placing water in river and streams

[jeldersr]

With TS12 I have installed terrain with Transdem and am trying to get water into rivers and streams. I have been able to do that with flat baseboard but with elevation I am having problems. Riverbed is at 300m. I set height at 290m and get ground to depress but when i get Water none appears. I can't figure what value to put in for the water. Thnx in advance.

jeldersr

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Try wireframe mode to see if the water tiles are buried. You might need to raise them.

 

[cascaderailroad]

Water is applied at 0.00m ... if you use the mouse to roll & scroll the water height, it will raise.

A constant water height on a DEM, must be broken up by different level dams.

 

[jeldersr]

Thnx for the quick replies! I will try both tomorrow. Will dropping the height every so often by a couple meters as per the dem satisfy the water "flow"?

Thnx

jelders

 

[misterchugg]

hi

i tried the alt wireframe mode and it kicked me out of surveyor

any idea why it did that?

thanks
ron

 

[mezzoprezzo]

hi

i tried the alt wireframe mode and it kicked me out of surveyor

any idea why it did that?

thanks
ron

I've not had that happen.

I have accidentally hit the Windows button (the key with the flag thingy just to the left of the Alt key) by mistake, which bombs you out of Trainz. However, you can click on the JET tab on the bottom toolbar and get straight back in.

I've also read somewhere that later Trainz versions do not have access to the alternative wireframe view - only the normal one, but I've not heard that you lose the game when trying.

Cheers
Casper

 

[HiBaller]

When I get ready to place water (particularly on DEM routes) I use the "Get Height" button (in Terrain) to see how high the land is right next to the water. Then, I use that same height in the water placement height field. That way, when you place the water, it will pop into view at the same height as the surrounding land. Then, using the mouse wheel, you can lower it appropriately.

Remember to use meters instead of feet.

Bill

 

[JCitron]

An easy way too is get the height of the riverbed and make the overall water in that area 2 meters above that. This seems to work for me with a dark bottom and lighter shores.

You might have to put in dams and rocks to break up the water if there are great height rises and falls. I happen to be lucky since I'm modeling a tidal river area right now.

John

 

[stagecoach]

Use water splines. There are a few of differing widths and types available.

 

[cascaderailroad]

I have been watching carefully, how several route builders have been using textures only for water.

 

[HiBaller]

Here are three shots from the DHR. We used a combination of several methods. Most of them were done with textures only though.

Bill

 

[misterchugg]

hi hiballer

i think textures might be the way to go

still trying to work the splines thing out in 2010

cheers
ton

 

[HiBaller]

The main thing to remember with textures is that every one of them have a specific "direction". By that I mean they have to be oriented 'up and down hill' instead of across it. That takes a steady hand and an eye on the little directional spinner on the painting tool.

The best way I found to do that was to place my view so I was straddling the river on the downhill (downstream) side. This way, every time you touch the mouse to the terrain, you have control of which way the texture 'grain' lies and can change the spinner in the direction the stream may be turning.

I've tried river splines, but I found most of them to have such a short 'repeat length' that the river looked fake and choppy. It was also hard to force them around sharp corners without showing a sliver of terrain underneath the spline.

Bill

 

[jeldersr]

Thanks for all the suggestions on putting water in a river! Thanks messoprezzo for the wireframe tip. With my route being about 20 sqr miles what i did was found the lowest point of the river and set my height to that and dug out the length of the river and placed the water inside. Not exactly prototypical but seems to do the trick.
Another query: I am trying to model a wye bridge (located at Lat 41.422442 Lon -79.697666 on Google Earth). Would enjoy any tips!

Thanks in advance

jeldersr

 

[HiBaller]

Interesting bridge. It is difficult to tell for sure, but I think the southern track enters the bridge, but does not exit it onto the southern branch of the wye. Note what appears to be a concrete block across the width of the roadbed. So, saying that, could you just use a double-tracked girder bridge for the west end? Then just connect a single-track deck bridge for the northern branch and the same bridge for the southern branch, but fiddle with the config file and remove the tracks?

The join point at the east end of the girder bridge would just be a single join point of the girder bridge and two deck bridges. If you intend to have rails on both legs of the wye, then no problem at all.

Bill

 

[BobCass]

Hi All: I've been reading this thread and I would like to show what can be done with texturing, it is the way to go..Splines are hard to handle plus there not to good on the frame rate..

 

[jeldersr]

Thanks for the reply. The bridge and line in that area of town has been abandoned for a while now. it was my plan to model this area back when I got 2004 but for various reason never saw it thru. But now that i got ts12 and having discovered transdem and succeeded in getting the dem and terrain textures into ts12 I am now ready to see this one thru. I really appreciate everyones thoughts and help. I plan to tackle this bridge in my next session probably in a few days. will let u know how it turns out. Thanks again

jeldersr