Maps

G

gooner28

UK railfan
As you may have read some of my recent threads, you may know that I have recently purchased trainz mac 2. I was wondering if anyone knew if there is a feature (like on the microsoft train sims) where you can load up maps on to the layout and place track over the track on the map, and things like that.
Hope you can understand my badly worded help request,
Chris.
 
You can do this using what are called basemaps. These are actual objects in Surveyor which are 1000 x 1000 meters. You edit the objects and place your own OS map or aerial view on them, by replacing the image. Once they are edited and committed (I'm not going through all the details now), you'll have a basemap of your map which you now load up into TSMAC.

In Surveyor you then place the object, which is usually just below the surface, and should be locked on another layer. You can now trace over the map with your tracks and place other objects in their place. Keep in mind that these are flat images so you will need to adjust the height of the land on the surface.

Hope this helps.
 
Jcitron, hes looking for DEM maps and the like. MSTS actually shipped with an engine to make Topo maps.

@Gooner
Look into TransDEM or MicroDEM. TransDEM is a program that you can buy for about $30 that will generate high quality Topo maps for Trainz, and even texture the map in a variety of ways to make accurate re-creation of a given area possible.

Falcus
 
Basemaps are the el' cheepo'doro' way to do it, and if you PM me, I can explain better, and help you make a map, I could even make you a free 1 dimensional map.

What exactly are you trying to reproduce ? What specific area, or interest ?
 
Falcus said:
Jcitron, hes looking for DEM maps and the like. MSTS actually shipped with an engine to make Topo maps.

@Gooner
Look into TransDEM or MicroDEM. TransDEM is a program that you can buy for about $30 that will generate high quality Topo maps for Trainz, and even texture the map in a variety of ways to make accurate re-creation of a given area possible.

Falcus
Click to expand...

I realize this.. However, he's using a MAC. There might be a way of importing the Ordinance Survey DEM information and maps into that version using some utility, but I don't know. He would need to have Boot Camp, Parallels running Windows 7 64-bit or up, or some other PC he can load TransDEM on to in order to process the data into Trainz format if he wants to go that way.

@Gooner - to bring the map images into a basemap, you need to download or scan them. Once they are tga images, they can be placed on the surface since they are now texture files.

John
 
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I used base maps at first but found them cumbersome and a pain getting everything lined up correctly etc, so I gave in and got Transdem and was able to easily (once I found the correct tutorials in the included pdf) set up a 250km route and a 80km route with track already laid and terrain heights already created. Can't do that with base maps. Just my opinion of course, do what you think is best for you.
 
There are a number of assets on the DLS which are similar to what you describe, basically a bare DEM map which can be imported, with lines for track and roads in the surface of the map. I forget the name of them, as it has been some years since I discovered them, and I decided at the time that they were not quite to my interest.

I myself use a couple of other techniques. First, if I am looking to produce something related to an actual location, I find a map of that location, cut it up into 720 x 720 unit bits, which I map to a 720 x 720 unit plane surface in Blender, and export as a Trainz asset. I then adjust the height of this as needed, and use it as a template to lay tracks, and other features. If I'm doing something imaginary, then I just start with a baseboard in Trainz and use various spline objects (usually different types of fences, power / telegraph poles &c) to mark the contour lines on the base board, then use various of the spline and landscape adjustment tools to raise and lower the terrain as needed.

ns
 
Think you can run a windows schell or emulator on a Mac and run windows applications on it.
Thats how some of our consultants run our (windows based) software on them.

gooner28 said:
How do I PM (I'm guessing that means private message)?
Click to expand...
Click on someone's username and select Private Message from the tiny window that shows up.
 
oknotsen said:
Think you can run a windows schell or emulator on a Mac and run windows applications on it.
Thats how some of our consultants run our (windows based) software on them.

Click on someone's username and select Private Message from the tiny window that shows up.
Click to expand...

That will work... They have a very nice VM called Parallels which handles graphics and performance quite well for a virtual machine. The alternative would dual boot the machine using Boot Camp which sets up a separate partition which can hold another OS. In this case, of course it's Windows.

