been using No Limits for a few months now, and I've come up with a few really original tracks. the problem is, they are never as smooth as they appear to be...[:(!] When I use the 3D portion of the editor and "ride" the track, I see that on some of the vertices (the little blue balls) the track "jumps"... No matter how I shape the track, and no matter how many times I use auto-smooth.

Any ideas as to how to fix this problem?[?]

[Brtnboarder495]

Which parts in particular? Elements, curves, ect. ...

That said, a lot of it comes with experience. One thing I can say is that you'll want to keep the radiuses consistent, meaning as similar in size as possible. A well-shaped helix will be smooth when it is as circular as possible.

any part that isn't straight...

sometimes things will work perfectly, and sometimes the segments don't align at all...

the thing that really annoys me is that it will look perfect when viewed from afar, but then when you ride it it's like OMGWTFBBQ WHY?????


The biggest problem areas are loops and rolls (corkscrew, zero-g, coming out of an immelmann, etc), though

loops seem like they would be easier to deal with, but the rolls drive me nuts

if it helps to keep your radii consistent, use 3ds circles and other shapes.

and how would i find these?

Use the object creator. Creater a sphere, ovals, whatever to your liking, then export into the objects folder. Hope this helps.

ArapahoeGOALIE07

If you want your roller coasters to be smooth you have to keep practicing and editing until you get it just the way you want it.

Or you could use newton and or Elementary and Purg

One thing that beginners can't spot are what are called pumps. They really are only 100% visible when riding along the track in the 3D editor, but an experienced person can look at a particular section and just tell you it's going to have a pump.

The only way to rid the track of these pumps is to practice practice practice! It may take a couple years before someone gets good enough to get 7-8 out of 10 on a rating of the track smoothness. I've been using NL since the earlier days of V1.5, and I tell you, the built in auto smoother does make things a lot easier than having to smooth by hand.

However, even the auto smoother can't fix a pumpy section on its own. You need to be able to build the track so that the auto smoother will smooth it properly. And the more segments you use, the more control over the element you have. For a loop, don't use 3-4 segments, use something like 8 segments, and you'll have plenty of control [;)]

if you try using continuous rolling for each end of a segment it will help a little bit, especially with turning, and banks

i make my rides quite smooth but it is hard.

If you are making a turn, start out with as few vertices as possible (for example a 180* turn, use 2 vertices- one on the start and one on the end). Use handles to shape the turn, and as bobbyjo said it takes a lot of practice.