Modelling topology without TransDEM

Spend the money and buy the program. Where else do you get personal support from the developer himself.

GeoPhil, I bet you have fun at October-fest. :)

William
 
I will second on buying TransDEM. It can be intimidating but once you get the hang of it it's easy and save sooooooooooooo much time.
 
I agree. There is ONE very good YouTube video on how to use it; and after MANY tries at it, I finally figured out TransDEM. That being said, you still need to check Google Earth for visual confirmations of the route; looking for level grade crossings and other clues that tell you which heights are correct or not. Of course, if you are doing a completely rural route, then you need to judge where a cut or mound is needed for a realistic gradient. It also depends if your route is prototypical or fantasy. (Because who would know if it's wrong on a fantasy route!)
I also used topo maps and personal visits to areas for my current route; and while it seems fairly accurate overall, there will always be compromises.
Have fun building!

I will second on buying TransDEM. It can be intimidating but once you get the hang of it it's easy and save sooooooooooooo much time.
 
If you want to create realistic terrain, the only excuse for not buying TransDEM is that you can't afford it. But it's very reasonably priced, so that doesn't apply to most people. I was actually doing a bit of manual terra-forming on a model railway layout created using Basemapz and I'd forgotten how absolutely tedious it is (and it never looks quite right either.)

Paul
 
Used TransDEM back in 2004 to 2005 time frame. Now using Macs so that isn’t possible. What is the format of the ground, track, baseboard and other related route files Trains will allow 3rd party programs to create or edit? I’ve been searching around for days now to figure that out.

I’m hoping to be able to not use Windows programs. I’m glad to see this thread.
 
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Used TransDEM back in 2004 to 2005 time frame. Now using Macs so that isn’t possible. What is the format of the ground, track, baseboard and other related route files Trains will allow 3rd party programs to create or edit? I’ve been searching around for days now to figure that out.

I’m hoping to be able to not use Windows programs. I’m glad to see this thread.
Way back in TRS04-06 days Auran did finally give out some details of the mapfile formats after promising to do it for a year or so. Back in UTC days I had hacked some of it with a couple of other trainzers but to get copies of Auran's new doc (5 pages IIRC) you had to sign nda's which I did eventually after I learned of its existence. I still have that info and have hacked a little bit more but gave up on seeing for me it would always be just a hobby effort and seemingly falling further behind with each new release. N3V kept putting me off when I asked when updates to the original docs might be available. Seems they had more important stuff to work on and never had anyone available to update a 5 or 6 page doc. It's quite evident they never intend to handle it like that again.

The new TNI will most likely be the only official way supported going forward and you probably won't have access to the formats with it either. But you might be able to kludge together some way to write mapfiles with 3rd party programs. I'm not sure MAC is supported directly since MS support is required with the TNI. But maybe cross platform support can be coerced somehow. I don't work with MACs so can't be of help there.

Transdem's developer worked with copies of the same docs I had but managed to hack each and every new version change at least up to TANE SP1. With SP2 N3V made some drastic changes to the formats and even Roland seems to be on hold at that level. Not all that bad as Surveyor (at least prior to TRS19) will read in all previous versions (with a few easy name edits required since TS12) but not being able to read the newer formats does prevent some features of Transdem from being available in TANE SP2 and newer.

Bob Pearson
 
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There was a thread a few months back about a website that had height maps of the USA available for download. I replied to it in great detail about how you could use them as displacement maps to sculpt terrain on multiple baseboards. I believe I showed a sample of a 4 x 4 baseboards layout of the area around Durango, CO. Since I wrote it all down there I won't bother doing it again. Happy searching.

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ement-maps-(greyscale-topography-height-maps)

William
 
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There was a thread a few months back about a website that had height maps of the USA available for download. I replied to it in great detail about how you could use them as displacement maps to sculpt terrain on multiple baseboards. I believe I showed a sample of a 4 x 4 baseboards layout of the area around Durango, CO. Since I wrote it all down there I won't bother doing it again. Happy searching.

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ement-maps-(greyscale-topography-height-maps)

William

Yes I tried this program and it does do some cool stuff. I agree it takes some futzing with to get it right, but it's a nice way to generate displacement maps.
 
Displacement mapping does help. I'm not sure I can use it for the same level of accuracy as TransDem. At least it is a tool I can use, rather than fully manual. Thank you.

I know I saw somewhere, the documentation for 2009, however I cannot find it again, and I'm not sure what it covered. I was thinking from reading around, the change in formats and lack of documentation is preventing full compatibility. This is a bummer, when we need new tools to deal with things and more tools on the Mac.

The TNI wiki page says the Surveyor interface is, "Not yet implemented."
 
Transdem's developer worked with copies of the same docs I had but managed to hack each and every new version change at least up to TANE SP1. With SP2 N3V made some drastic changes to the formats and even Roland seems to be on hold at that level. Not all that bad as Surveyor (at least prior to TRS19) will read in all previous versions (with a few easy name edits required since TS12) but not being able to read the newer formats does prevent some features of Transdem from being available in TANE SP2 and newer.

I already had some of the new formats deciphered (only those that TransDEM writes or reads, of course), but then encountered some strange stuff in the obs files, IIRC. It looked like 3D transformation matrices but I couldn't figure out what the purpose was and whether and how they would be affected if I alter coordinate values.
 
I'm sure you're doing your best Roland, but isn't it time N3V offered you full collaboration/partnership bearing in mind you've created the most important and valuable add-on in the history of Trainz?

Paul
 
I tried hex editor on the ground file, however I didn’t see any changes. Is there notes you can share, that is not covered by NDA?
 
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