What is the key to good Handbuilding?

I'm asking all the really good Handbuilders out there what is the key to making a track at least "tolerable" during the handbuilding process? Obviously it won't be as good as a tooled track (unless you're Ay-Trane[:D]) but, are there any tips, tricks or hints to make a track good.

I come up with really good layoutS and whatnot all the time, but they are so hard for me to execute properly. My main problem is banking. It's so hard for me to know what degree a turn should be banked at and how to make it smooth while turning. Another problem is inversions. I try to handbuild those, but god are they horrible! I've been practicing inversion shaping in Newtom though for different coaster types and that's actually kind of fun to do and mess around with.

But are there any suggestions on what to do? My question may be a little vague I suppose, but any help would be greatly apprecaited. Thanks.[:)]

I dunno man, I hand build all my tracks before I use AHG and I still don't really know what makes it smooth. Just practice it a lot, and try to find a balance between segments that are too long and too short. For banking, usually I line up the white lines when you click on a vertex with the spine of the track. Or just bank it until the laterals riding it are as low as possible.

^Okay. Thanks man. I have AHG's a few ofmy tracks just to see the outcome, and I've been impressed a few times. Not overly impressed though. Only because with AHG=Crap in, Crap Out..lol. And all of my handbuilt tracks tend to be on the crappy side. I take my time when I build rides, but I just end up getting upset because I make something so cool and the trackwork sucks. After that it just goes in the garbage.

Thanks alot man. I just need to practice more I guess.

[gouldy]

I personally think that the secret is... luck.

I have to build about 10 tracks before I come out with one that I'm happy with, i.e. the one that I got luckiest with!

practice.

[Coasterkidmwm]

A shitload of practice and abusing the various smoothers out there, especially the one in the editor. Setting the AHG heartline value to zero and being willing to unbank everything can do wonders. It helps to have no life also, a field I excel in.

Also I highly recommend learning HSAK for turns larger than 90 degrees, since it quite frankly isn't worth the effort. I'd rather focus on smoothing the hell out of the entrance and exit than the middle of the turn.

When I build a track, all turns, helices, whatever that are larger than 90 degrees start as a flat turn that then has heights adjusted in the editor to hell and back while I try and make a decent entrance/exit with the in editor smooother. Smoothing track that is only vertically displaced like an air hill is done entirely by hand since that is easy. It's when you add in the other direction when things become exceedingly complex.

The "reverse" tool on Purg is also extraordinarily helpful.

Some people find building around a disc shape (3ds disc) helpful for making somewhat circular turns. It can really help you place things correctly in top view. I'm glad I no longer rely on counting dots like way back when. Christ I've been playing this game too long.

I've found that handbuilding can work wonders, it's just there are some things you'll never quite get right like Eurofighter first drops, and more recently I've noticed I'm incapable of building B&M air hills. Also dive loops really suck ass too.

I do feel lots of the older style rides such as arrow loopers can be significantly easier to make by hand however. Additionally, lots of rides have bizarre instances where the heartline dies or something along those lines that I would imagine is difficult to make with tools. I don't really know tools too well though so don't quote me on that. I have yet to see a properly shaped Arrow made with tools however, and about 95% of woodies made with tools are lets just say awful in the shaping department. My Arrow loops aren't perfect at all, it's just I think they're closer than most that people have produced.

I do like being able to move a loop or whatever element's position around without totally ruining everything and easily adjusting everything within 1 minutes. It's an ability I think lots of tool people don't have. Additionally if you're crammed for space it's nice to see the profile you'll be using as it's created vs. creating the whole thing in the elementary, newton, whatever and then inserting the element and praying it fits. Of course this goes out the window when you forget to adjust for AHG radius changes...

Another key to my style at least is to start with a very basic elementary wizard to make a basic element such as a corkscrew, and then tweaking the poop out of it from there. The loop my Mantis ride has a much larger entrance/exit, and the top has been modified to be much less elliptical than the wizard pumped it out as. In other words, start with an element as a template, and then make it not suck.

That is my random, meandering unfocused pep talk on handsmoothing.

depending on what type of coaster I'm building, sometimes I split each segment into multiple segments, then use the smooth tool on the entire track.

Hey ckmwm, he asked for help from really good handbuilders, not mediocre ones like yourself...

ooohh... burn!

Originally posted by dcs221

Hey ckmwm, he asked for help from really good handbuilders, not mediocre ones like yourself...

Whens the last time you designed one by hand? Do you remember how to move verticies in the editor?

[Coasterkidmwm]

Originally posted by Real
Whens the last time you designed one by hand? Do you remember how to move verticies in the editor?

Thank you.

Just a shitload of Practice, I mean I've been at it for 6 years now and I still cant make a perfectly smooth track.

You're right, I'm sorry for building the more realistic way Real. Oh, and I move the first vertex where I want it, so yes.

More importantly, I don't have to actively do it myself to know what's good and what isn't.

Originally posted by dcs221

You're right, I'm sorry for building the more realistic way Real.

Realistic? Alrighty then.

ooohh... burn!

[Coasterkidmwm]

Looks like this thread was visited by Trogdor...

Time to make a decent contribution to this topic again. I think the key to good handbuilding is to make the vertexes evenly spreaded across the track, also when you click on one the lines on both sides of the vertex should be about the same length. This is how I get handbuild track as smooth as possible.

[AyTrane]

I don't have time to write up a lengthy article, but I do have a few tips, some of which have already been said.

Pay very close attention to shaping of elements. You can use the editor/3d view and press the "w" and "s" keys to move back and forth along the track. This is very helpful in checking for pumps.

