Advice on make a road?
 

I'm working on a project for school. Anyways, the scene takes place outside, and a couple of the shots are on the road. Any advice in terms of making a good road? Should I just use a poly plane? What about the texturing to make it look more realistic?

Any advice would be appreciated.

(This is assuming black background with white dips leads to pits, and white background with black dips leads to bumps in a bumpmap)

Well -- if you want good pavement, you may want to make a VERY VERY dark bumpmap jpg in photoshop, and give slight subtle dark greys to it to create a bumpy effect like asphault. It all depends on the condition of the road/weather of system aswell.

Example, if its a dry dusty desert road on a hot hot day, I believe its possible to emit a very very short-lived particle cloud in the distance, set to clear BUT with a refractive index (**making sure to set your skybox and other distance objects "visible in refractions"**) to make a heat-wave effect. Turn on raytracing in the renderer if you want to refract

However, if its a temperate well paved road, you may want a very very dark area with a well defined center divider/paint.

If its a sideroad, you may want a very very pale road with a couple of faces set darker to look like asphault patchwork, maybe draw a few exadurated lines in your bumpmap file to mimic cracks.

However, if its a super-futuristic metalic road, you may want a slightly reflective bottom (raytraced reflections if desired) with well defined bumpmaps to look like patched metal.

But most importantly, and most obviously, be careful with your dimensions! Keep things proportionate to whats ontop of it.

I should also mention that from what people told me, the best texturing you can get is by taking real world objects and scanning them, then creating an image 4x times that size, and keep flip-copying the original image so that it tiles without any visible breaks. (Basically, double the X dimension, double the Y dimension, take your original, place it in one corner, and copy the original 3 times, each time mirroring the copy so as they line up like edges -- if you have any breaks it'll be noticable... but for big textures-- mirrored properties don't matter that much... and are easily passed over by the human eye.)

Then again the randomization textures of Maya are sweeeeeeet.

The denfo guy's asphalt shader is the best shader for asphalt I have ever seen. Its great, really. You could just add new planes for things like the middle line, outer white lines ect. It can be located HERE . Most roads in my area are slightly elevated above the ground and come to sort of a point in the middle (makes the water run off into the ditches at the sides). I think you might want to make it out of a poly square or something with depth. Of course this depends on the level of detail and realism you are looking for, and if you cannot download anything. ;)