Surveyor 2.0 - Discussion Thread

I am trying to generate forests with 'ease' using speed trees, individually placing them down on a grid as I did in previous iteration of trainz and then copy and paste as necessary to complete the forest.

However, using S2.0, when I copy a group of trees then paste them, the game is completely throws the height off and suddenly an entire grid on the route has been elevated.

HHKnuP2.jpg

HHKnuP2

HHKnuP2

HHKnuP2
 
Looking at your screenshot, the green lines along the baseboard boundaries indicate that you have selected the trees and the baseboards. So when you raised them, the selected baseboards went up as well.

Actually, your "problem" has answered a question that I was pondering. How to raise the baseboards and everything on them to a new base height without destroying set landscaping? Thank you for that.

In regards to your problem. I just attempted what you were trying to do by using the marque tool to only select and raise the trees and I had no problem doing this. The baseboard on which they were located was selected (green border) but it did not move up with the trees. How widely did you draw your marquee area?
 
Last edited:
pware said:
Looking at your screenshot, the green lines along the baseboard boundaries indicate that you have selected the trees and the baseboards. So when you raised them, the selected baseboards went up as well.

Actually, your "problem" has answered a question that I was pondering. How to raise the baseboards and everything on them to a new base height without destroying set landscaping? Thank you for that.

In regards to your problem. I just attempted what you were trying to do by using the marque tool to only select and raise the trees and I had no problem doing this. The baseboard on which they were located was selected (green border) but it did not move up with the trees. How widely did you draw your marquee area?
Click to expand...

Which means you can now merge routes and adjust the height if theres a difference by pasting the scenery at a new height.
 
Hi Evan,

It took me a while to figure this out but there is a simple solution! At the bottom right of the S20 interface click the Filter drop-down.
This defaults to overwriting everything meaning that if you drag to select a group of meshes then move or copy then it will delete everything already in the destination and also moves the height and textures, which is rarely what I want to actually do! For your task of adding trees, try the following:

  • Ground height = none
  • Texture = none
  • Meshes = Add
  • Splines = Add
  • Effect layers = unless you are copying TurfFX then that should be none.
Surveyor-2.0-Filters-interface.jpg


Kind regards,

Gary
 
The default version of the settings that Gary has referred to are not those that I typically use so it would be handy to have the game save your own preferred settings.

Paul
 
GaryReggae said:
It took me a while to figure this out ... At the bottom right of the S20 interface click the Filter drop-down.
Click to expand...

It took me a while to figure out what you had written above. What you are referring to is the Scrapbook panel/pallete which has a filter. This panel is normally off (or I originally set it off) so it has to be made visible - click the Window Menu icon (2nd last) and tick Scrapbook. You select an area with the marquee tool, press Ctrl C and the contents of the marquee are copied to a scrapbook.

In exploring these particular posts I have discovered (S20 is a learning curve) that you can use the Filter in the Assets panel to narrow down your marquee selection.

For example, all my trees are in a Trees Picklist. So in the Assets panel I set:-

  • the top dropbox to Filter Selection
  • the middle dropbox to my Trees Picklist
  • the bottom dropbox I start a search - e.g. I type Euc to select only those trees in my Picklist which have Euc in their name (e.g. Eucalypt) and then I use the left mouse button and Ctrl key to only select those particular Eucalypt trees that I want

Then I use the Marquee tool to draw out the selection area. Only those trees that match my filter settings will be selected.

S20 - learning new tricks all the time.
 
GaryReggae said:
Hi Evan,

It took me a while to figure this out but there is a simple solution! At the bottom right of the S20 interface click the Filter drop-down.
This defaults to overwriting everything meaning that if you drag to select a group of meshes then move or copy then it will delete everything already in the destination and also moves the height and textures, which is rarely what I want to actually do! For your task of adding trees, try the following:

  • Ground height = none
  • Texture = none
  • Meshes = Add
  • Splines = Add
  • Effect layers = unless you are copying TurfFX then that should be none.


Kind regards,

Gary
Click to expand...

That worked, thank you Gary!


Here's another one for you -

Why is it that when I am applying texture paint, it also adjusts the height for where I am applying the texture? Is it possible to apply texture paint without the height being changed?
 
evan123 said:
Why is it that when I am applying texture paint, it also adjusts the height for where I am applying the texture? Is it possible to apply texture paint without the height being changed?
Click to expand...