I believe I mentioned this in my post above. See post #6.

John
 
I've converted a .pdf topo map to .tga and get this error when importing content into T:ANE... "Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/BufMap2.tga'". What am I doing wrong?
 
How are you importing the tga file into Trainz? Image files cannot be imported directly into Trainz, they must be part of an asset such as the Basemapz mentioned in post #2 above. These assets can be downloaded and installed into Trainz where you must add the map image (1km x 1km) yourself and then commit the asset.
 
I've re-read all the posts above and am now using Basemapz. the trouble I'm having now is Basemapz only wants to use model layout scales and is limited to 200' x 200'. I'm trying to use either a topo map with no dimensions available or a screenshot of the 1km x 1km area in Google Earth. No joy.
 
The last time I used Basemaps was in TRS2006 but I do recall that I was able to take

  1. a screenshot of an area 1km x 1km from Google Maps,
  2. use content manager (or whatever it was called back then) yo add it into a Basemapz asset as a .JPEG,
  3. edit the config.txt file to refer to the image,
  4. commit the edited asset and then
  5. load it into Trainz.

I just did a check of the DLS and the asset I actually used was "1km Basemap" followed by a number or letter as shown below.

<kuid2:267614:100010:2> 1km Basemap 0
<kuid2:267614:100001:2> 1km Basemap 1
<kuid2:267614:100002:2> 1km Basemap 2
<kuid2:267614:100003:2> 1km Basemap 3
<kuid2:267614:100004:2> 1km Basemap 4
<kuid2:267614:100005:2> 1km Basemap 5
<kuid2:267614:100006:2> 1km Basemap 6
<kuid2:267614:100007:2> 1km Basemap 7
<kuid2:267614:100068:2> 1km Basemap 8
<kuid2:267614:100069:2> 1km Basemap 9
<kuid2:267614:100011:2> 1km Basemap A

...and so on to ...

<kuid2:267614:100067:2> 1km Basemap Z

Have you tried these ones instead? The description of each asset contains the instructions.
 
Using your steps I get the following error message in Manage Content using a 1km x 1km screenshot from Maps as a .jpg or .tga:

! <NULL> Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/Maps1.jpg'
! <NULL> Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/Maps1.tga'

Reminder, I'm on a Mac using Pixillion Image Converter and Basemapz through Parallels Desktop and Windows 10...

Man, I've got a headache! ;-)
 
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Well that has got me beat. I don't understand why you have both .tga and .jpg images in a "1km Basemap x" asset. From my memory only the .jpg image is required - in any case the detailed instructions are in the asset description.
 
Philip656 said:
Using your steps I get the following error message in Manage Content using a 1km x 1km screenshot from Maps as a .jpg or .tga:

! <NULL> Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/Maps1.jpg'
! <NULL> Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/Maps1.tga'

Reminder, I'm on a Mac using Pixillion Image Converter and Basemapz through Parallels Desktop and Windows 10...

Man, I've got a headache! ;-)
Click to expand...

Make sure the .tga image is not compressed.

Edit the filename.texture.txt

Put in the .TGA filename.

Ensure that the filename is exactly as spelled out in the filename.texture.txt file.

Save the .texture.txt file.

Close editor.

Close any folder.

Submit the asset.
 
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Philip656 said:
Same error message: ! <NULL> Unsupported file type for '/Users/flip/Desktop/Maps1.texture.txt'
Click to expand...

Are you sure it's not Maps1.texture? There's a difference between them. The .texture.txt is a text file that contains information about your texture so the program knows how to interpret the texture.

The file.texture is a combined format, a compressed file, that contains both the texture its self plus the information in a single file. When the two are separated, you can edit the texture. The problem is sometimes, usually and mostly, with built-in assets, the .texture file is not uncompressed and when the asset is submitted, there's an error just as you see here.

Back over to your Windows 10 Parallels VM, you need to take the faulty asset, open it for edit, and run PEV's Images2TGA. Each .texture needs to be opened, and then choose save-as to save the TGA file.

Once done transfer the folder back to MAC side of things.
 
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