Terrain textures as overlay.

[SAR704]

Noticed this post recently: https://forums.auran.com/threads/de...image-slightly-over-800x600.79146/post-867935

I'd like to ask. Is there a way to cover lots of terrain at once with this method? From what I can tell, it only covers a few kms of track, before having to repeat the process again, just to cover an adjoining section of track.

Also, the imagery is barely visible. I assume it's to do with the assignment of colours or something. It is dark, and virtually impossible to make out vegetation and track clearly. It is about as legible as graffiti. Is this due to a pixel limit or something? I did read the portion in a tutorial about enabling additional colours/palettes. But it never seems to work. I'm using TRS22.

 

[pware]

Is there a way to cover lots of terrain at once

That method is not one I have ever used and looks, to me at least, overly complicated. I note that the post referred to was made 13 years ago, things have changed since then.

If you are using Surveyor 2.0 (Trainz Plus and TRS22PE) then there is a simple technique using the Marquee Tool that can cover large areas (even several baseboards) with a single texture. In both Surveyor 2.0 and Surveyor Classic (TRS22, Trainz Plus and TRS22PE) you can set each baseboard to be filled with a selected ground texture. Both methods are quick but have disadvantages such as not being able to vary the texture scale, intensity or brush size when it is added.

Also, in Surveyor 2.0 when using the texture brush, there is no upper limit to the brush radius and this method can overcome the disadvantage described above but is slower.

For references see the Trainz Wiki at:-

How_to_Use_S20_Tools#Ground_Texture for painting with the Surveyor 2.0 texture brush

How_to_Use_S20_Tools#Marquee Tool Baseboard Ground Texture for using the Surveyor 2.0 Marquee Tool

How_to_Use_S20_Tools#Default_Baseboard_Ground_Texture for setting a default texture

 

[SAR704]

I don't have 'Trainz plus', and will never consider it, due to the price tag outweighing the benefits.

My inhibited ability to learn new things with this game also makes it unjust. It has taken me around 18 months just to figure this much out about the game. @pware Do you know of any other techniques that might favour efficient route building? I am more or less super-reliant on satellite imagery, and have been since it became an option. Despite the ancient nature of this technique, I would still be interested to know if larger areas can be covered at once using this, or any similar methods that I may not be aware of.

 

[pware]

I would still be interested to know if larger areas can be covered at once using this, or any similar methods that I may not be aware of

This might be what you want - it has been a long time since I used Surveyor Classic that I forgot about it in my post above.

1. Open the Paint Tools flyout
2. Select the texture you want
3. Click the Select Area button (bottom left of the tools flyout)
4. Draw out a rectangular (or square) area to be filled
5. Click the Fill Area button (2nd on bottom of the tool flyout)
6. Repeat steps 2 to 5 as required
7. When finished click the Cancel Selection button (3rd on bottom of the tool flyout)

 

[JCitron]

To expand on what @pware says, try copying and pasting.

Place down your textures how you want them on a blank baseboard. Since you haven't upgraded or mentioned what version you are using, I'll assume Surveyor 1.0.

Go into the Tools pull-out located on the right-hand side.

Click on the select area button.
Select as big an area as you can.
Click on the things you don't want to paste such as, terrain height, objects, and splines.
Click on paste and you'll have a large square marquee floating around.
Go to the area where you want to paste the textures.
Click on the terrain where you want to paste the textures.
You can rotate your selection but only on the cardinal points of the compass unlike in Surveyor 2.0 where you can rotate nearly infinitely.

Caveat:

The compass points as mentioned for rotating.
The marquee is locked to the grid.
The marquee is limited to where it can select and paste, meaning there are no small sizes.

As to your statement about learning something new. Trainz is a complex "game" that's more akin to a world building program with many, many options and components.

Like these programs, there's a lot more to it than just placing objects and expecting wizards to kick in and do things for you. In addition to simple tasks shown in the tutorials, there's a whole new level well beyond that that even us more experienced users have barely touched and it doesn't help that we have to sometimes relearn how to do things, in many ways not so obvious, every time a new version comes out.

What worked for a decade, as we've found out the hard way, no longer works that way any longer. This mantra has become way too common in the recent releases of Trainz, and this has nothing to do with Surveyor 2.0.

With that said, take it one step at a time. There's more than a lifetime of learning here even for the so-called "simple" things in Trainz.

 

[SAR704]

I have TRS22 installed for the record. Just no subscription. I was screwing up with the number of baseboards before, as well as something else that inhibited the ability to load a route of a seemingly forbidden size in this game. I am slightly more used to S1.0. But the option to use 2.0 is there as well, as part of the 'Platinum edition', which I purchased last year.

