TransDEM UTM tiles and uniform color tiles

martinvk

since 10 Aug 2002
TransDEM has this wonderful feature where it can create a set of UTM tiles containing the terrain data as a guide so that objects can be placed in the map with the correct spacial relationship. When the tile contains only water, the color used is a uniform teal and Trainz makes a fuss. I can go in a apply some noise to each tile to keep Trainz quiet but is there a way to have TransDEM do this at creation instead? Since it's only water, not much loss if those tiles get deleted but I'd like to keep the complete set.
 
The textures for the UTM tiles are kept here:

C:\Program Files\Ziegler-Tools\TransDEM-Ground-Textures

They are in CDPs. and there's no reason why you can't install them and fix the uniform-color issue in the one that's giving you a problem. If for some reason that particular texture is built-in, you can easily get around that by updating the version of the texture you repaired, and instead of submitting the asset, use Explorer and drag in the open-for-edit asset's folder back into Content Manager. This will obsolete the built-in one. Once imported, you can revert the original since you can't update that one. I learned this trick ages ago.
 
I read Martin's OP as a problem with the texture applied to the utm map tiles TransDem generates for the route (2D and 3D versions). These are unique textures made for each tile based on georeferenced imagery/maps. As I understand it the colors are based on the colors in the images. So the color of the water covering all of a 1x1km sq or 0.5x0.5km sq (as specified by the user) is based on the image colors for that area of the map. I'd have thought for typical maps a single color covering a tile would be a rather rare occurrence.

Are single color textures a hard error or a warning issue in CM TRS19?

Bob Pearson
 
Yes, I was referring to the TransDEM generated tiles. Since I'm using 500 m tiles and there is a lot of water in my map, about 24 tiles only had water and so have a single uniform color which triggers an error (the item is red in CM so it doesn't get used in the map.) Granted, there are no interesting details in those tiles but they do leave a hole in my map.

I manually added some noise to the image files so the problem went away - this time. Not a frequently occurring issue so not a high priority. just wish there was a simpler way.

On a related topic, anyone know what is wrong with a uniform color? And why adding even a spot of a slightly different shade makes it OK.
 
Yes, I was referring to the TransDEM generated tiles. Since I'm using 500 m tiles and there is a lot of water in my map, about 24 tiles only had water and so have a single uniform color which triggers an error (the item is red in CM so it doesn't get used in the map.) Granted, there are no interesting details in those tiles but they do leave a hole in my map.

I manually added some noise to the image files so the problem went away - this time. Not a frequently occurring issue so not a high priority. just wish there was a simpler way.

On a related topic, anyone know what is wrong with a uniform color? And why adding even a spot of a slightly different shade makes it OK.

I thought the TransDEM textures in those CDP files are the ones used for the UTM tiles since the UTM tiles are actual objects, but anyway at least you fixed it for now.

Uniform-colors are difficult for video cards to process I was told by my brother who does 3d graphics and modeling. A simple off-colored pixel is enough to break up the uniform-color and that fixes the problem since the texture is no longer 'uniform'.
 
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