horacefithers
New member
The rollercoaster area was quite difficult to create. If N3V provided a true smoothing tool in addition to the plateau tool it would have been a lot easiet.
I laid the track first, then adjusted its elevations to make the mini hills and valleys after which I hit 'S' and smother the roadbed below the track into conformity. Then I used the plateau tool to run "ribs" out at right angles from the roadbed at the peaks and troughs and started filling in between them. The filling in took forever. I'd get some done then look at it and decide the hills/valleys were too high/low and adjust the track. Then repeat the terrain smoothing process. Again.
Then I painted the ground and chased around it looking at the contours from low elevation. This showed places where it was too rough or too smooth. Given the length of this area that was a LOT of chasing round adjusting elevations.
I think I put at least a week into the ground contours, painting (I ended up using a reddish PBL foliage texture with minus feature size...) and repainting, planting the occasional bush, tree, and lots of sagebrush.
Then I realized the some of the track that was supposed to be straight had gotten worked out of line back when I was adding curves (thank you for that feature N3V, not...) so I laid a roller from one end to the other of the unstraight section a tweaked the track to follow the ruler. Then I needed to go back and move underbrush, cuts, phone poles, fences, and dry grass TurfFX. I kept all the textures in this area PBL to avoid TurfFX artifacts that arise when transitioning from PBL to non-PBL
I got the idea of rollercoaster from the Portland and Western track running from Beaverton to Hillsboro next to Hwy 8 (Tualatin Valley Hwy). There are a series of small hills there, probably a max delta height of 15'. The train crews call it the rollercoaster.
HF
I laid the track first, then adjusted its elevations to make the mini hills and valleys after which I hit 'S' and smother the roadbed below the track into conformity. Then I used the plateau tool to run "ribs" out at right angles from the roadbed at the peaks and troughs and started filling in between them. The filling in took forever. I'd get some done then look at it and decide the hills/valleys were too high/low and adjust the track. Then repeat the terrain smoothing process. Again.
Then I painted the ground and chased around it looking at the contours from low elevation. This showed places where it was too rough or too smooth. Given the length of this area that was a LOT of chasing round adjusting elevations.
I think I put at least a week into the ground contours, painting (I ended up using a reddish PBL foliage texture with minus feature size...) and repainting, planting the occasional bush, tree, and lots of sagebrush.
Then I realized the some of the track that was supposed to be straight had gotten worked out of line back when I was adding curves (thank you for that feature N3V, not...) so I laid a roller from one end to the other of the unstraight section a tweaked the track to follow the ruler. Then I needed to go back and move underbrush, cuts, phone poles, fences, and dry grass TurfFX. I kept all the textures in this area PBL to avoid TurfFX artifacts that arise when transitioning from PBL to non-PBL
I got the idea of rollercoaster from the Portland and Western track running from Beaverton to Hillsboro next to Hwy 8 (Tualatin Valley Hwy). There are a series of small hills there, probably a max delta height of 15'. The train crews call it the rollercoaster.
HF
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