Making a lake or stream.

Hi all is there any tuition videos on making a lake or stream for Trainz Platinum, I remember many years ago on the early Trainz I found it quite easy to get the movement of water. But cant find anything now that resembles a lake.

I only use TANE, where water movement is set in Environment settings, where it can be changed from glassy to rough, and various settings inbetween.

The method of creating lakes and streams in TRS19 has not changed since the earliest versions of Trainz. Make a depression in the terrain, use the water tool to fill the area with a "floating" water "texture", then raise or lower the water height to the required level. All of this is in the Topology Tool.

"Moving water", such as in a fast flowing stream or a waterfall, is an animated scenery object. Water surface effects, such as ripples, etc, is set in the Environment Tools as stated in the post above.

Kinda swiped N3V's tutorial here :hehe: (I don't use 2019, but T:ANE and 2019 should be the same with this) all of the above are right with the way to create the lake itself, but this is where you alter the color of the lake and it's ripple size. The top box is the ambient color which changes the overall ground color (like if someone put colored tape over the sun) the second box is the sun color. The bottom most box is the water color box. The three dials above the little picture change the color of whatever box you select. In your case, it would be the third box.

You can alter the water color by, from what I've said, changing the dials. If all 3 go to the very left, the water becomes dark. If they are changed to the middle, it becomes normal-ish lake water. All the way to the right makes the water look white. I recommend for realism changing all three to the same position. To change the ripple size, select the sun/cloud icon at the bottom of the 3 tabs on the left. There are more settings there as well for clouds, overall weather, wind speed and cloud types.

If you want to make a stream or river without having level water, you can use the many textures that are available.

There are also stream and river splines, but you can't animate any ripple effects.

You can also now, if careful "step" water which is far more effective than using a spline. You just need to approach the join between the different heights very carefully and you will get a transition slope. You may need to also use the terrain tool to lift the edges slightly around the transition area. Another tip which I picked up when trying to do canals, is don't set the ground level way below the water height. 0.1 or 0.2 metres more than enough. Paint under the water with a plain(ish) brown or green texture (the MLK moorland grass ones work well) for a good effect.

A little off subject. Is there anyway to put water in ditches and ruts on a dirt road. This would add a lot to realism.

kin3 said:

A little off subject. Is there anyway to put water in ditches and ruts on a dirt road. This would add a lot to realism.

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If the ground level is for instance 0.00, set the topography tool radius to its smallest setting and lower the ground to -0.02. Then set water under the depression to -0.01.