Spline Height Smoothing

deighton

Seinpaal
Is there a way to set the radius of the smoothing tool? I have two tracks and they are one square apart. I only want one of the tracks elevated. When using the smoothing tool, it also elevates the ground around the other track. Any way around this?

CD
 
CD,

No way around this I'm afraid, the thing to do is to smooth the lower track then hide the gap on the higher track with either a wall, embankment or a bridge. Sorry I do not have another solution for you.
 
I also find it a problem.

Sometimes it’s possible, if there is enough separation between the tracks, to get a nice result, but it can be difficult.

If it looks possible, it’s best to try just one tap of the key when smoothing the track spline. Each successive tap will increase the problem, making the embankment or cutting wider. I’ve counted over 100 additional polygon moves on some of the peripheral angles, although the effect gets progressively less the more taps you do on a single spline length.

One alternative solution is to use an elevating sidewall spline to support the higher of the two tracks.

elevatingsidewall_zpsf3307b5e.jpg
 
Being set mostly on a hillside, we had this problem everywhere on the DHR. What we did was to let the higher track set the terrain. Wherever it hid the lower track, we went into the terrain tools (topmost pop-out), minimized the activity circle and chose the right-top icon (the one that lets you drag the mouse back and forth while holding the LMB to raise and lower terrain). Being very careful, it is possible to lower one edge of a square of terrain without disturbing the other edge. This way, you can lower the terrain so you can see the lower track. This works even better if you've made the terrain into 5M squares instead of 10. It is tedious, but does make things look nice.

Occasionally, we'd have to stuff a bush or something to hide an unsightly gap.

Bill
 
Spline Height

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I will have to be less of a perfectionist and realize more that reality is not easily duplicated. I still think that the stuff we can do in Trainz is outright awesome!

CD
 
Hi Deighton,
If you want to have one track leading off a mainline that is set to a higher or lower ground level, try using "JR MS Lt Grey (Terrain)" ,..... it also comes with Dirty or Pink. Make sure you select the one with the (Terrain) tag. First set your mainline height, then branch out lowering or raising the branch line and you'll see the track on its own support mound. Don't do any track smoothing on the branch line until you are well away (several spline points) from the main line or it will revert back to mainline level.
Cheers,
Roy
 
Thanks, I will give that a try! I wonder if the developers are going to incorporate something like that in the future. Would be very helpful!

CD
 
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