Transdem and alternatives
- Thread starter AntonyVW
- Start date
Here's my 2 humble cents...
I am sure there are several freeware alternatives out there, but they might require a lot of work and are limited in scope. Personally, I have no regrets with transDEM because nothing compares when trying to recreate a prototypical route. I am sure several other transDEM users would agree with me but there's only one way to find out.
You may wish to contact Dr. Ziegler (the creator) at his website here:
http://forum.transdem.de/
It might be possible to release a demo version. Ask him what he thinks.
:wave:
Gisa ^^
I am sure there are several freeware alternatives out there, but they might require a lot of work and are limited in scope. Personally, I have no regrets with transDEM because nothing compares when trying to recreate a prototypical route. I am sure several other transDEM users would agree with me but there's only one way to find out.
You may wish to contact Dr. Ziegler (the creator) at his website here:
http://forum.transdem.de/
It might be possible to release a demo version. Ask him what he thinks.
:wave:
Gisa ^^
I don't know about the demo part but I agree with the rest 100%
To the op the question shouldn't be what you could do with it but rather what can't you do with it...
It won't wash your car or make dinner but in it's area of creating maps for trainz there isn't anything it can't do...
cascaderailroad
New member
Everyone wants a DEM map ... Why I do not know ... Most areas of the US are relatively resembling flat land, and require no DEM. Landforms can be generated all by hand, and look very convincing. You very rarely roam more than 200 foot from the mainline anyway, why try to create the entire world ?
If you live in Indiana or Strasburg ... why go to the trouble to create an exact DEM ? It's low rolling corn field flatland.
However one of the worst hand created terrain routes I have ever seen, was supposed to be of British Columbia, with the BC-CP Rail-Kicking Horse Pass-Spiral Loops tunnels. The mountains were so poorly generated all by hand, that it didn't even resemble the Earths crust at all, let alone the Canadian Rockies.
You will find that laying grades a DEM will drive you completely crackers ! And all for what ? So you can run a twain down a track, viewing only the nearby, 200' foot away, bumpy land, all covered up with twees and schwubbery ?
Some have become masters at creating DEMS ... and others use such poor resolution satellite arc data, making the DEM terrain completely way off by more than +/- 20 foot in all the x-y-z dirrections.
Perhaps if I were 20 y/o, I would invest hundereds of hours in learning the curve of creating a DEM.
Since I got my DEM of the Horseshoe Curve, it has been the most cumbersome, difficult chore to lay track on. After years of working on it ... I find the route quite boring ... and the 37 mile hump & bump over the Appalachian Front Range is nothing but a meandering +/-1.75% gradient ... no big deal ... and not real thrilling.
But perhaps you will enjoy learning how to make DEM maps in Trainz ?
Good Luck !
If you live in Indiana or Strasburg ... why go to the trouble to create an exact DEM ? It's low rolling corn field flatland.
However one of the worst hand created terrain routes I have ever seen, was supposed to be of British Columbia, with the BC-CP Rail-Kicking Horse Pass-Spiral Loops tunnels. The mountains were so poorly generated all by hand, that it didn't even resemble the Earths crust at all, let alone the Canadian Rockies.
You will find that laying grades a DEM will drive you completely crackers ! And all for what ? So you can run a twain down a track, viewing only the nearby, 200' foot away, bumpy land, all covered up with twees and schwubbery ?
Some have become masters at creating DEMS ... and others use such poor resolution satellite arc data, making the DEM terrain completely way off by more than +/- 20 foot in all the x-y-z dirrections.
Perhaps if I were 20 y/o, I would invest hundereds of hours in learning the curve of creating a DEM.
Since I got my DEM of the Horseshoe Curve, it has been the most cumbersome, difficult chore to lay track on. After years of working on it ... I find the route quite boring ... and the 37 mile hump & bump over the Appalachian Front Range is nothing but a meandering +/-1.75% gradient ... no big deal ... and not real thrilling.
But perhaps you will enjoy learning how to make DEM maps in Trainz ?
Good Luck !
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Im not disputing what you say about the USA. Ive never been there and my only images of it are from films and photos.
