Effect Grass Covers Entire Route!

I was fiddling with Grass Effect in a field trying to better understand the odd way it is designed. After a lunch break I called up the route and discovered that the green grass I was using now covers the entire route. If this feature is supposed to be ready for general customer use then my system must have its own major fault. Platinum 105100. Yes, I can remove the many square miles of grass by just not enabling the Grass/Clutter Effect.

I should have known better. The prior version of TRS19 (about 1yr ago) did the same thing. I assumed/hoped that if I bought a new version it might work, but no luck.

boleyd said:

I was fiddling with Grass Effect in a field trying to better understand the odd way it is designed. After a lunch break I called up the route and discovered that the green grass I was using now covers the entire route. If this feature is supposed to be ready for general customer use then my system must have its own major fault. Platinum 105100. Yes, I can remove the many square miles of grass by just not enabling the Grass/Clutter Effect.

I should have known better. The prior version of TRS19 (about 1yr ago) did the same thing. I assumed/hoped that if I bought a new version it might work, but no luck.

Click to expand...

I had this happen once. I selected the effect specifically and deleted it. Not necessary to disable the other effects. In my case, the grass was about 20 ft high along the edges and waving wildly like some horror movie.

boleyd said:

After a lunch break I called up the route and discovered that the green grass I was using now covers the entire route.

Click to expand...

There is a bug in the turfx editor so that if you specify the density as zero then it covers the whole route instead of just using the constant. You may be able to fix it by changing the density from zero to int1. Otherwise the only option is to remove the effect and start a new one.

pitkin said:

In my case, the grass was about 20 ft high along the edges and waving wildly like some horror movie.

Click to expand...

There could be a demand for that - a layout recreation of a horror movie scene

pware said:

There could be a demand for that - a layout recreation of a horror movie scene

Click to expand...

Trainzers are often trend-setters.

Hi All
It is definitely possible to set your grass to cover the entire route using the existing settings, and this is an intentional feature (although not one that is going to be used a lot I think).

In this case there are two values that will cause this.

The primary one is the 'default value' setting below 'turffx-density'.

If you set this to above 0 then there is a high chance that the entire route will be covered in grass. However the exact likelihood of this is based on the setting you have for the 'int'/'float' setting (the left hand drop down) for the 'tuffx-density'. If this is set to int1, then only values over 0.5 for 'default value' will cause grass to appear all over the route; however higher settings in the 'int/float' box will lower the 'minimum' value at which the default-value setting will cause grass to appear (ie int2 will display grass at any value over ~0.33; int3 will display grass at any value over ~0.14, and so on).

For most routes, setting the default-value setting to 0 will be best, so as to allow you to selectively paint in the TurfFX. However if you are making a small diorama, or simular, and most of the map will have that grass effect then increasing this value may be more useful (allowing you to instead paint 'out' grass, rather than paint it 'in').

Regards

ZecMurphy said:

It is definitely possible to set your grass to cover the entire route using the existing settings, and this is an intentional feature (although not one that is going to be used a lot I think).

Click to expand...

What you have described may be a feature, but the issue the OP describes is a bug. If density is set to zero then the whole route is covered in the TurfX. It can't be deleted. It can be painted out, in some regions only, but it will re-appear on any new baseboard.

If there really was some use for this 'feature' then it would be labelled for what it really is, not some obscure combination of two unrelated settings. But in any case, as you note, it is only suitable in very small layouts, and in that case adding texture with a large brush is a simpler way to do it.

Look at the forum postings - it has been reported many times as a surprising, unexpected and unwanted result. I am not aware of any forum posting identifying it as a benefit other than this one.

Hi SailorDan
Unfortunately as there is only limited information in the original post, there wasn't enough for me to see that the description was a bug and not a changed setting in the TurfFX settings in the route.

I have seen some reports come through of similar issues, however we have not yet been able to reproduce these issues inhouse, which basically makes it impossible to resolve the issue.

If someone can provide reliable steps to reproduce this issue, then we may be able to investigate further.

