Narrow TurfFX?

Guys, I could not look up this info. Can you have a narrow TurfFX effect? I think they look best close to the cam, like trackside grass. I want to add TurfFX next to the external rails of a pair of tracks, with no grasses between the rails of a track. Probably some grass could be displayed between the tracks. I can't do it. If I set radius to 5 m (Surveyor 2.0), most of the time the circle is red, and if it becomes white for any reason, and I add a piece of effect with this minimal radios, it becomes so much larger, and grass is displayed between rails, which is unrealistic. See the video to overcome my cumbersome description.

[video]https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H4cTMexHR-bbA8zNTUPshiRnSoMVAyYM/view?usp=sharing[/video]

I don't think this is possible due to how the TurfFX works. TurfFX is a vertex-based effect meaning the procedural grass is placed on the vertex points of each grid square. If the track or road crosses between grid points, or is very close, then the grass will go on top of the nearby object much in the way textures which are placed the same way. This is why we have angular zigzag patterns when we use a smaller cursor when painting ballast and why we have sawtooth ridges when we raise terrain along an angular path.

My solution to the grass problem is to use shorter grass. This isn't ideal, but it allows me to cover these areas between the track and the roads without poking through to intrusively.

Maybe someday we can have this, but until the grid is made finer this will be an issue even with the 5-meter grid we have today.

Another solution I have seen recently is to use a track bed spline to raise the track above the height of the grass. A more left field option is to paint water below ground level under the track, then set TurfFX to avoid water.

Thank you both, I hoped we don't need to apply such workarounds, but if this is how it goes, then it goes like this.

grazlash said:

Another solution I have seen recently is to use a track bed spline to raise the track above the height of the grass. A more left field option is to paint water below ground level under the track, then set TurfFX to avoid water.

Click to expand...

Could you elaborate a bit more on this left-field option? I've hardly ever used water on my route yet, so I may be noob here. Say my terrain is 103 m under the track. Can I paint both a ballast texture and a water texture under the track by somehow telling Trainz to consider the water texture is under water level (say I set it to 90 metres). I'm not saying this is the perfect solution, I'm just wondering how this works to learn about the mechanism.

Anyway, my big issue with track bed splines is that I'm quite determined to create a fully seasonal route, and most of the splines are not seasonal -- apart from the fact that much of those are not PBR either, so they just don't play well with seasonal PBR textures around.