Real orography for rookies

Good afternoon


Perhaps you have ever wanted to make a small module or a real route but the difficulty has made you give up. Use the programs to do the
Orography is complicated and what I propose you will not avoid doing it by hand, but it will be with a solid base. There will be someone who
knows something better but this is for rookies (or not).


You need to install Google Earth (free) and have an image editor (gimp, adobe, etc).


I will explain how to do it.
The sections or tiles of Trainz measure 720 x 720 meters invariably and to that extent we base ourselves.
You open google earth and go to point 0 of what will be your route, the start, mark the point and open the ruler tool at the top,
Orient the image well to the north and with that tool place a line of 320 m towards each cardinal point, save the image.
With an image editing program make a square as in the images below and cut out; right now you have the full-scale image for Trainz.









I have a scenery object that I call " surveyor tile" and that measures 720x720 meters, I am going to upload it to the DLS now when I finish the post.


Kuid 876391: 22222222


Suppose that you already have it, since you edit it and replace the image that it bears with the one that you have made adjusting yours to the original, you validate it; now you go to surveyor mode and you can put it like a tree or a house. To continue making tiles you have to change the number of kuid with each one new you install, as many as necessary.


And that's it, you have permission to modify the image of the original object but it will have to have a kuid number of yours.
I hope it serves you in these times of isolation.


Greetings, Javier

Pretty sure you are not the first with this idea and I even think others have put similar assets on the DLS.

I even remember having a plugin for Google Maps that added a nice roster on the map in nice 720x720 squares so I could do larger areas.

I like the technique, yet it takes forever to do a bigger then small area.

Of course this idea would have been thought by others too, it came to me long ago.
It is a good tool for small routes because for a large one it is tedious as you say.
It is also useful to clone part of one route to another if you use screenshot instead of the google earth image.


Regards, Javier

Basemapz has worked well for me. I forget what settings I use but I was doing a live stream on it recently.

I might be doing some more this evening on the Chemical Spur on my Niagara build. Right now my Google Earth has tons of 720 x 720 squares. The bigger the route the chance that it will get thrown off my a meter or two from time to time (but I can live with that amount of error). All I know is my method eliminates those awful squares we had in Basemapz and connects properly by eye ball when you go to place the base map. I can rip through several in very little time.

Appreciate the idea though as I'm always looking for new ways of trying something.

Thanks

Sean

One other note is the error is not just matching the connecting grids by eye, but because the measurement tool in Google Earth Pro is not perfect. They give you 2 values which I believe is map size and total distance. I usually go with map size but even this can get thrown off especially on elevation changes. Again usually pretty close by a meter or two per grid.

Thanks

Sean

Thanks for the comments Sean.

Greetings, Javier