My reason for wanting to use DEMs is because I am not satisfied with what I am currently producing. I've taken to modeling part of the town I live in but based on maps from 1903. Cutting a long story short, our town used to have a very large salt industry which had its own railway linked to our local station. This is now all gone. Ive tried using maps which give me contours but Im just not happy with what Im seeing from my results. It just doesn't look or feel right.
I admit to trying out Railworks this last few days. In that Ive been able to import dem files to give me the landscape I want. Problem is I dont like the way track is laid in it - I prefere trainz for that (not tried anything else yet in Railworks). Ive also yet to figure out how to use the old maps I have which I can do quite easily in trainz.
So for me a chance to try out transdem would be most useful. Unfortunately a limited budget does not allow me to just purchase it and hope I have made the right choice.
With TransDEM you can take those old maps and overlay them on a terrain which is exactly correct.
There is a fairly steep learning curve, but lots of support through the forums and Roland's patience with new users is near legendary.
In short: Buy it - you won't regret it...
Andy
There is a fairly steep learning curve, but lots of support through the forums and Roland's patience with new users is near legendary.
In short: Buy it - you won't regret it...
Andy
jayholland
Content Creator
My two pennyworth on this is that there is a free alternative - Microdem. Trouble is that has to be used in combination with HOG terrain formation. I tried it out for a while, but eventually bought TranzDem - and I did not find a steep learning curve with it. In fact, from installation to my first gazing upon my DEM route and thinking 'Oh, yes - I know where we are' took about two hours.
I think it depends what sort of terrain one is modelling, and on how much of it. For a large flat area, or an area which is mostly flat with a couple of prominent features, DEM is probably not worth it. Also, I would imagine that a large area would, as Cascaderailroad says, be very tedious to construct - and, as he also says, it is necessary to use high-resolution data - no good using data that can be 30, 40, 50 feet 'out'.
I am modelling the Cuckoo Line in Sussex. It is a relatively sort (20 mile) branch line that meandered through the Weald. I initially tried to model the terrain by hand, but as anyone familiar with the Weald will know, it is a complex landscape, with gently rolling, but quite steep, hills. The railway followed a switchback course through this landscape, with gradients of 1 in 50 up and down over all its length, rising steadily from Polegate to Heathfield, then plunging into a valley before another steep climb to its summit at Argos Hill, after which it plunged again into the Rother Valley. I found it nigh impossible to achieve by hand anything other than a very crude approximation of this landscape. I laid the track all at the correct gradients, but found bringing the terrain up or down to it in a convincing manner to be a task which defeated me. My hills tended to be lumpy, rather than rolling, and I just could not get them to look right. I also found the process very tedious.
I was initially somewhat sceptical about DEM, but having installed TranzDem and made the terrain, I just laid the track straight on it, using an overlay to get the positioning right, and then simply set the gradients and used 'smooth spline'. Bang! I was astonished as the first bit I tried was a difficult part where the railway emerges from a deep cutting on to a high embankment at Horam. Both cutting and embankment just appeared, accurately represented, as if by magic, before my eyes. I had previously spent several hours fiddling about trying to get that bit even somewhere near accurate... There were only two or three places where I had to tweak things a bit to get the gradients right.
So, in my case, it was well worth it, but I think it depends on the size of the project. Maybe I have just been lucky. I should add that my route is only one baseboard wide - I cannot see much point in modelling any further away from the line as it involves a lot more work which you will never see!
J.
I think it depends what sort of terrain one is modelling, and on how much of it. For a large flat area, or an area which is mostly flat with a couple of prominent features, DEM is probably not worth it. Also, I would imagine that a large area would, as Cascaderailroad says, be very tedious to construct - and, as he also says, it is necessary to use high-resolution data - no good using data that can be 30, 40, 50 feet 'out'.