Noticing the track already half in place was reasonable. It does bypass the task of laying track on the long straights in the first half of the route if anything. I also made sure to minimise if not completely exclude 5M portions of terrain. Otherwise the route would take days to load, and require levels of RAM commonly found on a NASA computer. There is an animal bird that is squawking at a low decibel count nearby, and is not considered sad.

I have had continuous issues with the curves in this game. They are half rendered. But still clearly need some work done to them. No idea how I'll go with the gradients. And this is all on the assumption that the track is actually in the correct position to begin with. Some better geo-coordinates would be quite ideal, albeit possibly a pipe dream for the foreseeable future. Later on, I'll try and get back to the game to find out what may be possible with the route. At this stage, the length of the hypothetical completed route still stands at around 350kms, without any obvious intermediate locations to truncate it to a shorter length. Such a location would be in the middle of nowhere.

 

[JCitron]

At this stage, the length of the hypothetical completed route still stands at around 350kms, without any obvious intermediate locations to truncate it to a shorter length. Such a location would be in the middle of nowhere.

We recommend creating a test route where you can experiment with various techniques before applying them to your larger long-term project. Many of us here do that because it prevents ruining a larger project and needing to start over if what we tried didn't work out. This is more important in prototypical routes where we need to watch cuts and embankments because once saved after doing something not right means either living with it or going to a backup.

There are a couple of things to look at here regarding your buried track:

For your buried tracks, you need to ensure that the height is level. Click on the spline points with the adjust height tool found under the "advanced tools" pulldown on the tracks pull-out menu. When you click on the spline point, this will level your tracks and may raise them up a bit. If you need to lock the track to the terrain height at a particular point. Get the height of the terrain and then apply that to the track at that location. It means jumping between the topology tool and the track tools.

PBR textures, such as the default grass used on blank baseboards, will bury your track. Using the textures pull-out, you can spread out another texture where the tracks are located and that should remove the buried portions. If you do this, make sure you use another PBR texture otherwise you'll end up with textures appearing to float on pond swamp water.

You can also cut your route into pieces and merge them back together later seamlessly if the cuts are done carefully. This is highly recommended when working on large projects such as that. By chopping up the route into smaller parts, you have less of a risk of losing everything in a crash and it's also less overwhelming working on a small section at a time.

When working on large projects such as this plan on taking years rather than months to complete it. Unlike other programs, previous versions of routes and be upgraded to the new program version without too many issues. There are the usual things to consider such as backups and caution but most of the time the process is flawless.

Just to give you an idea of the longevity of Trainz, many of us including myself, started routes 20 years or more ago and they are still being worked on and are still functional in the newer versions. Assets of course had to be replaced, such as trees that went from billboards to Speed Trees and other assets needed replacement, but for all intents and purposes, everything is intact. My current large project route, started in TRS2004 in January 2004, lives on and has an operating session created for it back in TRS2019 after I did a major merger and upgrade to some areas and still runs fine in TRS-Plus.

And finally, backup your work. There's nothing worse than losing a long-term project due to a computer hardware failure. Having a local external backup drive is a godsend and in addition to sending your route to a CDP and copying that over to a backup location, backing up your full content-folder, using nothing fancy other than a simple file copy, will save your bacon should something go terribly upside down.

 

[SAR704]

I know what you mean re back ups. I haven't not been on the receiving end myself.

This isn't directly related to terrain textures. But how do I replace a ghost object in TRS22? I have used OSM to place road splines. But it seems like an invalid scenery object is assigned to them.

The vector data export in TransDEM only shows Object KUID, with a tiny drop-down list of roads to use that I have never heard of. No images or anything.

This is the situation in the editor in TRS22. The spline shown has no known object associated with it, and brings up an error message when I attempt to use the bulk asset replace tool.

 

[JCitron]

To remove ghost assets, you can run the Delete Missing Assets utility. This is found under the Tools menu located at the top of the screen.

If that doesn't work, there's a simple method to remove ghosts.

Using the Tools pullout located on the right in Surveyor Classic, you'll see the old copy and paste tools.

Select a blank area.
Deselect terrain height, objects, and textures by clicking on them, while leaving the splines enabled.

Click on paste.

This will give you a square or rectangle depending on how big an area you selected since this is all you get with this.

Backups have saved me a few times, once due to a bad update and the other due to a failing hard disk that got me in a single and sudden failure due to a faulty power supply. In both cases, I restored the backups I had made, and I was lucky they were both recent, and I lost only a few days of work on my route. The rework I did turned out to be better than

With this floating marquee, click on what you want to remove and the unremovable assets will be replaced by non-splines.

If you have objects you want to remove, you can do the same. It works like a dream. I've erased textures too doing this as well.

TransDEM's choice of spline is probably the topmost one in the list. I'm surmising here since I haven't used that feature in ages and enough to remember the details. In the end, you need to use Content Manager to choose the one you want, and then jot down the KUID and enter that in the dialog box.