Large Square Shadow, unable to delete.

[Harby]

I'm using TRS22 and a large square shadow has appeared, and I've been unable to get rid of it. everything that is in it looks if it is night. How can I remove it. See attached image. Thank you. ...

https://flic.kr/p/2rvJ8gP

 

[JCitron]

Shadows like that are usually caused by another asset elsewhere.

Is anything up above or nearby?

I recently had a building that produced long strips of shadows radiating out from it like a dark beacon. The shadows would flicker and appear if I positioned myself only in certain positions. Eventually, I saw the culprit and deleted the building. It was a very old asset that somehow was corrupted. I took note of the asset and not only deleted it from the route but also from Trainz then downloaded the building again because the asset was a dependency on other routes.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Is it really a shadow? Does the dark square move when you change the time of day?

 

[Harby]

......I've delt with shadows in the past like resizing or getting rid of the shadow in the structure at Norton's Turntable at Donner Summit. However, this shadow had no tabs to move it, reshape it, or resize it. There is nothing but the square shadow. Any object, vegetation, or structure placed in it looks as if it were midnight. It' on the only layer, main layer with all tracks, structure, texture, and vegetation. I can shut that layer off and everything goes away including the shadow. It is in the desert area north of Reon NV on the spurt to Hallelujah on TrainzItalia's route Donner Pass that since 2008 that I've been bringing it forward into each progressive new version of Trainz to the current TRS22 and modifying route or rolling it back from Union Pacific ownership in 2000 to how it was under Southern Pacific's ownership between 1945 and 1956 replicating track schematics, images and photos of the route as scenes, structure, and trackwork in the route.
......The shadow progress across the landscape from early morning to early evening. It is not there at night from after sunset to before sunrise and no sign of it at midnight.
.

 

[derznovich]

You could try using the layers to find this object, if it is indeed caused by an asset of some kind. Back up the route. Create a new layer, and make that layer invisible. In S2, box select various areas and change their layer to the new layer using the info box, and they will disappear. If the shadow disappears, hit undo and try a smaller and smaller area until only the shadow remains. Then delete the layer with the shadow on it.

Hopefully that could get rid of this cloaked borg cube before it assimilates the Marolf Garage, shown in your screenshot above.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

So, in brief, it really is a dynamic environmental shadow. That implies there is some kind of rectangular mesh object somewhere up in the sky casting that shadow.

If it was my problem, I would set the World Origin to 0 degrees latitude and the time of day to 12 noon. The sun should then be directly above the shadow. Using the free range camera (or whatever it’s called in TRS22) I would go to the shadow at ground level, look up towards the sun to check if I can see the object. Of course, if it is just a plane with a 1-sided texture on top, it would not be visible from below, but it’s logical to check this first.

Next I would point the camera directly down in the centre of the shadow and gradually zoom up, hoping to see the object when the camera gets above it, but before the view transforms to the mini-map view (does TRS22 still have that?).

If that fails to find anything, my last resort would be to delete all mesh-based objects (scenery, splines, locos etc) from the area in and around the shadow to see if that removes the shadow. Since the origin point of the mystery object isn’t known, you don’t know where exactly to point the deletion cursor. So, I would use the copy/paste tool to copy a large area of the map that is known to be empty, and paste it in and around the shadow to delete any objects directly above or below the pasted area. You might need to read up on how the copy/paste tool works if you have not used it before (it’s not exactly obvious).

 

[Harby]

Thank you all for your help and suggestions. Tried everything and nothing worked. I zoomed very slowly so high I could see the entire route from Roseville CA east to Sparks NV and north to Chico CA. Must say I was getting frustrated. Thought of one last thing to try out of desperation, there was nothing else I could think of or try. Went into the Environment-Lighting and reset the diurnal color data, that did the trick, the shadow square disappeared. Boy, was I elated. Again, Thank You all. If you would like to see a comparison of real-world photo and their counterpart in the route it is at my Flickr site. Here is the link. ... https://www.flickr.com/photos/87517897@N02/albums/72157716871674083 ... Again you guys are great, Thanks.