Transforming ordinary roads to seasonal snowy

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Just playing around with a way of adding snow to regular roads without requiring new versions of those roads (either seasonal or permanent snow versions) to be created. It relies on placing a seasonal snow spline over the top of a regular road. The snow displays only if its altitude is higher than the route's environmental snowline. Below that, the snow "melts" (= not displayed), leaving the regular road fully visible. The snow spline is not a road in itself, just an unattached accessory. As such, it does not affect the traffic settings of the road below it.

I am not sure how much interest there might be in this type of thing, but these screenshots illustrate the concept. The road here is a 2-lane, 40ft-wide AASHTO road by gfisher, but the snow can also work on roads by other creators too (maybe not all, but many) depending on their geometry.

EDIT: 12 Dec 2021
The 1- and 2-lane snow splines for roads shown in this thread are now available on the DLS ;

<kuid:68213:37380> Snow cover 6m 1L 01
<kuid:68213:37379> Snow cover 12m 2L 01

Screenshot of the 1-lane version: https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?165984-Transforming-ordinary-roads-to-seasonal-snowy&p=1900379#post1900379

Below snowline:



Above snowline;



Cheers all.

~ "Dino"




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[Forester1]

That's very clever! How does that work?

[Logman]

WoW love the snow texture and the tire wear in the snow. Nicely done

[Gary_Evans]

The road snow looks really great!!!

[JCitron]

That looks really awesome and that's very well done!

The snow looks like the light fluffy stuff that collects in the middle because public works didn't bother to plow it out of the way. We've had days like that and boy that stuff can get really dangerous to drive on when you hit the fluff in the middle with one side of the car.

[Christopher824]

That's incredible. Makes seasonal roads look obsolete. Is there a transition for example when a road is on an incline when it hits the snow level, simular to a LOD?

Anyway, can't wait to to play with it.

Thanks Dino!

[JimDep]

Looks great Deane ! Will this work for TANE too ?

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Thanks for the responses. It’s good to see some interest, a reason to continue with it. My plan is to do a 1-lane version and perhaps a couple of snow overlays for sidewalks, since there are very few seasonal sidewalk splines out there.

To answer the questions;

How does it work? No big secret. It simply uses the config tags season-selector and lod-season-index to tell the spline to show its snowy mesh when it is higher than the snowline, or no mesh when it is below the snowline. It doesn’t care what the actual season may be, it’s all purely based on snowline. The geometry of the spline mesh is actually just flat planes. Any impression of 3D thickness is only due to the normal-mapped texture.

Is there a transition if the road is on an incline that crosses the snowline level? There should be, yes. Any sections of the spline above the snowline should display snow, while any sections of the same spline below the snowline should be invisible. Unfortunately, the transition is sharp due to the “yes/no” config logic, and the nature of splines being just a series of repeated mesh units. I say “should” because there was a bug in the snowline logic of TANE at one stage where, instead of applying the user’s actual snowline value, it acted as if that value was always zero. I made a detailed report to N3V but haven’t checked if has been fixed in the latest service packs for TANE or TRS19.

Will it work in TANE? The spline is a build 4.4 asset, so yes, it does work in later editions of TANE. I had to make it 4.4 to disable shadows. They would otherwise ruin the impression of snow sitting on a road rather than floating slightly above it.

@JCitron - I lived and worked up in Montreal for a few years and really got to hate that white sh1t. The snow hump in between lanes was indeed dangerous, but at least you could see it. Worse for me was “black ice”. My little Mazda Miata did a full 720 degree spin in the middle of the on-ramp to the Champlain Bridge. Lucky it was 2 in the morning and no other traffic was on the road.

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[PC_Ace]

Stunning! Sublime; Sensational; Surreal; Superb!
Some more Dinorius_Redundicus masterful sorcery...

[JCitron]

Well Deane, you nailed it spot on. Yeah, that black ice is outright mean! You were lucky indeed.

I crashed into someone ahead of me because people cleared their driveways and dumped that white stuff on to the road and it glazed the surface. The traffic stopped ahead, and I slid into them. If I could have stopped a few feet ahead, I would have been safe, but my luck doesn't run in my favor.

[john2002]

We need a whole variety of seasonal buildings and structures for routes

MSTS/ORTS has been seasonal since day 1, why not?

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

We need a whole variety of seasonal buildings and structures for routes

MSTS/ORTS has been seasonal since day 1, why not?

Probably because many Trainz creators are non-professional hobbyists not bound by a company standard that mandates seasonal capability. Plus it's a lot of work to prepare the extra textures, to code the configs, and it usually doubles the file-size of the assets. Even when things like LOD's are mandated, you still see a lot of complaining and exploitation of loopholes to avoid doing the right thing.

So if you want more seasonal stuff, kick-start your Blender, Max or gmax and create.


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[hert]

TUME kinda took the whole seasonal thing and ran with it. Was one of the first to implement it back in the TS12 days if I remember correctly, both his MILW Avery-Drexel and Municipal routes with all his custom content took advantage of it. On a the topic of this thread those look really cool. A really interesting concept, would try it out on my routes for sure.

[dangavel]

looks great. could it also be applied to track ?

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

looks great. could it also be applied to track?

I don't think so. Tracks have much more complex 3D shapes than typical roads.