TransDEM Forum

So there is quite a bit here, but it's all common to my struggles. Despite the failures I'm learning from them so that is a good thing. But to boost my struggles along I thought I'd post a message at what I'm up against.

The route I'm building represents about 30 miles by 20 miles long. I found out quickly enough the limitations of 25 and was able to expand it with the route option then I ran into the 999 limitation of UTM's so I uploaded I believe 4 sections at a time. Not sure how many UTM's I had in the final version but it covered most with few exceptions of the 30 by 20 mile section. Niagara is a hybrid for various railroads in between the Great Lakes of Erie and Ontario in Canada. The naked eye on a clear day can see both lakes from the highest location and quite far which I wanted to represent in the limitations of Trainz 2019. I believe I changed the option in Trainz to allow for unlimited range as well. Despite that of course there is a limit but that is fine, it's just a sim.

The way I tackled this was to have a UTM route range in the settings of 10, and baseboards I believe 13 from the track. I only draw in the mainline and branch and not all the yard and industry tracks. I didn't put a background painted on the baseboards (More on that in a moment) but used UTM Ortho images from Bing. To get the effect of less detail scenery in the background I started with level 14 to generate on the routes all the way up to level 19 which was the most detail I could get across the system (20 was in some areas but not all so I skipped that). The result was more detail on the top layers with less detail on the bottoms and further away from the mains. In editing which I did see at one time I had plenty of far away detail on the lakes and the Niagara Escarpment (which represents the drop of Niagara Falls across a vast range across Niagara and beyond). So here are the issues I've come across. Basically it worked at first, but after 1 run Trainz just hangs on the constant loading screen.

1) Trying to delete older versions of the route. Because of the failures and learning from them I had plenty of versions. I removed them from what I can tell both in game as well as the DLS. But it appears despite emptying recycling bin I never got the disk space back. I learned later about clearing up the editing folder but that hasn't helped. Not sure where all these files are hiding.

2) To try and reduce the disk space once I made room again, I wanted to do an orthoimage for the entire baseboard system for a nice low quality image instead of using so many UTMs in the distance. The issue and I looked in the manual I installed the ortho package but I'm not sure where to look to pull it up (the file it's asking for in TransDem).

3) I'm getting a missing dependency as well and I'm not sure if this is because I'm overwriting the route to fit more UTM's and this could be the issue.

Now I did try the merge route function which I've done before but the elevations where different for some reason when I merged them. I assume it's because I did it my own way as I've merged routes in Trainz before prior to TransDem. Possibly has to do with the origin point, not sure.

I'm curious how to solve those issues, and what might be the best strategy. Once I'm done building the route which could take months if not years, I'll remove the UTM's but for now I enjoy seeing them for my own personal use.

Thanks for the assistance.

Sean

So I was toying around a bit and found some success and some more roadblocks.

1) I found the backups folder which seemed to have some old routes that I was able to get back some space.

2) It looks as if I have an orthoimage paint some of the scenery disappears (such as track roadbed not rails) and the UTM's are no longer visible. This did help in my resources as I stuck to up to level 15 in painting on the baseboards while using Levels 16 to 19 as UTM's. Unfortunately the UTM portion didn't work out as planned. I hit F9 in edit and the UTM's never showed up. Not sure if they were plotted wrong or not compatible with an ortho baseboard.

3) The missing dependency has not been an issue in this route.

Hopefully I can be directed on what I'm missing.

Thanks

Sean

Not quite sure I fully understand your question. The UTM tile is an ordinary Trainz asset, albeit quite large, that serves purely as a texture carrier. The texture is the ortho-image or map or whatever was currently on top in the TransDEM main window when you started the export. I assume you use 3D UTM tiles. That means that the existing Trainz terrain in the route serves as a template for the UTM tile terrain, reduced to the 10 m grid by default. The default vertical position of the tile is slightly above the Trainz ground.

Now, if the tile textures conceals low assets on the route, like track or track bed, you can raise or lower the UTM tile in Trainz Surveyor with the standard edit tool, since the UTM tile is just another scenery asset, like a building or a tree.

What are the missing dependencies? You are aware that you cannot add UTM tiles to an existing route at the moment, once it has been edited in Surveyor (T:ANE SP2 and above, TRS2019)?

Yeah I believe I tried that which caused a missing dependency but now I'm starting from scratch every time and it has no issues.

So I'm in 2019 using 3D UTM's. I can raise the UTM further up (I haven't tried that). I know the default is set at 10CM above. Does a baseboard texture overwrite or cover a UTM texture or is it just buried?

What I wouldn't mind doing is getting baseboard paint or map in low resolutions outside of the 3 UTM width of the mains for background images of distant scenery, while using the UTM's until I've developed all the scenery in the area. Hope that makes sense.

Thanks for your help as always.

Sean

I decided to go with just the UTM about 3 wide. If I want to add more I can always do a merge but this will give me plenty to start with. So far it looks pretty good.

Thanks

Sean

They are completely independent. Try it out yourself. Lower the UTM tile in Surveyor until it has disappeared and you only see the ground texture. Switch to wireframe mode in Surveyor (make sure you have installed the wireframe replacement texture, see the TransDEM Trainz manual) and you will see the UTM tile texture and its 3D body underneath the wire frame.

Something was strange then and that was the issue. Unless I'm not understanding how TransDem paints textures on the baseboards. I had UTM's that were not showing so they were already disappeared. The only thing I didn't try was raisting the UTM higher so perhaps 10cm was not enough when a ground texture was painted.

I think I'm happy with the 3 wide UTM as it's giving me more than enough for now in most cases to see. I'm going to fill the great lakes in the distance. If I want to add more later I can always delete the extra baseboards outside the UTM's and rebuild them in Transdem with UTM or ground textures and merge to complete certain scenes. Except for areas of fields most visibility will be restricted by trees or buildings.

Appreciate the help, and any further assistance if I have anything wrong here or something that doesn't make sense. I think I've been recreating routes now for 5 weeks and I want to get back to building again. If I'm wrong I figure I can always merge in something since I can't add UTM's to the route once it's generated (something I didn't know until yesterday's post you mentioned).

Thanks

Sean

So I thought I had my mind made up then I started trying to add water

Of course the UTM being 10 CM above hides all paints and unless the water level is higher your not going to see it. I needed to dig deeper on the lake as it was at ground level from the shore. Now I'm wondering if it's easier just to go with the baseboard. It's not as high definition but at least I can manipulate it a bit better.

What would most people use UTM's for in the first place and is there an easy way to hide certain tiles? I know F9 works well for the baseboards.

Thanks

Sean

Texture resolution. The ground texture can only render 1 pixel per 10 or 5 m, depending on the baseboard grid. That's good enough for maps up to 1:25,000 or zoom level 14 or 15. Larger than that and it becomes all blurry. And ortho-images never work well with ground textures. It you need the utmost detail, e.g. to make out individual tracks in a yard, you'll use ortho-images and apply them to UTM tiles. Where that level of detail is not required, the ordinary map and ground textures should suffice, OSM or often slightly better: Open Topo Map (same database, different rendering).

Yeah I was thinking of that (yards) last night.

So here is one more question as I haven't seen it in TransDem. I know you can cut out (clip) DEM, can you do the same for areas of detail such as a yard that you want a UTM to show up?

The only thing I can think of is have backdrop images around the area of interest with the selection grid tool. Then the area of interest selecting do bring in a UTM.

Thanks

Sean