It is highly likely that the texture you are applying is a PBR texture which has a height component (i.e. it is a 3D texture). This will alter the terrain height by a few centimetres which is most noticeable when it is used "under" track.

There have been a number of threads on this issue. It does take some care and PBR textures do have some "rules" when being applied such as:-

  1. do not use the rotate tools (the "[" and "]" keys) when painting unless absolutely necessary
  2. do not mix PBR and non-PBR textures - the height issue will raise its ugly head

Despite all that I have moved over to using only PBR textures because, in my opinion at least, its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages.

Most PBR textures have the letter "PBR" in their name but there are some that don't - that is in the hands of the creator.

I will add that none of these issues are the fault of N3V, they are common to all platforms that use PBR textures.
 
pware said:
It is highly likely that the texture you are applying is a PBR texture which has a height component (i.e. it is a 3D texture). This will alter the terrain height by a few centimetres which is most noticeable when it is used "under" track.

There have been a number of threads on this issue. It does take some care and PBR textures do have some "rules" when being applied such as:-

  1. do not use the rotate tools (the "[" and "]" keys) when painting unless absolutely necessary
  2. do not mix PBR and non-PBR textures - the height issue will raise its ugly head

Despite all that I have moved over to using only PBR textures because, in my opinion at least, its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages.

Most PBR textures have the letter "PBR" in their name but there are some that don't - that is in the hands of the creator.

I will add that none of these issues are the fault of N3V, they are common to all platforms that use PBR textures.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the response Pware!

If you merge non-pbr and pbr textures together, will the route suffer from performance issues? I was told that rotating PBR textures will in fact decrease performance.
 
evan123 said:
If you merge non-pbr and pbr textures together, will the route suffer from performance issues? I was told that rotating PBR textures will in fact decrease performance.
Click to expand...

No performance issues that I have read about, just the height issue where the two different textures meet. Rotating a PBR texture forces Trainz to reload the texture file (MBs in size) multiple times, once for each rotation angle. That could have performance issues.
 
In surveyor 2.0 instead switching to the grid texture is there a way to just put baseboards down without the grass texture on it where it is just bare grid if that makes sense like tane and ts12 had in surveyor mode
 
shaun_rt said:
In surveyor 2.0 instead switching to the grid texture is there a way to just put baseboards down without the grass texture
Click to expand...

The same method (without using the grid texture control) works in both Surveyor 2.0 and Surveyor Classic. Set the region property of your route to a region that has its grid texture set to the old TRS19 grid (or similar).

There are a number of suitable regions available on the DLS.

Some examples for the USA:-
<kuid:45176:100437> United States with TRS19 Grid
<kuid:647907:102143> CDE USA Grid Region
<kuid:647907:102314> CDE USA Grid Region Tampa Florida

Install any of the above and then in Edit Route (Surveyor Edit Drop down menu) set the Region to the downloaded asset.
 
so digging up an "ancient" topic, wow almost a whole year later, you seem to be the only person i have seen mention this. Will TRS22 ever get a "free" upgrade to S20? Or will S20 only ever be accessible via a subscription?
 
rjc0235 said:
so digging up an "ancient" topic, wow almost a whole year later, you seem to be the only person i have seen mention this. Will TRS22 ever get a "free" upgrade to S20? Or will S20 only ever be accessible via a subscription?
Click to expand...

I get the impression that S2.0 is still not ready, still in beta.
 
amigacooke said:
I get the impression that S2.0 is still not ready, still in beta.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I am mildly tempted by the current Black Friday offer of getting a year of Trainz+ and a copy of TRS22 "free to keep" once the sub has expired. But if TRS22 never gets the S2.0 update for "free" i really don't want to be burning a hole in my wallet every year!
 
Surveyor 2 is in Beta so plus subscription only, probably up to the next major release of TRS23 or whatever comes next as happened with the Unified Driver and other updates that were Plus and are now TRS22.

Whereas it is nice to be able to try out new features in Plus it is a Beta so as with all betas there will have problems or things tried out, that may or may not make it into the next major version, pretty much as what happens with Windows Insiders.

I would imagine that with the new HD Terrain there will need to be a lot of tweaking and adjustment and testing and learning by those testing to be done before it becomes safe to release to the masses with hopefully bugs ironed out.
 
clam1952 said:
Surveyor 2 is in Beta so plus subscription only, probably up to the next major release of TRS23 or whatever comes next as happened with the Unified Driver and other updates that were Plus and are now TRS22.
Click to expand...

Unified Driver was TRS19 Platinum as well.
 
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