Tips and Tricks-Surveyor waffles

[titaniclover]

very good tips and tricks! especially track and double and direction which you lay the tracks.
any other tips and trick from anyone!

 

[Swordfish]

There is another reason for not useing double track too: Double track you can't exchange with trainzmap and you have it to do manually.

Regards

Swordfish

 

[titaniclover]

good tips. yea i lay green color for grass if im doing a summer route if your doing winter its the same only use a winter texture for snow.
i didnt ever think abotu the industriesvery useful thank you.
any more?

 

[titaniclover]

ahh yes i have that. but some of them are not PDF files so i cant DL them.

 

[jivebunny]

Cheers Andyz I didn't know that! Just goes to show it's the simplest things....

@ Lewisner I'll bear that in mind next time I build a field just checked and none of my fields have a gate

JB

 

[titaniclover]

wow. very good tips i never knew about the bridge and feilds.
anymore?

 

[titaniclover]

wow rick thats is amazing

 

[titaniclover]

yea i suck at makin them. i can get the trees right. tell me where can i find some splines for trees?

 

[lewisner]

Put "Tree" into Search on the DLS and ignore everything not native to your country .I usually end up with "Trees Mixed" and DM Drakes various sizes of Poplars which are a nice shade of green.Also "Undergrowth" is a good way to cover Embankments.

 

[Moojgoo]

yea i suck at makin them. i can get the trees right. tell me where can i find some splines for trees?

They are built-in and can be found in the Objects--> Spline tab.
And I got a very intresting tip; objects or splines or etc. can be sometimes modified with other tabs, such as the fact that object splines can be straightened with the track straighten tool. Strange, ain't it? Found that out yesterday.

 

[lewisner]

I nearly forgot the major (and fairly obvious) tip which is to use Google Earth satellite images.The amount of work these save in getting the Textures of fields right is unbelievable.And its so cool when you go to ground level and see it in 3D.

 

[titaniclover]

very very useful!
i am myself making a Prototypical Route right now and this will came in very handy!
see here for details on the route. i just started thank god!
http://natw.11.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=38

 

[lewisner]

Mein Gott! I"ve never seen so much Green on a map.You"ll have to keep the LOD down to one baseboard or you"ll spend the rest of your life planting trees!..

 

[BLACKWATCH]

To raise the ground up to the track, use the "Smooth Spline" tool.
Just select the tool then L/click on the track, the ground then rises to the correct position.

 

[leader2302]

Blackwatch,

The "smooth spline" tool does not completely bring the ground up to the track. It still leaves a slight space between the track and the ground. The smooth spline tool is good to use first as a "macro adjustment" then use the method I described above to fill in the remaining space.

 

[titaniclover]

yes.
i noticed when i just keep hitting the smooth spline tool the ground after coming up starts to sink.
not good in my opinion.

 

[jrockey]

I'm a beginner, and I'm finding all these tips especially helpful! However, I'm a little confused about lewisner's tip to

use Google Earth satellite images

Could lewisner (or someone else familiar with this technique) explain it in just a bit more detail?

How do you get the satellite images into Surveyor? Do you just copy Google Earth screenshots, convert them to B&W, and use them as Displacement maps? Or perhaps this method requires another software program (like MicroDem, HOG, TransDem, or Mapmaker)?

 

[titaniclover]

my freind read the rest of his post.

Google Earth satellite images.The amount of work these save in getting the Textures of fields right is unbelievable.And its so cool when you go to ground level and see it in 3D.

that might help.

 

[lewisner]

"jrockey" I believe it is possible to overlay Google images onto a Trainz baseboard but so far that is rocket science as far as I am concerned.What I mean is that (mainly if you are doing a Proto route) if you download a Google image at the highest resolution and use it to Texture your fields the result is far more accurate than it would be if you went out and looked at the place from ground level.So, when you build it and then view it in Surveyor (3D) at ground level the result will be very accurate.Does that make sense?An aerial view of things is quite different from a ground view-you see the "bigger picture".

 

[jrockey]

Thanks, lewisner -

I was indeed originally thinking you meant there was some easy way to actually overlay Google images onto a Trainz baseboard. However, now I'm guessing that is probably "rocket science" to both of us...

As I understand it now, you meant that you are referencing high-res Google images for accurate placement of objects and textures while using the regular Surveyor tools to re-create a particular location. That's a great idea, and I can appreciate how having a "birds-eye-view" of a prototype scene would really help in that process!

Thanks for the clarification.