I am modelling the Cuckoo Line in Sussex. It is a relatively sort (20 mile) branch line that meandered through the Weald. I initially tried to model the terrain by hand, but as anyone familiar with the Weald will know, it is a complex landscape, with gently rolling, but quite steep, hills. The railway followed a switchback course through this landscape, with gradients of 1 in 50 up and down over all its length, rising steadily from Polegate to Heathfield, then plunging into a valley before another steep climb to its summit at Argos Hill, after which it plunged again into the Rother Valley. I found it nigh impossible to achieve by hand anything other than a very crude approximation of this landscape. I laid the track all at the correct gradients, but found bringing the terrain up or down to it in a convincing manner to be a task which defeated me. My hills tended to be lumpy, rather than rolling, and I just could not get them to look right. I also found the process very tedious.
I was initially somewhat sceptical about DEM, but having installed TranzDem and made the terrain, I just laid the track straight on it, using an overlay to get the positioning right, and then simply set the gradients and used 'smooth spline'. Bang! I was astonished as the first bit I tried was a difficult part where the railway emerges from a deep cutting on to a high embankment at Horam. Both cutting and embankment just appeared, accurately represented, as if by magic, before my eyes. I had previously spent several hours fiddling about trying to get that bit even somewhere near accurate... There were only two or three places where I had to tweak things a bit to get the gradients right.
So, in my case, it was well worth it, but I think it depends on the size of the project. Maybe I have just been lucky. I should add that my route is only one baseboard wide - I cannot see much point in modelling any further away from the line as it involves a lot more work which you will never see!
J.
Jayholland - your comments run very much along with how I feel about it. Its not that my baseboard is wide - its that in the area the track runs through (Droitwich in my case), the terrain alters constantly. As the track approaches from the south it goes from being in a cutting to level land - an embankment and back to a cutting as it reaches the station. When leaving the station it goes imeadiately from the cutting to an embankment in 2 different directions as the junction splits up. Above the one junction the hill rises further with a lovely old church on the top. from there it heads north towards Stoke Works and then Bromsgrove and the Lickey incline. The other line heading north west takes us on towards Kidderminster and the Severn Valley Railway. Going back south from Droitwich it heads in to Worcester again splittng up to head out across the city towards either Malvern via a viaduct or Cheltenham joining up with another line that comes south from Stoke Works without entering Droitwich.
Anyway - that is the area Im currently looking at. And although I can produce the contours according to the map - smoothing them out is proving very difficult. Hnece my questioning about transdem. Still it seems my wife has no objection to me purchasing it in a couple of weeks time after our holiday with the grandchildren so things are looking good
Anyway - that is the area Im currently looking at. And although I can produce the contours according to the map - smoothing them out is proving very difficult. Hnece my questioning about transdem. Still it seems my wife has no objection to me purchasing it in a couple of weeks time after our holiday with the grandchildren so things are looking good
Jayholland - your comments run very much along with how I feel about it. Its not that my baseboard is wide - its that in the area the track runs through (Droitwich in my case), the terrain alters constantly. As the track approaches from the south it goes from being in a cutting to level land - an embankment and back to a cutting as it reaches the station. When leaving the station it goes imeadiately from the cutting to an embankment in 2 different directions as the junction splits up. Above the one junction the hill rises further with a lovely old church on the top. from there it heads north towards Stoke Works and then Bromsgrove and the Lickey incline. The other line heading north west takes us on towards Kidderminster and the Severn Valley Railway. Going back south from Droitwich it heads in to Worcester again splittng up to head out across the city towards either Malvern via a viaduct or Cheltenham joining up with another line that comes south from Stoke Works without entering Droitwich.
Anyway - that is the area Im currently looking at. And although I can produce the contours according to the map - smoothing them out is proving very difficult. Hnece my questioning about transdem. Still it seems my wife has no objection to me purchasing it in a couple of weeks time after our holiday with the grandchildren so things are looking good
Are you going to include the Severn Valley? There is one already but its not what I'd call really to prototype and there seems to be an absence of the actual river!
I used Microdem and Hog for a large chunk of North Wales, worked reasonably well although I had to to do some manual "carving" of the Aberglaslyn pass and several other bits that the dem had smoothed out.
I initially tried to do it manually with the aid of OS maps and decided that it would take me years to get it done, being new to Trainz at the time Microdem was the first thing I found, wasn't even aware of Transdem until a few months later.............
