ray_whiley
Active member
Covering acres of space with scenery - which is why I have come to prefer Virtual Model Railways.
Ray
Ray
Your lest favorite thing to do in making a route
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All of these are why I prefer Model Railroadz. You don't need to model a whole town. You don't have to worry about HOG/DEM. You can compress towns and/or the areas in between the towns so you don't have to use multiple baseboards between the towns. You can also model specific areas on a Model Railroadz, such as a large bridge. You don't have to worry about having to use a whole baseboard to create the terrain around the railroad, just the area between the backdrop or wall and the edge of the benchwork. You don't have to model a whole building, just model part of it by placing it up against the backdrop or wall and hiding the rest of the building behind the wall or backdrop. These are some of the reasons why I prefer Model Railroadz. I'd suggest buying track plan books or looking online at websites with track plans to get some inspiration and ideas to create a Model Railroadz featuring the place you're trying to recreate in Trainz.
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my least favorite thing is planting bushes, grass, and trees around the track. I can never get it to look realistic. Some people just throw as much GRASS as possible around the track, but that is not prototypical. Most US yards are pretty well bare, such as this one here in Jonesboro:
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.8440186,-90.7029692,324a,35y,270h,44.9t/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
https://www.google.com/maps/@35.8440186,-90.7029692,324a,35y,270h,44.9t/data=!3m1!1e3?hl=en
hiawathamr
DLC developer for Trainz
I don't mine most of the route building things, but my least favourite thing is the details (eg trash, old junk, etc). May seem realistic, but I personally fine it a pain as well.
Floating assets , currently placing 80 or so miles of trees grass and shrubs and so many of them float just enough above the surface to not look convincing , fortunately around creek banks vegetation on this route is prolific so they mostly hide each other by their closeness , but the sparser open grassland and pinyon pine juniper country looks lousy unless each tree is dropped a bit, and it takes forever .....
That is where the Picklists are the solution you are looking for.
Picklist is the red buttons on the one screen that you can save your favarite stuff right? Not siting at my computer right now, I have a bunch of stuff saved that way, however not sure how to use the other buttons, when I click on another one, it just shows what I have saved on the first one.
Also does not help that I lost my list when the game crashed last month, have not got around to putting all of my fav's back in.
Also have found that searching for something with that search button works better than using the search list on the right with each category.
Also does not help that I lost my list when the game crashed last month, have not got around to putting all of my fav's back in.
Also have found that searching for something with that search button works better than using the search list on the right with each category.
Picklists allow you to create collections or libraries of your favourite or most used assets. Instead of trolling through the long list of assets in the objects, rolling stock and other selection lists and trying to remember what that "really cool" asset was called, you can call up the relevant picklist have its contents displayed and for easy selection.
I have picklists for textures, rolling stock, trees, shrubs and bushes, houses, people, etc.
I have picklists for textures, rolling stock, trees, shrubs and bushes, houses, people, etc.
Maybe not "Least Favorite" but biggest PITA --- Knowing what's out there.
It seems the only way to become aware of things is to read the forums. Interlocking Towers have been around from before I started with Trainz. I just learned about them a year ago when someone posted a question about them. Schedule Library is another. YARNish Roads, ATLS and TRC. Just today I found out about some interesting stuff from trev999.
These are examples of stuff that provides solutions to problems, but there is not a centralized "learning place".
This also extends, to a degree, with "objects" like buildings and trees and textures. There's a beautiful modular Shopping Plaza created by davesnow. How did I found out about it? Someone commented about it in a forum.
There are 448,115 buildings, scripts, rules, textures, roads, etc, etc, etc. It's impossible to get a handle on even a tiny portion of everything. So, yeah, it's a PITA, but it's also great.
It seems the only way to become aware of things is to read the forums. Interlocking Towers have been around from before I started with Trainz. I just learned about them a year ago when someone posted a question about them. Schedule Library is another. YARNish Roads, ATLS and TRC. Just today I found out about some interesting stuff from trev999.
These are examples of stuff that provides solutions to problems, but there is not a centralized "learning place".
This also extends, to a degree, with "objects" like buildings and trees and textures. There's a beautiful modular Shopping Plaza created by davesnow. How did I found out about it? Someone commented about it in a forum.
There are 448,115 buildings, scripts, rules, textures, roads, etc, etc, etc. It's impossible to get a handle on even a tiny portion of everything. So, yeah, it's a PITA, but it's also great.
nfitzsimmons
New member
Getting too hung up with details. Once I get started I find it hard to stop. At one point I found myself putting rose bushes in the yard of a house six blocks from the nearest track. I don't know why. Nobody was ever going to see them.
It is almost as if you believe that you are creating a real world so everything, and I do mean everything, has to be perfect. You have to be a practitioner of the art of deception.
I use lo-poly assets (where available) for objects that are far from the track and only use the hi-poly assets close to the track. My favourite set of scenery houses is by sirgibby who has created 35 different houses with most of them supplied in normal, lo-poly and hi-poly versions. Most of these are already built in to TANE.
Other deception tricks include using the same buildings but orientating them so that a different side is seen from the tracks each time. Use of foliage to provide camouflage for lack of detail. Using textures to replace foliage in more distant scenes and to highlight gullies and streams.
You know they are there. You see them. You are the artistic creator.
But I understand where you're coming from. I have a large (for me) 30 baseboard layout of the Tampa Rockport area. I spent a lot of time Google mapping to get accurate distances. I put in all tracks and industries (named) and sidings. I spent hours and hours putting in trees and shrubs and crossings and etc, etc. I have come to realize that, on a layout that large, I'll never have enough time to make the entire layout look really, really good.
So, I decided to make a small 2 Baseboard layout where I can concentrate on the finer details. I may even put a rose bush in front of one of only ten houses. Now I flip back and forth between the two layouts depending on where my creative juices direct me. I also realize I'll never "finish" either one.
nfitzsimmons
New member
I think you may have missed my point. It's more of an OCD thing with me.
Possibly, but it is always far too easy for anyone, OCD or not, to get carried away with the detail - I have been there, done that and I do not consider myself to have OCD.
It is not just the wasted time and effort simply because no one will ever see it that far out from that track, it is also the effects on frame rates and performance. This will be less of a problem to those of us who have the "latest and greatest" gaming rigs but for many (most) of us without that advantage, the techniques I included in my previous post will allow "the details" to be there without the penalties.
euromodeller
Imagineer
Tunnels!
As in trying to create a small model railway with 760mm/30in track.
Finding tunnels is one thing, then getting them to fit/blend in is another.
We need a new method of tunnelling!
Maybe I should change from small narrow gauge modelling to large open spaced Aus/USA routes instead
As in trying to create a small model railway with 760mm/30in track.
Finding tunnels is one thing, then getting them to fit/blend in is another.
We need a new method of tunnelling!
Maybe I should change from small narrow gauge modelling to large open spaced Aus/USA routes instead
nfitzsimmons
New member
Actually, I don't consider myself to have OCD; it was a joke about doing things just because I can, not because I should.
And as it turns out I do have the latest and greatest gaming machine.
Fiddling with objects that have way too big or way too small a radius of influence. Yesterday I was trying to move a few trees and every tree would move except the one I wanted, even trees that were many meters away. Multi industry track is another culprit. Had a nice freight warehouse set up and was trying to add some signage and clutter every time I tried to rotate or move anything the track moved. I tried every angle and direction know to man and eventually got it but I'm sure my blood pressure went up more than it should have. Conversely, some items are just about impossible to more, rotate or delete unless one gets lucky enough to find the invisible sweet spot.