Height / Displacement Maps. Trainz 22 plus, Surveyor 2.0

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Trainz 2022 Plus, Surveyor 2.0 - HD Tiles

Is there any way to import terrain heightmaps / displacement maps for random use through a layout / terrain? As I have seen others have point out, making realistic terrain with the existing tools is awful. I remember in some older / previous versions of Trainz, there were displacement maps I could use to randomly place mountains, hills or other features throughout the terrain/layout. I am not looking for something like transDEM for a whole route, I want to be able to place features through the route. Surveyor 2.0 does not seem to have this feature and the hills and mountains I have created so far look more like my 5 yo son grabbed the mouse and clicked the button randomly, lol. Random concentric circles, etc. seem too common and the lack of a smoothing or random generator makes it look... bad. I could see how someone could create and possibly use scrapbook to generate random landscapes but I have yet to find that, either. Note: I have tried switching to Surveyor Classic but it says HD editing not supported when trying to use the displacement maps.

Any ideas, tips, etc that could help? Tutorials?

Thanks!
 
Since you have Surveyor 2.0, here is a suggestion which I have done myself:

Find a route, either on the DLS, or one of the built-in routes that came with Trainz, that has suitable terrain that you want to use in your route. Load that route.

In Surveyor 2.0, select an area and copy it. It will now show up in the scrapbook area. Exit that route, load your route. Before you paste, set the scrapbook filters to:

Ground height-absolute, Texture-none, Meshes-none. Splines-none, Effect Layers-None. Then paste (Ctrl-V) where you want this terrain to go and you're done.

I have found you can do for a fairly large area, as much as 10 x 10 baseboards although my guess this depends on your hardware. I have not tried this with HD terrain but with ordinary 10 meter terrain, it works.
 
Since you have Surveyor 2.0, here is a suggestion which I have done myself:

Find a route, either on the DLS, or one of the built-in routes that came with Trainz, that has suitable terrain that you want to use in your route. Load that route.

In Surveyor 2.0, select an area and copy it. It will now show up in the scrapbook area. Exit that route, load your route. Before you paste, set the scrapbook filters to:

Ground height-absolute, Texture-none, Meshes-none. Splines-none, Effect Layers-None. Then paste (Ctrl-V) where you want this terrain to go and you're done.

I have found you can do for a fairly large area, as much as 10 x 10 baseboards although my guess this depends on your hardware. I have not tried this with HD terrain but with ordinary 10 meter terrain, it works.

This sounds like a great idea! thanks for your suggestion!
 
Since you have Surveyor 2.0, here is a suggestion which I have done myself:

Find a route, either on the DLS, or one of the built-in routes that came with Trainz, that has suitable terrain that you want to use in your route. Load that route.

In Surveyor 2.0, select an area and copy it. It will now show up in the scrapbook area. Exit that route, load your route. Before you paste, set the scrapbook filters to:

Ground height-absolute, Texture-none, Meshes-none. Splines-none, Effect Layers-None. Then paste (Ctrl-V) where you want this terrain to go and you're done.

I have found you can do for a fairly large area, as much as 10 x 10 baseboards although my guess this depends on your hardware. I have not tried this with HD terrain but with ordinary 10 meter terrain, it works.

So after trying this out I keep getting that the selected area has payware and it wont let me paste. I have tried user made routes as well. Any ideas or am I missing something. I just want to copy the terrain and nothing else.
 
So after trying this out I keep getting that the selected area has payware and it wont let me paste. I have tried user made routes as well. Any ideas or am I missing something. I just want to copy the terrain and nothing else.
I'm sorry this did not work for you.

The route I copied terrain from was my own, so certainly not payware.

I hope someone from N3V will see this and comment on whether the prevention of pasting terrain only from a payware route was intentional or an oversight that could be corrected.

This will be time consuming, but if you could find a non-payware route on the DLS with nice terrain or terrain from TransDEM, the process I described should work.
 
You can still create your own displacement maps.

Using a paint program, create a 256 x 256 map you want to use. The lighter the color, the higher the terrain; the opposite for lower with white being the highest and black the lowest.

Save the image as displacement01.bmp.

Go into Content Manager and search for Displacement.
This should show Displacement Map 01 and Displacement Map 02 as built-in.

Select Displacement Map 01 and press CTRL-D to duplicate, aka clone the asset.

Clear the search and choose Open for Edit in the filter to show the New Asset that's open for editing.
Right-click on that and choose Open in File Explorer
You'll see an existing image named displacement 01
Copy your displacement 01 into that folder and overwrite it.

Edit the config.txt file and change the username. Type in the name you want for the displacement map within the quotes.
Save the config.txt file.
Close the folder.

Back in Content Manager, highlight the asset, right-click and choose submit to close it.

It'll disappear from the list.

Check your faulty assets to ensure there are no errors...

=====

Assuming there are no errors:

Go into Classic Surveyor.
Go to the topology tool in the upper right.
Click on Advanced to open up the "advanced options"

Click on the Add-baseboard button.
Set that to 5 or 10 m.
Click the baseboard. (The screen may flash).

Located just above the window is the word None.

Click on the arrow to the right to scroll the list, or click on None to bring up the full list.
Choose your displacement map.

Located at the bottom of the window is a select area box.

Select a large section of the baseboard. You can carefully select the whole baseboard by pressing the CTRL key and scrolling the mouse. It takes some practice and fiddling to get this.

Once you've selected the area, click the fill button - it looks like a beaker.

====
Switch to Surveyor 2.0
Select your terrain.
Press CTRL-C to Copy and create a Scrapbook item.
Click on the name and rename it and be sure to click on the push pin to make it permanent.
 
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