How to Create a Custom Track for RCT3, using Nolimits

[FrancesCoaster]

Hi, I thought about sharing the CT creation tutorial by Coaster Inc here.

This will help you exporting a track from Nolimits and importing it to RCT3 as a CT.

You don't actually need to know anything about modelling here, but I suggest looking at any tutorial for importing Custom Scenery pieces as the steps in the Importer are similar, and you'll need to export the supports as CS anyway.

This tutorial by Silvarret could help. I remember there was one by Costerfreak also, but they are all more or less the same.

 

Once you understood the basic steps for CS import, let's move on to CTs:

 

The things you'll need:

- Blender v2.49

- Sketchup (any version should work fine, as long as you can export .3DS files).

- The 2 files linked in the description of the first video.

 

Then you can go along all the 9 parts of the tutorial. Please arm yourself with patience, it's a quite long process, but it's not difficult, just long. If you follow the steps carefully you'll have a working track in a few hours.

 

NOTE ON THE FIRST PART: At 3:46, do NOT tick the "Merge complanar faces" checkbox in the options. It will avoid you a lot of problems that Coasterinc has in the tutorial, especially when in Blender.

[FrancesCoaster]

PART 2:
 

 

PART 3:

 

PART 4:

PART 5:
 

PART 6:
 

PART 7:
 

PART 8:
 

PART 9, and last part:
 

 

Edited January 20 by FrancesCoaster

[Aerick McCullough]

Is there any specific settings for other coaster track types from there? (Wood, other steel types)

[FrancesCoaster]

Well, there are some differences.

NOLIMITS CONSTRUCTION KIT PHASE.
---------------------------------------------

For woodies, I'd recommend to optimize the supports in NL construction kit before exporting, this will dramatically reduce the amount of polys by merging adjacent supports.

To do this, after loading your track file, go to Track (menu on top) > Supports optimizer. Leave the checkbox ticked and click OK.

 

For intamin and schwarzkopf tracks, don't change the position of the rails in CTR creator (leave to +/-0.50).

 

 

SKETCHUP PHASE.
---------------------------------------------

Nothing different here, except for maybe texturing the wooden coaster track and supports. Not mandatory, but recommended for better look ingame. I'm including the textures I used for thunderhead here, they are red to be recolourable.

For arrow and vekoma tracks you'd need to scale the model in sketchup, there used to be some custom ties made by coaster-inc back in the day, but I don't have them anymore. You'll need something like 140 CM of space between the rails. Remember to do uniform scaling (just scale from a corner) to avoid silly results. An 1.16 scale factor should be just right to get everything line up.

 

BLENDER PHASE.
---------------------------------------------

Just the same, but for anything except B&M tracks (all of the above), you'll need the spline on the top side of the rails, not on the bottom.

Archivio.zip

Edited February 24 by FrancesCoaster

[wolfpaw]

Thanks for sharing! Really cool tutorial!