Elevation changes for water?

[waylo51]

Has anyone come up with a good way of making elevation changes for water. I want to model a river that has a lot of change in altitude. The only way I have found that is allowed is to break up the water but that makes an area where the water is not continuous. Any suggestions?

 

[mjolnir]

This is one of the weak spots in TRS; there is presently no way to change the elevation of a river; the best way is to consider your river like the Mississippi in the US, where it has been converted into a series of lakes by dams, with the impoundment behind each dam a relatively constant level back to the next dam upstream. There are also at least two "rapids" on the DLS, which would allow one to change the level of water. And if a stream goes out of sight, say under a large bridge which happens to be on a grid line, or behind a forest, one can change the height slightly there.

ns

 

[Lo_Poly]

I know that multiple water splines exist (I know that several came with TRS2006, and that there are numerous splines on the DLS), but they don't (they simply can't) match the native Trainz water though (you're stuck with one color, they're not animated, etc.). If they won't cut it for you, all I can really suggest is using some sort of workaround, such as bridges, dams... something. You could also be clever and change the height in areas out of view, if possible. It takes a little bit of creativity I suppose.

 

[gfisher]

There is no good solution to be had. You can either do what you said and try to paint the ground between levels to look like waterfalls or rapids, or you can try to do the whole thing with groundtextures which may work for small streams, but I find it unconvincing for larger rivers. All of the splines I have seen are also generally rather unconvincing.

 

[waylo51]

RE: Water elevation change

OK, thanks to those who responded. It is kind of what I figured, i.e., no good answer, but workarounds.:'(

 

[SuperFudd]

I created a dam of rock covered earth in Alameda Creek at Niles in in my "Niles, Hinton and Winchester" on the DLS.

 

[ldowns]

The water splines I've seen all seem to have one major drawback, and that's that there isn't any reflectivity (gloss) or 'shape' to the water (just a flat matte surface). Another possibility would be to take advantage of the greater possibilities in TS2009 for textures (normal mapping, etc.) to create a water texture that actually looks 3-dimensional and 'glistens.' Any content creators out there that want to try this?

--Lamont

 

[warwickh]

in AJS tunnels you can have a retaining wall that has a grass bank behind it which you can adjust the height of . if this grass bank was used on its own and painted blue then this could be used between two levels of a river to raise the level. if someone could design this?

Warwickh

 

[SantaFebuff]

What I did was to use the built in animated water system for the straight sections, and when it would lose view or elevate, I would use the water spines. (Note, if you don't have them pre-installed, they are availbe from HP Trainz.) You can also use a water texture, some are remarkably realistic, while others can't pass for a texture.

Cheers,
Joshua