Motivation for doing supports?

I was kinda just curious if i'm the only person here who has at least 4 rides sitting in my inventory that range from mediocre to almost good that are only about 30-40% supported. I'm sure I'm not the only one, but for some reason i just can't find the motivation to support these rides. I currently have 6 rides, some of which are absolutely worth supporting. They probably all are, but i just can't set my mind to support them.

How do you go about finding motivation for supports? what do you do to put yourself in the mood for "supporting"? It seems like no matter what i do i just can't finish supporting a ride. Its strange because i used to love supporting rides. For some reason it used to be really enjoyable and almost medicinal to me. I would use supporting a ride as a stress relief technique in some cases. What happened? Where did the enjoyment go?

Edit: this is also why i rarely upload a coaster anymore. I used to be a somewhat frequent uploader, but now i barely do...

[slosprint]

I am the same way. I finish trackwork and from that point forward it just gets boring as hell.

Hmm... I listen to music while I support, usually.

Other than that, I just plug away at it...

I look at jet coasters on RCDB to get inspired.

Music used to get me going with supports, but now it just distracts me.

I say that I'm too far in to stop now and I know when I'm done I never have to do it again. Yay.

I've also had about that many projects on hold at a time before. One of my tracks took 6 years from the first vertex to the final upload. Supports actually were a problem there because I was using 3ds footers at first, so there were no footer nodes; only free nodes. Then when 1.6's footers came out, I decided to switch back which took a while. Eventually I finished the supports after months of not really working on it.

That said I don't have many ideas for getting motivated to work on supports. NL's supporting is clunky and tedious to work with and I could never muster up enough patience to support something ridiculous like a wooden coaster entirely by hand.

If your rides are only trackwork and supports, then it gets pretty boring when you have nothing else to add to the scene. Taking breaks and doing 3D object work can help break the monotony, or perhaps using .3ds supports which you can detail to look much nicer than NL's supports. You can also work on the environment or even the terrain for areas that haven't been terraformed nor supported. (i.e. the background of the scene.)

I guess you may have to work on supports in parts. Do as much as your attention span will allow for at one given time, then take a break and do something else for the track, or just something else, period. Just make sure you can get back to supporting after whatever else you're doing. When working with NL, you really don't have much of a choice when you want to work on something; it always starts with trackwork, then terrain, then supports. Few things can be done in between as you go along, and that's why I usually have several projects going on a at time.

Some Gabber and I'm set to make anything.

I'm the same way...so many decent rides and so little motivation to support.

Same! I'm thinking wow this ride good turn out good if I just support it, What happens when I try to support it? I get so bored and i'm to lazy to do it and i'm doing 2-4 supports a day and I don't get to upload for like a month!

I have a track that is almost two miles long and it probably wont ever get posted because i just dont want to support it. Too much work with too little feedback from the community. I don't want to do all that work for 100 people to just take it and walk away and say nothing. Not worth it.

[AyTrane]

I love doing supports, so I rarely need much motivation. I always have music going, it really helps the time go by.

I guess I am the complete opposite. I rather support than do trackwork. I am not good a trackwork at all, and doing supports to me keeps me occupied and I do much better at them. Now, that's not saying that I build huge fledge houses and stuff in NL like alot of you guys do..lol. I would go insane if I did that. lol!

But sometimes when someone builds a track I'll support it for them. I usually just break the coaster down into sections. Just do a little a time so you won't get overly bored or anything. Also just take your time. If it takes you two years to support the ride it takes you two years. Don't worry about it. I tend to just start from random parts of the coaster that catch my interest.

If I do supports on a coaster with inversions, I tend to support all of the inversions before anything. I then move onto the end of the ride and the beginning around the station area. I tend to do the lift supports last, but it really just depends on what type of coaster it is.

Just take your time. No one is rushing you..lol.

[Metazoanhaddock]

i hate supporting... dont get me wrong, when i want it to look really good, and have something specific in mind, ill get to supporting quickly, but i too have quite a few rides i just dont wanna support

[Coasterkidmwm]

I always found it to be the best part. Really brings the ride together.

^ see i always used to think that too. I always looked forward to supporting.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Perhaps you play too much?

How do you guys make your supports look so realistic? Is there a science behind it, or do you just look at pictures of other similar real roller coasters and go from there?

[hyyyper]

Originally posted by ProZach626

How do you guys make your supports look so realistic? Is there a science behind it, or do you just look at pictures of other similar real roller coasters and go from there?

You are basically answering your own question. Since there is science behind real supports, there would also be science behind supports copied from real coasters.

But to really answer your question: If you look at a coaster of the same type that you are building, and more specefically to an area that has the same height/banking/forces, copy that supports and you're golden.

Originally posted by Coasterkidmwm

Perhaps you play too much?

I barely touch NL anymore. Every now and then i'll work on something... but its rare.

Ahah man, I have like four sick rides that have no supports. It is just SO damn boring.