TransDEM Forum

I am both new to Trainz and TransDEM but I have some experience with other rail software. My ultimate goal is modeling the rail (and maybe also tram) network in a fairly large area in Germany, about 40 by 40 km total. Before I start digging into it, I have a very basic question.

Would I have to create the entire "route" in Trainz via TransDEM in one go or can this be split up into smaller sections? In order to familiarise myself with both softwares, I would prefer to start with a small section first and then gradually expand. For this it would be necessary to integrate new parts of the network seamlessly into the the existing file.

Absolutely.

Due to the static mapping of UTM coordinates to Trainz baseboards by TransDEM, you can seamlessly merge in Trainz Surveyor. You should use the same DEM data source for your modules and stay in the same UTM zone for this.

If your route crosses a UTM zone border (every 6th meridian, e.g. 12° east, Halle or Regensburg in Germany), you should define your primary UTM zone, the one with the bigger part of your route, and let TransDEM convert all geo data from the 2nd UTM zone to the primary one. It's more or less automatic if you load geo data from the primary UTM zone first.

I have been playing around a bit and got it to work "in principle", but the overlay textures are looking quite disappointing. I guess this is caused by the new HD terrain feature that restricts ground textures to just 16. I am using Trainz plus 2022, so I suppose I will have to live with it.

When I started with TransDEM for Trainz in 2004, Auran, now N3V, provided me with some documentation on the Trainz file structures, already somewhat outdated at that time. But that was that. All further modifications they made I had to figure out myself, without any help from them. I gave up after T:ANE, too much work for getting anywhere. So I'm afraid, HD terrain won't be supported.

The alternative to ground textures as a building aid are (3D) UTM tiles, as you will have learned from the Müngsten tutorial. Both have their pros and cons.

I just had an idea. HD terrain only supports 16 ground textures, but I heard you can give a texture as many colour tints as you want. So wouldn't it be possible to work with the colouring options instead of solid colour textures for HD terrains?

Even if TransDEM could generate HD terrain - which it cannot - that wouldn't work. ground textures are addresses by index from a palette. For conventional baseboards that was a palette of 256. Using only 20 for TransDEM and leaving the remaining ones for the user was intentional as cartographic maps don't have many colours.