   How to render a road in terrain imlpemented in height map?
  I would like to know how to render (or blend nicely) a road or some other details on a terrain using height map implementation.The best exampple is those in WoW. After using tools to turn WoW into wire frame mode, you will find there is only triangles (forming squares) for terrain and no other polygons rendering the roads and so on.Maybe there are multiple rendering of the terrain meshes, first with the low frequency basic land type and then the high frequency road? But if so, then, this seems better to render with only detail textures as the terrain is already streammed in?   
  Shader's Multi texturing is the #1 way to go.#2 way to go would be to have LOTS of different textures (one texture per "block")   ;  Wouldn't it be too costly to store so many detail textures as there are so many blocks on screen at the same time?   ;  Using multitexturing, it is very cheap :1-Use a few high rez images (ie : grass, rocks ... etc) that you will be reusing on hundreds of terrain blocks2-Use a different low-rez texture that says how much of each texture to use for a pixel (ie : each channel of this texture will tell how much of "grass" or how much of "rocks" that pixel will have).Multitexturing will be very memory friendly.  It will obviously cost more GPU, but this cost is still pretty damn low.The second solution; having a different texture for every terrain block; will cost a LOT in memory.  Both storage memory AND video memory.  But at least :-it is very GPU friendly-it will allow you to draw whatever you want on the terrain   ;  Thanks for the reply! I have been curious on how to create terrains with high details.There are many articles on terrain generation and rendering methods but a lack of how to texture them especially when artificial items and regular items are to be painted on the terrain.   ;  Maybe you should consider using a separate mesh for the road(curved over and bellow  the terrain) and then align the terrain mesh to that road. Something like this ?http://vimeo.com/9122230   ;Quote:Original post by solenoidzMaybe you should consider using a separate mesh for the road(curved over and bellow  the terrain) and then align the terrain mesh to that road. Something like this ?+1.Here is another example of a road made by mesh: http://pc.ign.com/dor/objects/14327511/tropico-3/images/tropico-3-screens-20090610000645685.html?page=mediaFull;  Yep. Looks like a Crysis editor. It would be nice if you say few words of how exactly you model the road mesh around the spline, and is there any difficulties with the UV generation. I tried Tropico game demo once. Good job.   ;  I've also seen this done in screen space with a fragment shader, surprisingly...  Very crisp road.  You lose AA though, and it doesn't seem like the most flexible solution.  But very nice for what it does.   ;  if you add geometry, it will z fight like a bastard at distance, and you will fight with that forever, until you wished you had done it all in the shader.   