Turns

I am trying to get some rules of thumb for turns (roll, Leadin/out's, angle of roll at entering and exiting the roll) I know the best thing to do is work w/ it till you get it right, but is there anything special that i should know while im laying out the track in the first place (such as where to place the control point). I am starting to get a hang of what is going on w/ it just some high g's on my curves.

Well, this is how I make my turns usually. First I make a segment of track that is slightly curved in the direction that I want the turn to be. Then I bank it to the maximum degree bank that the turn is going to be. Make sure that it doesn't turn to fast without banking or you'll have high lats.then I make ALMOST the whole rest of the turn with another segment and I bank that the same banking as the first one. Then to finish it I have the turn slowly unbank and it turns in the same direction of the turn does (obviously). A lot of people bank in straight lines (you can see in the top view a straight line of track) and then they make the curve and then unbank with a straight line. This is the improper way to bank but it is realistic to do for ONLY woodies and arrow/vekoma coasters. No other types of coasters bank like that. Another thing that should help you with turns is the con roll icon. You should basically use it whenever you want something to bank continuous (like a turn or zero-g roll, or heartline) instead of turn, stop, turn, stop, and makes the bankings flow a lot better. C2 is another icon that will help because it evens out the control nodes on each side to make helices smoother and make some turns smoother, too. I recently learned this so I havn't used it on my coasters yet. So just keep these things in mind and you should have good turns.

thanks for the post intaminfan397, trying to work it out right now! I was actually in the process of making my lead in straight and lead out straight. Is it frowned on to use a prefab loop when you are just starting out if you plan on uploading? I would understand that if you do it should be mentioned when it is built

Well, I don't like prefabs and neither do most of the peeps, but if your just starting out it's ok to, but when you get better you should start making them yourself. And if you use any of Buster's prefabs you should give credit to him in your description because he made them so I would guess you should.

I understand that about the prefabs. its my first on right now but as i go on to the next one I will do away. The reason that I decided to use it is to get a good idea of where to place the control points and the angles.