Please note, however, that there are some cases where incorrect data is in the route's files (potentially from bugs in much earlier builds of Trainz, that have since been resolved but may not 'repair' the route) may cause this to occur when turffx is added to an affected part of the route. In this case, unfortunately the issue is with the route rather than Trainz itself. The only solution is to re-do the TurfFX in that location, although in some cases the incorrect data may be extensive enough to continue to cause this issue. From memory creating a new route, then merging the existing route into it, may resolve these issues in the route's data.

Regards

ZecMurphy said:

If someone can provide reliable steps to reproduce this issue, then we may be able to investigate further.

Click to expand...

Open the Topology tab, select Advanced and click on the effect icon to open the Effect Layers dialogue.
Enter a name for the effect.
Change the turfx_density to 'Zero'. This means that no data space will be consumed for the density setting, so the Sensitivity control cannot be used to control the density. The default will be used instead.
Set the Constant value (immediately below the density setting, not the one below the height scale) to the required default density - 10 is suitable.
Leave all the other settings unchanged and click Apply and close the dialogue.
Select the Height Up tool and click anywhere on the baseboard.
What should happen is that the baseboard is painted with the effect within the paint circle at the default density. Instead, the whole route is painted with the effect.

Note that the effect spills over the edge of the baseboard.
Note also that the Height Down tool has no effect at any setting of the Sensitivity control.
Note also that any baseboard added to the map will also be painted with the effect.

Open the effect for editing and change the default density to a different value. Note how the density changes. So the application of the default value to the effect is working correctly. But there is no way to apply it selectively.

There does not seem to be any way to remove the effect other than deleting it and starting over. If turfx_density is set to 1-bit then part of it can be removed by painting; it remains at the edges of the route (and, of course, that part that falls outside the edges). If the density is edited back to zero then it re-appears across the whole route.

SailorDan said:

Change the turfx_density to 'Zero'. This means that no data space will be consumed for the density setting, so the Sensitivity control cannot be used to control the density.

Click to expand...

Setting it to this setting will allow no variation, but will still allow the 'constant' value (and possibly the 'default' value) to be set, as effectively you are telling Trainz there is zero variability to this setting.

This is what this setting does, it controls how much variability you can have.

Zero = no variability (ie you have no control over the density via the brush tools, but you can set a fixed/hard value in the effect layer configuration)
Int1 = 2 levels of variation + off (ie off, half, full)
Int2 = 3 levels of variation + off (ie off, 1/3, 2/3, full)
Int3 = 7 levels of variation + off (ie off, 1/7, 2/7... 6/7, full)

You may not personally want to use every setting, but we do provide these settings for those who do want them.

Regards

ZecMurphy said:

This is what this setting does, it controls how much variability you can have.

Click to expand...

That's correct - it means that the sensitivity setting does not control the density while you are painting, and that multiple clicks will not change the density.

That's what it should be.

What actually happens is that the radius control has no effect while you are painting and that the whole surface of the route (and a bit more) gets covered with just one click.

SailorDan said:

That's correct - it means that the sensitivity setting does not control the density while you are painting, and that multiple clicks will not change the density.

Click to expand...

No, it means that there is NO control over density what so ever. It is what ever is configured in the settings across the route.

In this case the bug appears to be that the effect layer is not actually updating for the changes in the settings. Instead it is updating after you click on the route with any of the 'height' tools (when in effect layer mode).

I have tested this here in the latest build (latest Trainz Plus build in this case), and have confirmed that in this build the TurfFX will now automatically update after this change is submitted (it does take a few seconds, due to the way the new preview window works for TurfFX).

Regards

ZecMurphy said:

No, it means that there is NO control over density what so ever. It is what ever is configured in the settings across the route.

Click to expand...

That is coverage, not density. No control over the density means you cannot control how much is applied - it does not mean that you cannot control where it is applied. They are two quite different things.

There is nothing in the turfx editing that could be construed as 'settings across the route'. If someone thought that covering the whole route with the effect was a worthwhile feature it would have been implemented as part of the painting procedure, not as density values within a particular effect, there would be a way of removing it, and it would not extend beyond the boundaries of the baseboard. The surprising and unexpected coverage of the entire route is an accidental result of the way that effects have been coded.