Were are in need of a plug-in or material.

History:
We regularly create terrains that have roads, dirt and grass.

The roads are rarely straight and getting a blend from the road to the road shoulder to the grass is difficult to do well.

We have experimented with creating a gradient material to blend between the road and grass. It works well as long as the road is straight with no curves. The gradient material only seems to work in straight lines.

We need either a material that we can specify at least 3 different images (with normals) so we can create a transition that can follow curves, or some other plug-in.

The material needs to tile well (would probably be dependant on the tileability of the images used).

If there is a way to do this now, please advise.

Thanks,
David

Create you terrain in a straight grid and apply your gradient material. Then modify the mesh in a pose or action to create your curved roads and the gradient material will follow.

you could even "rig" your terrain model with some bones and weighting, and then pose it for different situations to get your hills and curves

Both good suggestions, and I will experiment.

Any ideas how this could apply to intersections and driveways?

I've tried to think how I could use 3d painter in this application.
Like 2 different texture brushes, one for the shoulder pebbles and one for the grass, then just paint it on (this was actually the reason I bought 3d painter, but haven't been able to get it to do this.

Thanks guys,
David

Don't forget the 'Roads' plugin by Marcel Bricman.

Rodney,
I tried to get it work but was unable too.

I created a geometry, made a separate spline in a named group, created the material as indicated in the instructions (in fact I used the exact same setting as the example).

Applied the material to the named group and didn't see any results.
I'll play with it some more to see if I can get it.
David