Trying out 'proper landscaping'

[bassist118]

I'm trying out landscaping of a hilly area trying to get that prototypical feel to my fictional routes (I havn't actually completed a route yet, I now have 4 on the go waiting for my skills to catch up. Now I've plucked up the currage to attempt landscaping and texturing and just wanted your opinions and critizims (not about my spelling tho, I already know thats poor) and some pointers to good ground textures.

Here's some screenies of what landscaping I've done so far.

It's taken a while but not as long as what it was taking before someone told me in a thread that the gap between the track and land smoothing is 20 cm this has made life 100% quicker because the track laying tool becomes a land smoothing tool hight adjustable, angle adjustable and curving. A big thankyou to whoever this fine fellow way.

Cheers Trainzers

:Y:

Andy

 

[Dermmy]

You might want to try dappling a very dark green under the trees to represent shadows, but other than that I would keep right on doing what you are doing, looks great...

Andy

 

[Sabertooth]

What Dermmy said, but sometimes I use pure black...but apply it very gently for shadows..it takes alot more time to get right thou

 

[cascaderailroad]

Someone previously posted that Trainz likes 6 or so variations of trees scattered together, instead of using many dozens, and hundereds of different types of trees. Most 10-15 meter trees are tall enough, as any higher trees are towering like in gigantic redwood forests. "Fallen Leaf" texture laid by lightly tapping the RMB is a good technique for subtle small radius texturing. You can sink trees partially in the ground by lowering their height by hand, so they are now low to the ground schwubbery. Also, rotate the trees slightly differtly so they don't have that simetrical all look alike look.
Example:

Too much...can't see the trainz...for the trees

 

[angelah]

English hills

Getting English hills right takes time, it can't be done with a quick sweep or fast processes.
Using the set heights is fine but they do tend to need a lot of manipulation afterwards to get decent merges and have them look natural.
Once the hill or mountain is done basically I often adjust a single square at a time to get the right effect, a nice rolling hillside. It depends on what area or even which country you are creating a representation of, so think about that too.
I don't think anybody should post criticism of your efforts so far they are good.
Texturing takes time to get right so experiment a lot, preferably on a spare board at the edge of the route that you can delete later. On this you can create small section of trees or forest complete with texturing and then Copy/Paste to parts of the actual route, saves time, but if you do use this method make say 3 sections then the trees won't get monotonous.

Good effort, keep it up,

Angela

 

[tume]

Getting English hills right takes time, it can't be done with a quick sweep or fast processes.
Using the set heights is fine but they do tend to need a lot of manipulation afterwards to get decent merges and have them look natural.
Once the hill or mountain is done basically I often adjust a single square at a time to get the right effect, a nice rolling hillside. It depends on what area or even which country you are creating a representation of, so think about that too.
I don't think anybody should post criticism of your efforts so far they are good.
Texturing takes time to get right so experiment a lot, preferably on a spare board at the edge of the route that you can delete later. On this you can create small section of trees or forest complete with texturing and then Copy/Paste to parts of the actual route, saves time, but if you do use this method make say 3 sections then the trees won't get monotonous.

Good effort, keep it up,

Angela

Hallo Andy,

I absolutely agree with Angelah. The screens looks like, you used the same technology, I used as I did my first steps here. I used terrain only routes for my Milwaukee Road simulations - the terrain relief of a real landscape has already been created and therefore the Mountains and Valley does not need to be created. But the terrain only files are not very exact in its relief and so it is necessary to make improvements by hand – even by using the techniques everybody found out by himself during its first route creations.

Congratulation, you are at the right way. But I have to say, if you are going to simulate nice things in a serious way, you may will never be satisfied about your own results, as there will always be some details left, you may want to improve ;-)

Cheers TUME

 

[bnsf50]

The easiest way to get nicely formed mountains is to download a DEM map from the download site. Look for fishlipsatwork. He made quite a few blank DEM maps. Just find one of a mountainous area. You can name it what ever you want, You don't have to stick with the name it comes with. And if it's larger than what you want to work on for now then just delete the boards you don't want. An example would be the Mojave route. It has low 500' to 4000' rolling hills and some desert area as well.

 

[cascaderailroad]

EGG-sell-ent Idea you have there...and you could re-contour certain areas where you feel the need toI like that idea...I like it alot !
Theres one Fishlipsatwork DEM of near the Grand Canyon...wow...thats one deep DEM !
Renovo-Williams DEM has some really nice PA hill topography, as does 2 of the East Broad Top RR DEM's. (on Gaurc site)

 

[mawilson]

I'm not sure how it will apply to the UK but the Northbay County route is probably one of the best "landscaped" routes that I've seen. One thing they do to great effect is to layer multiple gound textures by laying down a base, adding pacthes of a second texture followed by "bumping" the RMB for a couple of other textures in all cases rotating often and even during application. Once you get a nice area you can use it to stamp over a larger area but, remember to rotate it frequently when stamping to avoid tiling effects. Don't use the same ground texture over the entire area. Think about varying ground texture based on the slope and location. An open field ground texture should be different from a wooded area.

Remember, too, that trees tend to grow in stands of the same kind with varying heights rather than a ballanced scattering. Consider the kind of terrain that a particular species is found in. Cypress trees don't belong on mountain sides and Aspens don't grow in swamps.

Like trees, place clumps (not an even scattering) of brush in likely places such as in a draw or along banks and in clearings. You can place clumps of smaller bushes among taller trees as well.

Wooded areas have plants at all stages of life including dead so scatter some dead and fallen trees.

Finally, think in terms of photographs. Create some scenes with visual interest such as an outcrop of rocks, a perenial stream bed (no water, just evidence that water is there from time to time) or an interesting collection of standing and fallen dead trees. Don't make too many and spread them around.

 

[bassist118]

Thax for all the very kind and very very helpfull comments,

:Y:

all taken on board and will modify some aspects. The only trouble is the trackwork (very much unfinished) is over 230 baseboards so foar and over half of these are planned to be in hilly areas so has anyone got any tips on copying and pasting to routes already tracked, graded and land smoothed to track.

Thanks again

Andy

 

[tume]

Thax for all the very kind and very very helpfull comments,

:Y:

all taken on board and will modify some aspects. The only trouble is the trackwork (very much unfinished) is over 230 baseboards so foar and over half of these are planned to be in hilly areas so has anyone got any tips on copying and pasting to routes already tracked, graded and land smoothed to track.

Thanks again

Andy

Well, as far, as I know, TRS does not support any copy and past functions for spline objects. You probably found already the copy and past functions for terrain, ground texture and non spline objects.
I would be happy, if anybody would come up saying “… you are wrong, there is a copy and past functions for spline objects” – but I think this will probably not happen – unfortunately. :'(

Cheers TUME

 

[bassist118]

Taken all comments on board and came up with this :-

Thanks to all I myself can see the differance.

Andy

 

[betsy662]

Its best to use a variety of textures, I use many textures in in various areas of a route, I also max out the size of the texture, and at the same time, minimize the radius of the texture, this will give you plenty of variety in how your ground work looks.

On my Durango route, instead of using the actual animated water on the route, I instead used Animas River Textures, there are like 16 of them on the DLS by David Drake, I also use these in the same manor, texture size maximum, texture radii minimum.

 

[evan123]

On some of my logging scenes, I will spend some 2 hours just on 10x10 set of tiles. Rotating, scaling and fixing various textures and objects. I can never seem to find a good looking piece of landscape.