Transdem is probably the best option but if you or anyone else for that matter uses Microdem be aware that the program has been changed since the online tutorial was made, default height is metres not as was feet so no need to convert and some of the menu items have changed, plus a few other enhancements, you can now overlay the DEM on Google earth which would have been handy when I originally started three years ago!
Another approach
There is at least one other approach you could try and that is to use topographical maps ported into basemaps to recreate terrain. See: http://homepage.mac.com/doug56/MBC/ Tutorials>Route Construction>Basemaps>Topography Maps.
Cayden
There is at least one other approach you could try and that is to use topographical maps ported into basemaps to recreate terrain. See: http://homepage.mac.com/doug56/MBC/ Tutorials>Route Construction>Basemaps>Topography Maps.
Cayden
Actually it was that particular website that got me using basemaps in the first place. Had a lot of support from its owner. Cheers mate
But I'm still not satisfied with my hills
As to the Severn Valley - I had not considered doing it but I see no reason why not
But that will have to wait a little while. As I mentioned my current interest is in reproducing Droitwich at least based on a 1903 map which means that a couple of quite large areas will change dramatically from its real present form. I'm interested in reproducing the salt factories and associated lines that were present in 1903. The 1927 map shows that not only have the lines gone but so have the factories. Houses are showing up in that area. I believe that the lines were closed around 1918/22. So Droitwich at least will be a "what if" the factories still existed today?Same goes for Stoke Works. The complex of the salt factories there was even bigger (all gone now). I understand that that particular site was served by a narrow gauge but I have yet to discover where it changed the cargo to the mainline - there does not seem to be any clear separation of the lines. So at this point all the lines I have layed down are of standard gauge. Im wondering about that at the moment though - as some of the locos that served Stoke Works originated from Droitwich Covercroft works - and I know they were standard gauge. A little puzzle for me
Droitwich? Worcester? Salt factories? Must be this area:
Photo taken from a boat on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Restored Droitwich Canal, originally built to carry salt, due to fork off a mile or so to the left. Is it fully open now?
58 locks on the W&B from Gas Street Basin to the Severn. Don't you say the West Midlands are flat. And at least one railway line nearby for most of the stretch.
I often use English landscape for TransDEM test runs and have planned my narrowboat trips this way.
Photo taken from a boat on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Restored Droitwich Canal, originally built to carry salt, due to fork off a mile or so to the left. Is it fully open now?
58 locks on the W&B from Gas Street Basin to the Severn. Don't you say the West Midlands are flat. And at least one railway line nearby for most of the stretch.
I often use English landscape for TransDEM test runs and have planned my narrowboat trips this way.
PortlandBill
Member
Anthony, If you want to look at old maps try www.old-maps.co.uk I have just checked that they have available 1:10560 maps of Worcestershire dated 1903-1905 and you can see the old narrow gauge lines. They also have 1:2500 dated 1927 and you can see that the ng lines have disappeared. I hope this may help your research a bit. I would encourage you to use TransDEM. It is excellent with the open DEM data available from the Ordnance Survey and how to use it is explained in the wel-written manuals that come with the program
Steve
. I would encourage you to use TransDEM. It is excellent with the open DEM data available from the Ordnance Survey and how to use it is explained in the wel-written manuals that come with the programSteve
Droitwich? Worcester? Salt factories? Must be this area:
Photo taken from a boat on the Worcester & Birmingham Canal. Restored Droitwich Canal, originally built to carry salt, due to fork off a mile or so to the left. Is it fully open now?
58 locks on the W&B from Gas Street Basin to the Severn. Don't you say the West Midlands are flat. And at least one railway line nearby for most of the stretch.
I often use English landscape for TransDEM test runs and have planned my narrowboat trips this way.
Oh yes the canal is now fully open. It was opened a couple of weeks ago. My wife and I took the grandchildren to the first day of opening. Had a great time taking them on a barge ride to take part in that historic event We had upwards of 60 barges there for the weekend - some coming frmo as far as London to take part.
