Any way to preview seasonals by season?

[Forester1]

I am thinking I would like to use Seasonal Field assets on my route, but if I try to apply them now, all I get is snow. I want to know what the fields will look like in spring, summer and fall, but there doesn't seem to be any way to apply them to check. I really don't want to wait a year.

 

[pware]

One suggestion I would make would be to add 4 sessions for the route - one for each season. Just change the month in each session to one that matches each season, according to your hemisphere. See the Trainz Wiki at How_to_Use_Environment_Tools#Location.

There can be some surprises with seasonal assets. Some creators have neglected to add a snow-height value to the asset so as soon as winter arrives you get snow even if you are below sea level in the tropics. One ground texture I used was suddenly covered in snow at sea level in the Aussie summer - the creator had not correctly set the hemisphere.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

I am thinking I would like to use Seasonal Field assets on my route, but if I try to apply them now, all I get is snow. I want to know what the fields will look like in spring, summer and fall, but there doesn't seem to be any way to apply them to check. I really don't want to wait a year.

Are you talking about previewing individual seasonal assets or a route which includes seasonal assets?

If it's individual items, Content Manager's "Preview Asset" viewer (Ctrl-Shift-R) includes a "Season" display feature. You select a season number (0,1,2,3 or 4) and if those are configured, it will display what they look like. It usually takes a few seconds for the program to display the mesh. It doesn't actually tell you in words what the season is, you need to guess that from the appearance, but snow is pretty obvious and is usually (but not always) season 1.

If it's a Route, all I can suggest is to use the Environment controls to temporarily set the snowline to some very high altitude so that snow is unlikely to display. Then cycle through the months of the year and allow time for the map to re-draw with the appropriate seasonal textures after each time change. Take note of whether the Route is in the northern or southern hemisphere since that changes the months that correspond to each season.

 

[Forester1]

Are you talking about previewing individual seasonal assets or a route which includes seasonal assets?

Well, yes? I am debating whether the seasonal fields will look good on my route, but there is no way to sample the seasons, like I might sample a regular texture off to the side or something. Right now, all I see is snow. Which is OK for northern Idaho right now, but I can't see how it will look in spring, summer, or fall. I might try pware's approach, but that must needs be temporary, as I don't ultimately want textures in the session layer. I am also inexperienced in sessions, so maybe some work. But, I don't want to put miles of fields in place just to someday bring it up and find it doesn't look like what I want in another season. Grasping at straws I guess, if I don't want to use just a stubble field or a green summer wheat field for all seasons. It would be great if one could bring up a seasonal texture in preview and toggle seasons or something, but for some reason my TRS22 and TRS19 haven't been showing texture previews for a long time, just blank screens. Never figured out why, although I think I posted somewhere quite a while ago.