4m smoothing technique

[BurningDragon]

Hi,
I've been using the so called "4m smoothing technique" on my coasters lately and the results are amazing, but I have two questions regarding the technique. I discovered the technique by watching a video posted by Silvarret on youtube. According to his explanation in the video, you have to go back and forth the whole coaster for a total of 8 times, but in the video comments and on other forums (reddit, here) people say that 4 times is enough. Can anyone elaborate on this?

Also, sometimes I have to place a longer track piece, say 5m or longer, on the track. Does this interfere with the 4m technique? Do I treat it as a 4m piece or should I jump over it?

Thanks

 

[Zakman]

Hi,
In the video comments and on other forums (reddit, here) people say that 4 times is enough. Can anyone elaborate on this?

Also, sometimes I have to place a longer track piece, say 5m or longer, on the track. Does this interfere with the 4m technique? Do I treat it as a 4m piece or should I jump over it?

Thanks

Point 1) Sometimes 2 is enough, sometimes 4 is enough, really just go with whatever satisfies your eye test

Point 2) Longer track sections are fine, and even sometimes preferable to smaller ones. I myself tend to use 5 or 6m when doing larger rides like Hypers or Gigas, and I use 4m for smaller rides or inversions. Honestly this is also an eye test judgement you make yourself too, it largely just depends on how big your building really!

Just have a mess with it, after enough tries on different coasters you'll pretty quickly grab the hang of when and how to cut corners with this kind of smoothing, I know one of the biggest gripes with this is how long it takes, but its for sure worth it to some people!

 

[BurningDragon]

Point 1) Sometimes 2 is enough, sometimes 4 is enough, really just go with whatever satisfies your eye test

Point 2) Longer track sections are fine, and even sometimes preferable to smaller ones. I myself tend to use 5 or 6m when doing larger rides like Hypers or Gigas, and I use 4m for smaller rides or inversions. Honestly this is also an eye test judgement you make yourself too, it largely just depends on how big your building really!

Just have a mess with it, after enough tries on different coasters you'll pretty quickly grab the hang of when and how to cut corners with this kind of smoothing, I know one of the biggest gripes with this is how long it takes, but its for sure worth it to some people!

Point (1) makes sense, it's always a good idea to test it with the eye and see if it is sufficient enough. I think the number of times you have to do it also depends on how smooth you build it in the first place.
point (2): when using 5m or 6m pieces on larger rides, do you still smooth 4 pieces at a time or do you do 5-6? It kind of intuitively makes sense to smooth 4 pieces at a time when using 4m track pieces, but I really don't know if there's any correlation between the two.

Thanks for your input!