What's First? Landscape or Track?

Before I begin work on "my Masterpiece" (lol) I wanted to know how you start your project. Do you start with a flat landscape, build your track, then raise and lower the land around it? Or do you first build a crazy landscape, then let the challenge be deciding how to navigate it with the track? Or do you jump back and forth? The landscaping certainly makes for a more interesting and engaging ride, and I plan to include all that eventually.

So far I have mostly just messed around with using the vertices and trying to see what looks the most realistic, like what kinds of curves I can realistically put into the track at what speeds. I often end up making so many adjustments to curve radii that I don't end up with anything that looks like a theme, but the track is all over the place...which I actually do like. I haven't even bothered putting in supports yet, and considering how much track I want to put into one layout, if I lay out the track without also putting in supports as I go, I could end up with a frustrating mess if I can't adjust where the supports hit the ground to avoid having it go through track at lower altitudes. I would like to build a track that takes up the whole map, with tunnels going through some mountains and around others, even going to high altitudes and underground, if possible, and some very high-speed, but long curves that look so cool with the "starry night" environment.

It would be nice if there was a way to set the track up with two stations: one for loading, and one for unloading. Reason being is, I had a lot of fun messing around with a track I started by raising the loading area as high as it would go, so as soon as the coaster leaves the loading station, your adventure begins. My goal is to make a coaster that'll run for 10, 15, maybe even 20 minutes, or more. I don't know how much I can cram into a single map. Until I figure out some way to have the simulator run only certain sections of a track (so I can test individual sections without having to ride everything up to the test area) it's going to be long and arduous, but still fun!

If any ideas come to mind about any of the things I've discussed, please reply. Seems odd that I should have to mention that, but in some forums, people often reply to my wondering about where replies are, saying that if I wanted replies, I should have used a question mark somewhere. I just had to include that... :]

Damaeus

Most people build their terrain around the track, but that comes out pretty unrealistic. I personally find you can make much more realistic and creative terrain coaster when you already have a landscape to work with. For a coaster of the size that you're wanting to build, I would have no idea how to go about it, but for my normal sized original projects, I find I like working with a premade terrain/template and building my track around that.

Landscape first, then make small changes if they are needed.

depends on which you want to do. If your building a terrain ride, landscape first, I've done both ways works either way.

im working on a terrain coaster at the moment, a compleatly unralistic one but at the moment it looks fab

terrail coaster do landscape first.

[Coasterkidmwm]

Landscape first usually creates better results.

Well,for my coaster Thrillwood:
http://www.coastercrazy.com/track_excha ... ?tid=16309
I first made the landscape,after that I designed the track,which follows the terrain.

Yes generally the landscape always comes first and you build the coaster to fit, making cuts and/or tunnels as necessary.

Unless you're building something where the landscape is an integral part of the design. In which case the landscape is in fact theming, think Thunderhead Falls as an example. In that case you want to lay the track first, with a pretty good idea of how the landscape is going to work as you do it, and get it set in stone before you build the landscape around it. This is especially true if your landscape is going to require lots of 3DS, because any changes you make to your layout are going to require fixing your 3DS models too and that can be a big pain in the ass.

I do track first, it's possible to make the terrain realistic around the ride. Subtley is the key. And don't be too obvious, look at real rides etc.

A well terrained ride doesn't mean constantly ground hugging. I'll just suggest thinking of the terrain while designing the track and imply your ideas later. It's abit unrealistic to design like that, but it's less hassle to get the effect you want, whatever that is.

What I tend to do is envision the terrain completely before even starting the track, but doing all of the trackwork on a flat map, and then building my terrain around that. It tends to work pretty well for me for the most part - it gives me a chance to have some really great moments where the terrain is basically the track, but at the same time I can make it realistic.