As to where the salt factories were - there was 2 main centers in Droitwich itself. One by the canal and the Salwarpe rive. In what we call Vines park (off Vines Lane). the other - a much bigger complex was in the area we know as Covercroft. Today that area covers from Union Lane (near the station - where the Workhouse used to be) up to Ombersley Road. That area now is covered with car parks - doctors surgeries - police station and some shops. To access the site there was a link line curving off to the right as you left the station heading north - it was just before where the lines separate to go to Kidderminster and Bromsgrove. This curved round into the covercroft area and was quite extensive. While mentioning the Bromsgrove line - as that passed Vines park, a line swung round into the factory complex there as well.
The Biggest of the complexes though was at Stoke Works.
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Anthony, If you want to look at old maps try www.old-maps.co.uk I have just checked that they have available 1:10560 maps of Worcestershire dated 1903-1905 and you can see the old narrow gauge lines. They also have 1:2500 dated 1927 and you can see that the ng lines have disappeared. I hope this may help your research a bit
Steve
Ive been using that website quite extensively. Initially had a big learning curve interpreting what I was seeing to what I know is there today. But it has been worth it. I would be interested in knowing how and where you have isolated the narrow gauge tracks as that is still taking me time to understand. For Droitwich itself, as far as I can tell its all standard gauge. I have a list of the engines that worked those lines and as far as I know they were not ng. Stoke Works however, I believe is a mix of both - I just havent worked out where the change happens so some guidance there would be much appreciated.
rztaylorjr21225
New member
I've had TransDEM for about a year and although it was difficult to learn and understand it does a fantastic job of making your prototypical dreams come to life. Great program if you take the time to learn it
Maps
For my WCL route right through from London to Penzance a certain person kindly made DEM's for me, so the land is correct. The third section I found heights could be out slightly because I work with OS maps at the same time and these have the height contours on them so a given position can be pinpointed, but that particular map is extremely hilly with deep ravines with rivers at their bottoms surrounded by very high hills and cuttings.
However, far better slight adjustments than having to do the whole lot by hand which would have been nigh on impossible, so a DEM for land that has a reasonable amount of contouring is a must in my opinion.
The maps generated for me saved countless hours of head scratching and pulling my hair out, so thank you that man (you know who you are), I am forever endebted to you, you made the routes possible.
So for the UK Transdem is almost a must. Our country certainly isn't flat by any means or even a stretch of one's imagination and our rolling and intersecting mountains, hills and valleys are a beauty to behold, but a nightmare to recreate without TD help.
So for the UK and you have the time and patience, get it. If I was still in route creation I would be considering it myself, after all I soon enough learned how to use gmax so maybe TransDem is no harder?
Angela
For my WCL route right through from London to Penzance a certain person kindly made DEM's for me, so the land is correct. The third section I found heights could be out slightly because I work with OS maps at the same time and these have the height contours on them so a given position can be pinpointed, but that particular map is extremely hilly with deep ravines with rivers at their bottoms surrounded by very high hills and cuttings.
However, far better slight adjustments than having to do the whole lot by hand which would have been nigh on impossible, so a DEM for land that has a reasonable amount of contouring is a must in my opinion.
The maps generated for me saved countless hours of head scratching and pulling my hair out, so thank you that man (you know who you are), I am forever endebted to you, you made the routes possible.
So for the UK Transdem is almost a must. Our country certainly isn't flat by any means or even a stretch of one's imagination and our rolling and intersecting mountains, hills and valleys are a beauty to behold, but a nightmare to recreate without TD help.
So for the UK and you have the time and patience, get it. If I was still in route creation I would be considering it myself, after all I soon enough learned how to use gmax so maybe TransDem is no harder?
Angela
Thanks Angela for your comments and encouragement.
In relation to using OS maps I was just wondering what folk think about the data that can be gotten from the OS Landform Panarama? From what Ive seen of it, and the comments Ive heard elsewhere, it seems it is more accurate/refined or more detailed than some available?
Yes, Landform Panorama DEMs are more detailed than SRTM. It's not a sensational difference, but I think it's worth it. See the TransDEM forum for a comparison: http://forum.transdem.de/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25
More on British map resources and TransDEM here: http://forum.transdem.de/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5
Some of the online historic maps can be processed by TransDEM automatically, but I don't think these sources go as far back as 1903.