Sometimes 3d objects help with curves, sometimes they don't. With modern track design, roller coasters don't use simple curves of one or two radii anymore (except for a couple manufacturers), so using a 3d circle won't do you much good in that regard; an ellipse on the other hand, might.

You might find smoothing a problem spot easier if you split up two adjoining segments, and deleting their common vertex. Then select the four nodes closest to the deleted vertex (two on each side), and use the "smooth" feature. Then replace the deleted vertex by splitting up the middle segment, and then delete the two segments you created in step one. Repeat for other segments in the curve until it flows naturally and smoothly.

Never be afraid to fix a segment that doesn't seem right, even if you have spent a lot of time on it. Sometimes, things just don't work out.

Thanks alot for you comments guys! I appreciate it alot!

hahahaha ftf, thanks for bringing up 4-5 year old tracks...one of which was intentionally over-the-top because it was for a contest where the judge clearly scored crazy tracks higher than realistic ones. Neither are remotely similar to the quality of anything I do now. Well done kid. *slow clap*

I've actually recently retrograded to hand-building... and here are the tips that I always find myself using:

1. Use at least one vertex per 90 degrees of turning, if not more. Bezier curves are not good at making turns wider than this, and this also makes the "chop method" possible, as that method will only hurt segments that are too long. Also, the included NL track smoother is really good at ironing out the bumps in individual vertexes, but it often completely screws up the shaping of coasters with sparsely-placed vertexes.

2. For shaping elements, try starting with longer segments, ones that will just generally define the shape of the element that you want. Then split it up into smaller vertexes from there, and refine the shaping that way. This generally makes smoothing a lot easier than if you were to go vertex by vertex, which can result in some shaping that you really didn't want, and more difficult smoothing later. Then the only issue left after that is how to smooth out the original vertex... and the AHG or chop methods are very good at this.

3. Make sure that the vertex handles never cross over the track. If you want smooth track, all of the vertex handles should be outside tangents to the curvature. The one exception would be if you are going for authentic Arrow and CCI transitions, in which case having the vertexes directly on top of the track produces the traditional jolt going into them.

4. In general, you should make the length of the vertex handles proportionate to the length of the segment that they define. If there is a long segment before the vertex, use a long handle. If it's short, use a shorter handle. This is the general rule for getting the right flow.

5. Vertexes that are equal distances apart from each-other make smoothing a lot easier. The included NL track smoother can either be your best friend if you use proportional vertexes, or completely mess the coaster up if they are too variable.

6. This is what I call the "chop method." Basically what you do is isolate a bumpy vertex by cutting the segments immediately before and after that vertex in half. Then delete the original vertex. This will re-shape the track that it was on. Then re-split the resulting long segment, and delete the two vertexes that were created by splitting the segments in the first place. Run this resultant new vertex, and the two vertexes immediately before and after it, through the track smoother, and the result is usually a much smoother vertex. (Once again, this only works when vertexes are relatively close together to start with.)

7. Use AHG with a 0-value heartline, all black, and a low vertex #. What this will do is take your element and re-shape it with equidistant vertexes, but not so many that you can't still work it by hand. Sometimes this solves smoothing problems all by itself.

8. Experiment with vertex handles, and look at how various changes in their length/placement relative to the adjacent track impacts the flow of the vertex. Take mental notes, so that the next time you see a troublesome bump, you can observe the nature of that bump's flow and know what kind of vertex-shaping errors traditionally cause a bump to behave like that.

9. Look at the shaping of real coasters, and how they flow. The more you know how real elements are shaped, the easier it will be to make properly-shaped elements in NL. Don't guess. Do some research.

10. Try downloading a few hand-built coasters that are already smooth, and take a look at how they did it. I recommend some of the old coasters on this site, from Hansixx, GFA, and the like, in the days before Elementary and AHG, and see how they are shaped. This was a huge help for me when I was getting started.

11. Try making the shaping of your elements either close to circular, or continually tightening-widening. If a turn has flat spots or pointy spots, it will result in g-spikes and what we call "pumping."

12. Practice, practice, practice. There is no better method.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Originally posted by dcs221

hahahaha ftf, thanks for bringing up 4-5 year old tracks...one of which was intentionally over-the-top because it was for a contest where the judge clearly scored crazy tracks higher than realistic ones. Neither are remotely similar to the quality of anything I do now. Well done kid. *slow clap*

But things you release now are sometimes several years in the making, so theoretically things you release now COULD be of that same quality...

As of Cypher III's release I'm about out of old tracks to release. Any big release from now on will have up-to-date trackwork. I'm even redoing trackwork from a ~2 year old ride to update from FVD to Newton 2, and in doing so add details and improve features I couldn't have done before easily or at all.

Originally posted by dcs221

You're right, I'm sorry for building the more realistic way Real. Oh, and I move the first vertex where I want it, so yes.

More importantly, I don't have to actively do it myself to know what's good and what isn't.

Ah, watch what you say. I didn't say anything about realistic or not. Don't put words into peoples mouths that were not spoken. I simply said, and I quote

"Whens the last time you designed one by hand? Do you remember how to move verticies in the editor? "

Nothing about realism. It was in jest and also a joke simply that you've been doing the math stuff so long you might not remember how to move the verticies around. Don't ever put words where they never were please, and I'm being serious.

I didn't say you referred to realism...I was saying it myself. You put more words in my mouth than I did yours lol.

You were joking, and I was being sarcastic with the first vertex statement. I didn't think you expected a real answer of whether I can still move a vertex around in the program...people who pick it up their first time can move a vertex around.