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Old 01-25-2018, 12:33 PM   #1
Melkhior
 
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: France
Default Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

Hello,

I started working on some 3D printable track pieces base on the OpenLOCK tiling system. The idea is to be able multiple 3D track from a bunch of pieces with some 3D features, w/o the need to go full 3X or to be an experienced modeller.

Track is for the 'classic' scale of 1"=15', 2" wide to make things faster to print (and narrower track means more crashes and easier-to-shoot, closer targets of course). Should be possible to make wider (or even narrower !) track, but then it would take a _long_ time to print a full race/combat track.

As it's OpenLOCK, it's possible to use other OpenLOCK tiles for scenery (even tough OpenLOCK is meant for 1"=5', we can pretend those walls are just really big to protect the public ;-) ).

Anyone interested in trying the pieces on their printers?
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Old 01-25-2018, 03:18 PM   #2
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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Originally Posted by Melkhior View Post
Anyone interested in trying the pieces on their printers?
I'd like to but the track I want to make is at least 4" wide, and is banked the whole way around. (Yes, it's the track named for me. :) )
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Old 01-25-2018, 03:42 PM   #3
Melkhior
 
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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Originally Posted by 43Supporter View Post
I'd like to but the track I want to make is at least 4" wide, and is banked the whole way around. (Yes, it's the track named for me. :) )
4" wide means a lot of surface to cover, in particular if you want to replicate a real track that has significant length. That's a lot of parts to print... Right now, I'm targeting smaller and easier to handle for friendly games. Principle the same though :-)

Edit: some OpenSCAD previews:
A 3" straight bit of road at the lowest level
Turning left to a higher level
The road up there is full of potholes

Last edited by Melkhior; 01-25-2018 at 11:59 PM. Reason: links
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Old 01-26-2018, 11:40 AM   #4
Melkhior
 
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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Originally Posted by 43Supporter View Post
I'd like to but the track I want to make is at least 4" wide, and is banked the whole way around. (Yes, it's the track named for me. :) )
Something like this 90° turn ? :-)

(BTW, I don't live in the U.S., which track would that be ?)
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Old 01-26-2018, 03:10 PM   #5
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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Something like this 90° turn ? :-)
I think the banking's a bit greater, but, close enough.... :)

(In fact: Given the way the corners on the map sheet are drawn, it isn't actually possible for the corners to be banked the way the track desc. says it is.)

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Originally Posted by Melkhior View Post
(BTW, I don't live in the U.S., which track would that be ?)
Oh -- it's one of the tracks in _Car Wars Arenas_; which one should be obvious. :)
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Old 01-26-2018, 03:33 PM   #6
Steve Jackson
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

I will follow this thread with interest :) I like anything that involves playing with models.
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Old 01-26-2018, 03:48 PM   #7
Melkhior
 
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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I think the banking's a bit greater, but, close enough.... :)
I'm cheating a bit to get the banking, and the process I use limits how high I can go. The track, grid, borders and the sort-of-grassy texture is a 2D image used as a height-map. So to get the banking, I simply lighten part of the image to "raise" the track. It works well, but the greyscale range of a PNG is only 0-255, so you can get accuracy OR range, but not both... but a 1/4" or 1/2" (as shown) raise works fine for a 2" wide track, I think. For a 4" wide track, getting enough height starts limiting the accuracy of the height-map.

A *very* unfortunate side-effect of that process is that OpenSCAD ends up eating memory like crazy. Creating the STL for that part requires 20+ gigabytes of memory...

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Originally Posted by 43Supporter View Post
Oh -- it's one of the tracks in _Car Wars Arenas_; which one should be obvious. :)
Silly me, and here I thought of a real-life track for some reason.

I haven't got Arenas. Back in the day, we used to draw & print tracks for our games rather than play on pre-defined. So we could make the tracks suit out style of play. Also, the Octagon was and still is awesome :-)

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I will follow this thread with interest :) I like anything that involves playing with models.
3D printing is great for people like me - with no real-life modelling skills :-( Can't paint very well, either. I'll try and publish the pieces (& the code to semi-automate the creation) when the whole process is a bit less hackish than it is now.

Last edited by Melkhior; 01-26-2018 at 03:55 PM. Reason: comment on the banking height
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Old 01-26-2018, 11:22 PM   #8
RogerBW
 
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Melkhior View Post
I'm cheating a bit to get the banking, and the process I use limits how high I can go. The track, grid, borders and the sort-of-grassy texture is a 2D image used as a height-map. So to get the banking, I simply lighten part of the image to "raise" the track. It works well, but the greyscale range of a PNG is only 0-255, so you can get accuracy OR range, but not both... but a 1/4" or 1/2" (as shown) raise works fine for a 2" wide track, I think. For a 4" wide track, getting enough height starts limiting the accuracy of the height-map.

A *very* unfortunate side-effect of that process is that OpenSCAD ends up eating memory like crazy. Creating the STL for that part requires 20+ gigabytes of memory...
A couple of points here:

(1) PNG can actually support 16-bit greyscale values. However, many tools won't write this.

(2) Yes, in effect each pixel becomes a separate object within OpenSCAD, so achieving a decent resolution gets very expensive very quickly.

Still, for this sort of task in OpenSCAD heightmaps are probably still your best bet. While I use OpenSCAD for almost all my modelling for print, in a case like this I'd be distinctly tempted to go to Blender (perhaps working off a base built in OpenSCAD) and its random perturbation modifiers.
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Old 01-27-2018, 05:18 PM   #9
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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A *very* unfortunate side-effect of that process is that OpenSCAD ends up eating memory like crazy. Creating the STL for that part requires 20+ gigabytes of memory...
One of the reasons why I haven't been able to use it myself....

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Originally Posted by Melkhior View Post
Silly me, and here I thought of a real-life track for some reason.
One day, darn it... one day.... >:)
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Old 02-05-2018, 12:27 PM   #10
Melkhior
 
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Default Re: Interest in 3d printable track pieces for 'classic'?

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I'll try and publish the pieces (& the code to semi-automate the creation) when the whole process is a bit less hackish than it is now.
It's still extremely hackish, but here they are:

https://github.com/rdolbeau/OpenLOCKTrack

The STL files are in subdirectory export, but are compressed. They are too big for GitHub, and the STL viewer fails (for me at least) to display them anyway.

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Originally Posted by RogerBW View Post
(2) Yes, in effect each pixel becomes a separate object within OpenSCAD, so achieving a decent resolution gets very expensive very quickly.
Yes, and I only thought now that I could crop the PNG programatically (same principle as the filter) instead of cropping in OpenSCAD. Would save a lot of memory, I suspect... Still a some work to do.

Also, need to find the time to try and paint some of the parts I've already 3D printed.
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