Smooth Ground Under Selected?

[jeff1959]

I'm using Trainz 22+ Is there a way to control the width of the smoothing? I want to raise the ground about 2 meters beneath the track, but only about 5 meters wide. I can get the 2 meter height from the tool options, but experimenting around, I can't find a way to control how wide the area is affected. I don't like how the embankment assets look, so that's not an option. Please and thank you.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

The settings that affect the size of the area of effect should do that, but apparently don`t. I haven`t heard of anything that does.

 

[PC_Ace]

Make sure you're using HD terrain and Surveyor 2.0 mode.

 

[RikFish]

The radius control +/- for the brush tool will do just what you need.

 

[pware]

As described above but you do not have to be using HD terrain. This works in 5m and 10m grid resolutions as well.

1. Select the object to have its ground smoothed
2. Set the Tool Options Palette width setting to the desired width otherwise the size of the object will determine its smoothing width
3. Open the selected object Context Menu (click its icon or press the T key)
4. Select the Smooth Under Selected option

The above works for scenery objects such as buildings as well as track and road spline. For scenery objects the size of the objects footprint will also affect the area smoothed.

 

[johnnytrain]

jeff1959 - you are not alone. I've never been able to get the smoothing to give a realistic width to the top of my embankments either (and I'm using Surveyor 2 with HD terrain). For me, setting the width of the brush will affect the spread of the embankment. but not width of the top - it's always approx 5 metres wide and very little different from the old non-HD terrain. I've resorted to shaving a bit off my embankments by putting a spline at ground level near the foot of my just-created said feature and smoothing under that. But I'm interested to see that others above seem to be able to get the smoothing to work straight out of the box. I wonder if it's because I'm on a Mac that things are different (Build 123844)?

 

[jeff1959]

Here's some pictures to show you what I am talking about. S2.0, HD Terrain.
3m height 3m radius

3m height 5 m radius

3m height 10m radius

Tell me again how these are different? The only that changed was the radius, but there is no apparent change to the roadbed.

 

[MasterTracklayer]

Agreed.

 

[pware]

From my experiments (which were not in HD) there appears to be a minimum radius or distance from the track for smoothing under track assets. In 10m and 5m resolution it appears to be about 10m on each side of the track.

Setting the radius value below that minimum will have no effect. Setting it above the minimum does have an effect.

I seem to recall some time ago a discussion about this with someone from N3V - but cannot locate the thread, so the following explanation could be completely off the mark. IIRC the minimum radius (10m???) is a set requirement for the correct operation of the track and track switches in particular.

To achieve tighter (narrower) spacing on embankments and cuttings I use embankment and cliff splines.

My theories/observations.

 

[johnnytrain]

HD smoothing is marginally different in that cuttings are more concave and embankments - if the ratio of height to brush diameter is too small - assume the shape of a plain loaf (apologies if this Scottish metaphor doesn't apply universally) wherein the top is flat, the shoulders rounded and the edges pretty well sheer. It is possible to use the "second spline shave" or to do a bit of the old Michaelangelo and sculpt the width down, although this tends to be easier with cuttings than with embankments. In short it feels as if this is a feature that's not quite there yet.

ps... When fixing this and other things it would be a marvellous opportunity for N3V to ditch the C++,or whatever they're, using and rewrite everything in native Assembler for each platform, thus fully optimising the code .