slopes

hi all.
I have been trying to make a gentle slope for ages .
every time it is to steep.
is it possible to make a board say zero one end and say five the other.
thanks for any help.
matt

goomermatt said:

hi all.
I have been trying to make a gentle slope for ages

Click to expand...

What procedure have you been using? If you create a gentle gradient you should be able to apply it to the whole board, keep the threshold value low, and get the slope you need.

Bob mentions one way.

The other is to use a displacement map to raise up the gradient slowly using various shades of grey with black being the lowest and white being the highest point. Once the gradient is created in a an image program, clone an installed displacement map and substitute your images in it. When you adjust the intensity knob on the displacement map tool, it will adjust the steepness of the grades and therefore the height of the slop. If I'm not mistaken, there may already be one in the game if not I may have seen one on the DLS.

The other way is to run a road spline or track spline the whole length of the baseboard up to the height you want and then smooth the terrain under the spline. This will raise up the gradient very easily. The problem with this method is you'll need to place multiple splines next to each other if you want this wider than a single road or track. This method is great for short slopes and cuttings as it removes the stepped wedding cake effect caused by the grid edges.

John

For real world terrain there is always the excellent Transdem!

thanks all

goomermatt said:

thanks all

Click to expand...

Note that there is no need for your gradient to go from white to black. It could be a any subset of that range. By keeping the gradient range small, you get more control over the amount of rise through the offset setting, albeit at the expense of a reduced number of steps in the grade.

Hi all 8years later I think I've solved it.
Only in surveyor classic.(2019)
I place three or more blank base boards
Then in topology ADVANCED slope, displacement scale low, select area (all three) Then Fill.
Then I go to TOOLS. Then (SELECT) then (PASTE) paste N. S. E. W seems to work
Hope this makes sense

Matt

I have a process that works well for small or medium sized areas. It's a variation of JCitron's suggestion. Place 4 road splines aligned to the 10-meter grid, one spline on each of the four adjacent grid lines, all the same length, all the same heights, vertex height applied, and flatten each spline. Then select Tools/copy/paste and select paste height. The select area should be the inner two splines. Avoid the outer two because they will not be perfectly smooth because they are adjacent to rough terrain.

Now you have a perfectly smooth slope that you can paste as often as you want, moving the paste area 10m each time. Once you have a larger slope, you can even select that slope and copy and paste away. The advantage to this idea is that you only need to place four splines, and everything else is pasting.

Or if you have S2.0 you can simply use the grade paste brush.

HI thanks stagecoach how do you do it with S2.0
I'm getting old.71
Can't seem to get the hang of new surveyor
Thanks for any help
Matt

Hi Matt:
It can be simple, but effective.
I am working on the topography of the city where I live, which is very smooth and is quite simple for me.
Where I have to place hills and gradients, I lay a few parallel tracks and some crossing them. Then I take height data ( say Google Earth or Isobar maps ) and with those references I adjust the height of a few Spline Points .
Then I apply Smooth to the terrain along the tracks and all that remains is to remove them to have the terrain bare and with heights. It's very basic, but it works for me. Especially in real landscapes.
I think John is also referring to something like that...

My technique, tedious but effective, is to raise (or lower) the ends to the desired height, then lay a bunch of track from high to low (or low to high) placing them so the spinning circles just touch.

Once I've "stitched" over the terrain, I just use smooth spline to shape the ground below the track, then delete the track.

For more realistic hill sides, snake your high and low end points around and place the track ends following that convoluted line.

Then I just tweak as needed using the plateau tool set to as large as possible and 100% sensitivity.

From one 71-year-old to another.
Select the brush.
Select ground height in the top brush window.
Select grade in the bottom brush window.
Select the brush radius.
Height, Grade, Angle, and rotation I am still experimenting with.
https://docs.trainzsimulator.com/docs/using-the-tool-options-palette

Thanks stagecoach an everyone
Will experiment.
A lot of late nights.
Thanks again for all your help

Matt UK

I just use a bunch of splines and the smooth spline height tool
either set the height at both ends or what I tend to personally do just drag the spline between two points you want the smooth gradient between,
after that use the smooth tool and delete the splines

afe_uy said:

Hi Matt:
It can be simple, but effective.
I am working on the topography of the city where I live, which is very smooth and is quite simple for me.
Where I have to place hills and gradients, I lay a few parallel tracks and some crossing them. Then I take height data ( say Google Earth or Isobar maps ) and with those references I adjust the height of a few Spline Points .
Then I apply Smooth to the terrain along the tracks and all that remains is to remove them to have the terrain bare and with heights. It's very basic, but it works for me. Especially in real landscapes.
I think John is also referring to something like that...

Click to expand...

Yup I did.

I used this method recently to recreate terrain that was obliterated by a dam and reservoir. I was lucky that the topographic map still showed the contour lines and the rail line even though the map was created long after the dam was built, and the image was placed on a modern DEM with flattened valley due to DEMs not reproducing anything below the water height. The heights were given in feet on the ca. 1942 map which I converted to meters for use in Trainz using my trusty calculator sitting on my second monitor. I didn't place a road spline on every line but instead placed them on the bigger ones and let the smoothing interpolate the terrain in between. This actually proved to be quite successful, and I was able to bring back a river that was wiped out in 1925.

Now I have the fun part of landscaping and smoothing out the bumps on the New York and Greenwood Lake branch from Pompton Jct., NJ to Sterling Forest, NY.