Any tips on "winterizing" a route?

[JonMyrlennBailey]

We may have summer routes already but and might want a snow-covered version to boot. It's easy to replace grass or other textures with Replace Assets.

I use the following textures for "summer" scenery:

-grass
-dirt
-ballast along motor roadways and tracks
-gravel
-shadow under trees
-asphalt
-concrete
-rock (for cliffs and mountains)
-various ones for farm crops as hay, wheat and corn

What winter textures should replace each of the above?

I also use house grass and ballast splines for along bench edges. Are there snow splines to replace these?

Additionally, there are snow blower/snowplow engines and snowfall in Weather/Environment.

What should be done with Topo bodies of water using water chips?

There might be other special winter stuff at DSLS as snowmobiles, snowcats and sleds.

I use a bunch of hemlock and pine trees with snow versions available. Other trees can shed their foliage depending upon time of year and world origin settings. I also use alpine tree spine. Are there snow versions for alpine/pine tree splines?

 

[JCitron]

It depends. If it's freshly fallen deep snow, it'll cover everything with blacktop poking through in those places that are freshly shoveled out.



You want something that has a blue-grey tint to it rather than pure white. Snow is dirty and ranges from sooty-grey to brownish-yellow-brown with white. That's not saying that you can't have some pure white, but it's not as common as you'd think.

You'll need snow banks and snow piles. I think Dino_ made some of those, but I can't remember.

Roads will be white-plus the asphalt color underneath if the roads aren't fully cleared. This can be difficult to model correctly and many people create plain white roads like gravel or sand roads that are white rather than snow-covered roads.

Shadows under trees and objects will be bluish grey. Towards early morning, the sun will shine with a bit of a yellowish tinge to it, and the shadow will be more grey with a yellowish tinge to the snow. Towards evening, the snow takes on a bluish tinge with darker shadows.

Asphalt and concrete are their regular color but have snow scattered across the surface when covered with snow, see the description on the roads. The same with rocks and cliffs, but in those areas the snow will pile up in the crevices and create dollops of frosting in places. The overall covering will be like frosting on top of oatmeal cookies. There will be crevices that are the underlying color with white, or bluish white/grey on top.

Crops will be their dead color. Wheat and corn will be stalks that are yellowish brown to golden brown color and will stick through the snow. There are various dead grass splines that will work well for these better than seasonal plants which are too uniform in texture.

The pictures above are from my deck and were taken in 2014 or early 2015. We got 30 meters of snow, or basically 1 meter a week for 10 weeks of winter. Boston had so much snow that it sat unmelted on the docks until May before it melted down. In my area, we had so much snow we didn't know what to do with it as we dug out. Backing out of the driveway, was outright dangerous because people fly down the street and there was no way to see past the end, and we couldn't turn our wheels until we were well out past the driveway!

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

Angelha has a whole host of "House Grass Splines". These are spline ground covers for along the edges of roads, model trainz benches and streets. Jrfolco has some ballast spline textures. There doesn't seem to be any snow-colored spline textures. Also needed are snow pine tree splines.

 

[JCitron]

There are some older winter tree splines, but the trees are old and may come in invisible in TANE and up. They have an alpha-channel issue that causes this, but I can't remember how to fix them. The more recent ones might work by Toxa-batoxa (Don't quote me on the spelling) that begin with TB. These are seasonal.

For winter routes, you need to do two things. First set the calendar to a date sometime in December and second lower the altitude to zero for the snow line. This will ensure that seasonal assets do in fact have snow, and seasonal textures will have snow.

Being from a northern climate that gets that dreadful, rotten, miserably slippery stuff, I tend to create summertime routes and enjoy the warmth.

 

[JonMyrlennBailey]

John, I need more than two things.

I need snow texture splines to go along the edges of my benchwork to boot. Green House Grass won't look right with snow terrain right next to it along a sharp seam line. I might just hold off on this Frosty-the-Snow-Trainz notion until more known TANE-compatible snow tree spline and snow texture content comes available. It would also be swell to have building rooftops that frost over. Trainz was created in Australia, the only content in the world where it never snows. Trainz was not originally invented with comprehensive snow-climate "winterization" of assets built in.

Trainz would be truly slick if all the following occurred automatically in winter climate settings:

-train roofs frosted over
-house and car tops frosted over
-all trees frosted over and over shed foliage
-icicles formed on tree branches
-Topo water froze over
-Paint textures auto-changed to appropriate snow textures
-house grass, ballast and other texture splines turned to snow colors
-people figures bundled up like Eskimos
-dog figures wore sweaters
-trucks and cars with tire chains

We might also like to see ski lift content, static snowmobiles, snow man content, Christmas decoration content, snowmobiles, snow-cats, bombardiers and other AI-drivable snow vehicles.

 

[JCitron]

Check around for ski lifts and stuff. There is some of that on the DLS. It's quite old but it still works. I think it's made by Cyberstorm for his now ancient Swiss Alps route he built. There are seasonal textures that have winter-textures. I was never impressed by them, so you''ll need to experiment with them. They're made by various authors. Remember, not everything is covered with ice and snow so having some patches of dead grass appearing as bare areas, is okay.

There are quite a number of seasonal assets that will get a layer of snow; I'm not sure about ice, though, but there are buildings that have snow and some are seasonal. Cars and other vehicles with chains, unfortunately, are not there that I am aware of

For water, there are water splines including some that are ice and I think some with seasonal textures that may work. I can't remember who made them so

I agree with you on the backdrop. There maybe something for winter.

I recommend going shopping on the DLS.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Trainz was created in Australia, the only cont[in]ent in the world where it never snows. .

Take 10 seconds to Google snow Australia, it will be educational for you.

On a more practical note, there are basically 2 types of snowy assets - those with permanent snow texture and others with environmentally controlled snow (called seasonal but in reality, controlled by snowline not season). You need to decide which type or types will be suitable for your route.

Searching for assets of either type is a bit of a problem because there is no universal method to bring up everything snowy in one hit. I suggest a few search strategies be used.

Search for words snow or ice or seasonal or winter in;

asset names
keywords
asset description text (only possible with DLS website, not Content Manager).

Repeat using non-English expressions for those search words.

Your list of ideas for snowy assets is quite creative. Why not learn a 3D creation program yourself and have a go at turning the wish list into reality?


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