Gameboy900
Member
HI, I was wondering what the easiest and most accurate way to place trees in a route in Trainz 12
How to Accuratly Place Treez in a Route
- Thread starter Gameboy900
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Before you begin, you kind of have to know what kind of trees grow in the area you're trying to model, or find some that are similar. I live in southeastern New England where there are all kinds of pines, cedars, oak, hemlock, sugar maple, poplar, weeping willow, birch, hemlock, locust, American Black cherry, and American Elm, which sadly was wiped out by a virus many years ago. This doesn't count the apple and pair trees, which have escaped from gardens and orchards years ago, or those that now live in the wild because the orchards have turned back into woodlands.
Having said, that, I mix and match and make up clumps of trees with the so-called English Trees which look like Poplars, which are a type of willow and related to aspens.
Anyway, to make the clumps look good, I put them in groups of 5 then copy and paste, and rotate the placement so they all don't line up like soldiers. I find that the clumps placed in rows and with some in the middle look good in the distant parts of the route where there are lines of woodlands along a field or along roads.
Another trick you can do is vary the size by burying parts of the trees to pull them into the ground a bit. This makes for an interesting undergrowth and adds some variety.
The biggest problem I have is I really can't get enough trees into the scene without affecting the performance because where I live the trees are pretty dense. These aren't old-growth forest, but new growth because what was once farmland is now heavily covered woodlands.
John
tell me he did not say that,,,,,
Gameboy900
Member
Based on a few years of trial and error, I have found that the most accurate way to place trees in a route is to not place them directly on the track, inside structures, in the middle of lakes, or on roadways. Most anywhere else, insuring that the tree is place firmly on the earth's surface, should be sufficient. SOME trees may also be rotated and placed on their sides to give the appearance of being cut down or toppled by a natural disaster, such as a boulder, tornado, or flood. To prevent power outages, trees should NEVER be placed in or directly next to power lines.
Moderators have my permission to make this a sticky.
Closing in on 1200 posts of useful and essential information.
Last edited:
Gameboy900
Member
Based on a few years of trial and error, I have found that the most accurate way to place trees in a route is to not place them directly on the track, inside structures, in the middle of lakes, or on roadways. Most any where else, insuring that the tree is place firmly on the earth's surface should be sufficient. Trees may also be placed on their sides to give the appearance that they may have been cut down or toppled, perhaps by a boulder, tornado, or flood.
Closing in on 1200 posts of useful and essential information.
Um... ok.
I've seen that too, and would rather have no grass clumps than those placed so they work weird, and the frame rates are always lousy with the grass. I think this is due to how it's constructed.These are still alpha-blended flip board objects instead of GPU-driven objects like Speed Treez. Maybe Auran or some other very kind and generous content creator can make us some useful - smaller grass and plants, that use the SpeedTreez technology.
The other problem I have with grass is that the clumps along with the weeds too are too tall. Have you ever seen 8-foot Queen Ann's Lace? [FONT="]
So if I've imported a route with grass clumps, I will spend my time removing them to a certain extent to make the route usable until there are some suitable replacements can be found.
@Game Boy. You're welcome. I'm glad you found my tip useful.
John[/FONT]
Just in my backyard on Winter St. in Merricmac and Maudlsay State Park. I felt like I was on a set for " Land of the Giants" .
Have you been out to Maudslay recently, John? Wow, what a beautiful place!
I haven't been out there recently. It is beautiful though. This year's trip was spent in eastern Oklahoma and southern Illinois this time. Interesting countryside though with lots of sad abandoned ROW along roads and the Ohio River. We did see 6 twisters and a multitude of super cell storms though.
Hopefully next spring I'll go for a North Lands Tour again where we start in Denver then head around the north and west into the Dakotas and back.
Good analogy with "Land of the Giants". Did you see giant mushrooms too and people fighting giant spiders with quill pens?
John
Good analogy with "Land of the Giants". Did you see giant mushrooms too and people fighting giant spiders with quill pens?
John
HAHAHAHA
No, I can't say that I did........but you are giving me some new content ideas!You know that you can't go through Denver without contacting me to get together over coffee. You do know that, right?
G'day,
If in my opinion weeds, grass flowers etc. are too tall, I hit the height adjust button and just lower them. If the other vegetation around it is dense enough, it will stil look natural. I find that f. e. the undergrowth spline is far too high, so I drag it all down to my level:hehe:.
Cheers,
E.C.
Great idea, but for every clump? In the real world, there are a gazillion clumps of grass. If it could be set once and then positioned that would be great, but that's not the case unfortunately with the program unless I'm missing an option.
The problem with the undergrowth splines is the alpha-blending. Even with the fixes, they still look funny. This is of course my opinion here, and some people may like them, but I don't. There's also a performance issue with these as well, considering where I live there would have to be a big load of these to look right.
John
Gameboy900
Member
These are my results guys! More screenshots are posted here:
http://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?t=242&page=825
Scroll down until you see ones like above.
Thanks!
G'day,
It all depends on how large an area you want to cover with individual clumps of grass. There is always the copy and paste feature yo cover large areas.
E.C.
Copy/paste doesn't paste adjusted heights. You can certainly c/p the grass clumps, but you still need to lower them one damned clump at a time. That's why the grass on EK3 is so sparse LOL...
Andy
Oops, my mistake.
I am still fairly new to trainz, and I don't think I tried C&P with adjusted height assets.
E.C.
Andy,
That was one of the things I found out the hard way too a long time ago, and one of the many reasons why the grass clumps have become very sparse on my routes too.
John
G'day.
Copy and paste with adjusted heights seems ro work fibe for me. I have TRS2010. Maybe it didn't work in earlier Trainz versions, that I don't know.
E.C.
It depends (I think) on how much vertical adjustment is applied. I am currently building a small route in TS2010 (44088) in which I repeatedly use a single model comprising clump of 4 medium sized bushes surrounded by about 100 'seedling' bushes. I don't like the way the seedlings look so I bury the clump just enough to put thee seedlings below ground level, varying the height of what's left by about .4m. When pasted some of the clumps are down where they belong, but more'n half are at 0.00 and need dug down manually. Possibly it's the deeper ones that stay put, the shallower ones pop back out.
When applying grass clumps I generally only lower them by about .2 or so and they definitely all return to 0.00...
Andy
When applying grass clumps I generally only lower them by about .2 or so and they definitely all return to 0.00...
Andy