Howdy; Trying to paint an entire grid as per the picture
I select snow, pick FILL GRID and hit replace but nothing happens, but I can paint with the brush. How do I do a complete board paint? I did an experiment, added a blank board and was able to replace the default grey board to snow no problem, but not working with raster.
I think you will need the paint brush for this. The TransDEM ground textures are all monochrome and more than one texture would have to be substituted by the Surveyor Replace function.
geophil wrote:I think you will need the paint brush for this. The TransDEM ground textures are all monochrome and more than one texture would have to be substituted by the Surveyor Replace function.
That is too bad, it adds a ton of work not being able to just fill a board now, but I guess less work than trying to create the hills and lay the track.
I am not too big a fan of UTM, I find even at high resolution they they are blurry and hard to make things out. I have UTM on this route but I have them set to invisible and I don't think I will use them again. I DL 2048x2048 resolution (or at least that is the setting I use) but still can't see too much.
Resolution is down to your image data source. Theoretically, the UTM tile can resolve 10cm aerial images, with 4096 px texture size and 500m tiles. That's more than enough to show crossties/sleepers, for instance.
But in this case here, to be able to use the texture replace function in Surveyor, you could simply apply the map image data source to the UTM tiles instead of the terrain ground.
geophil wrote:
But in this case here, to be able to use the texture replace function in Surveyor, you could simply apply the map image data source to the UTM tiles instead of the terrain ground.
Sorry to be dumb, but you totally lost me on this sentence, no idea what you mean. I did get that the blurry picture is the fault of the satellite picture provider; fair enough.
From the TransDEM point of view, any georeferenced cartographic or aerial image can be used for both terrain ground textures and/or UTM tile textures. Technically, there is no difference. However, there are limits on ground texture resolution, just one pixel per 10 or 5m. That's why aerial images don't make much sense as ground textures if intended as a building aid. But the other way round, applying the map texture to UTM tiles, does not come with any such scale restrictions.
This way, you could leave the terrain blank, when generating the Trainz from the DEM. In the second step you let TransDEM generate 3D UTM tiles and use the map textures for them. You will end up with the default Trainz grey and orange grid texture and have all options to manipulate it in Surveyor, with no other ground texture interfering.
Took a look at the links and the photo titled: Hi-res ortho-photos for 3D UTM tiles and Bonneville Dam are what I would like to get and what I was hoping the UTM I used would give me.
So just to clarify in my mind to make sure I understand:
My UTM look like crap because the pictures from the satellite suck, not because I am doing something wrong, correct? They are ortho maps not air photos. Because that is all I have to work with I am stuck, no way to make it better. Am I understanding correctly?
Yes, get the best ortho images you can, if you want high resolution.
In TransDEM set the the max texture size for UTM tiles to 4096 px (if your graphics card supports it) and use 500 m tiles. If your images are smaller scale, TransDEM will use smaller textures automatically. Go for .jpg instead of .tga to save disk space. I'd also suggest to install the wireframe replacement texture in Trainz (TS12) for better transparency in wireframe mode.
You can add or replace UTM tiles to/in an existing route at any time, but you need to go through the export/import cycle with Trainz Content Manager.
