Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using Gan

I am not sure if any of you have tried using the Gantry.dat file to spawn scenery such as tree and bush lines along the right of way. While working on my E&N route I got tired of manually setting each treeline and using forest regions for bushes and weeds. My route was taking forever to forest and the frame rates were low. While working on the route one night I hit the add gantries line by accident while I was on the phone and got a message saying that %&#*%.s was missing. After hanging up the phone I went into the route directory and started looking for the missing file and took a look at the gantry.dat file. After some experimenting I realized that I could use the gantry.dat file to spawn treelines rather than manually placing the treelines. So I went into TSM and started building tree blocks, tree, bush and weed lines and started experimenting. You can see the results for yourself in the screen shot forum under the "Chasing Trains on Vancouver Island" thread. What took me a month to do I could now do in an evening and best of all my frame rates and object counts were much lower.With the release of Scale Rail in the last week or two I have found that you can use the gantry.dat file to spawn sections of short sections of Scale Rail (2m or less) over the existing dynamic track instead of re-editing your route completely. This process is much easier than destroying your route. You will need to manually delete the additional spawned track tiles manually in the route editior or in the world files which I have found the easiest to do.I will try and post a picture tutorial in the near future if there is enough interest.

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RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, cn_bayview, Jul-11-04, 10:04 PM, (1) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, pvoxland, Jul-11-04, 10:13 PM, (2) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, ENR3005, Jul-11-04, 10:48 PM, (3) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, Steven, Jul-12-04, 00:48 AM, (4) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, sniper297, Jul-12-04, 02:03 AM, (5) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, Richard, Jul-12-04, 07:35 AM, (6) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, chuckzeiler, Jul-12-04, 08:08 AM, (7) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, OTTODAD, Jul-12-04, 01:18 PM, (8) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, timken, Jul-12-04, 05:47 PM, (9) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, chuckzeiler, Jul-12-04, 09:32 PM, (10) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, ENR3005, Jul-12-04, 11:18 PM, (11) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, sniper297, Jul-12-04, 11:20 PM, (12) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, chuckzeiler, Jul-13-04, 08:49 PM, (13) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, sniper297, Jul-13-04, 10:20 PM, (14) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, ENR3005, Jul-14-04, 01:31 AM, (15) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, Swissie, Jul-14-04, 04:50 PM, (16) RE: Scale Rail Dynamic Track And Spawned Scenery Using, sniper297, Jul-14-04, 09:38 PM, (17)

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Sounds interesting!I would be interested in a picture tutorial! How are the frame rates with tree blocks?
Thanks!Rob

TH&B Van #68
www.greatlakesrail.com

Check out my train photos!http://www.railpictures.net/showphotos.php?userid=472

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Thanks for the pointer to the screen shots, and the technique you have mentioned looks quite good. One of the few pay ware routes I've acquired seems to have used the same technique, so it's an idea that I've been tossing around to try out some time too. I think the success of it must depend on how close the trees are to the track, on the tree line textures, the tree shapes, and whether there is variety in the shapes and textures. That commercial route didn't work too well, I thought, because the images were so close to track that the flatness of the tree shapes was repetetively obvious. Plus, I think it's important in flat terrain to open vistas fairly frequently on one side or another, so that the trip down the tracks doesn't become too predictable. I think a tutorial would be a great idea too. The gantry.dat is quite efficient and powerful for placing repeating objects along a route (such as telephone poles). Another unexplored idea I had was to use the gantry.dat file to put down some 'temporary' object, such as an odd-ball tree. Then use a text search and replace program to replace the tree object with a forest data specification. So much to experiment with, and so little time to do it, but then that's the point of what you've discovered!

--- Phil Voxland

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On the Victoria Subdivison of the E&N there is approximately 30 miles of ROW between Parksville and Courtenay where there is nothing but tall stands of trees on either side of the ROW due to a lack of brush cutting for the last 3 decades. The trick to making a convincing ROW is to have 3 or 4 different types of forest blocks, tree lines and weed lines and mix them up. At first I set the spacing for how far away the tree lines were to be set apart but then settled on manually placing them along the ROW after generation which took a couple minutes longer (still beats hours or days) but provided a more realistic result. You then delete the areas where you need the scenic vistas and roads or you can spawn parts of those also (still eperimenting with that).I have even been experimenting with spawned trestle tiles also. I have several curved trestles that I need to build on the the Port Alberni Subdivision. I have seen a lot of postings of people spending hours lining up their trestles. I am hoping to do it in a couple of minutes after editing the gantry.dat file to generate it them the way I need them set.

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Would definitely like a tutorial, and perhaps the shapes and textures too.
StevenStandardized \global\tsection.dat file now at build #25.
Tsection Inquiries: tsection@train-sim.com

LMRR - Lower Mainland Railways (of BC)
Track: 961.02 km
Roads: 1027.75 km

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I'm definitely gonna need a tutorial just to try it.Tr_GantryFile (
GantrySets ( 1
GantrySet(
Name ( "ponderosa" )
Style ( 00000001 )
Separation ( 50 )
GantryTable ( 1
GantryTableEntry (
Filename ( "pondpine1.s" )
Distance ( 20 )
)
)
)
)
)That second value, "Distance ( 20 )" is supposed to be how far the pairs are spaced apart, but whatever number I type in there they always plant right on the edge of the ballast.

Attachments

http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/User_files/40f237a169776ab5.jpg

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Jim,
I had the same problem What you have to do is edit the texture and offset the handle of the texture so it plants the tree further away. I've been using this method to plant telephone poles along the right or way.Take care,
Rich S.

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Richard, that's basically what I did to solve the Distance problem. I ran the firtreesvnmpl.s through SFM and shifted the X axis by 20, re-named the resulting shifted file, and placed it using the auto gantry placement feature. Looks promising.

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Chuck, what happens when you need to use Gantries because the Route is electrified ? Or do developers of such routes manually place their Custom Gantries ?O t t o

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As far as I know, you can have as many gantry entries as you wish. We used 2 in the Sumpter route, fences and telephone poles, but experimented with as many as 5 at 1 time. Each is independent of others.

Steve T.

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Otto, I dunno what the gantry limit is. So far, the sim keeps accepting them. Here's a shot of four gantries coinciding in the same space. And the FPS is not affected as far as I can tell. You can see where the tree gantry stopped at the next tile. You may also notice the 40 foot (or meter) spacing in the upper left on the diverting branch line.

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I haven't had any problems with multiple gantries on my route. I have up to seven different ones on some tiles. I will throw together a tutorial in the coming weeks on what has worked for me with this technique. It's nice to see a couple of other routes that have used this feature also. I especially like the idea about inserting forest region data into the gantry.dat file. It would make adding scenery to rough terrain a breeze however frame rates might be high again.

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Yeah, Otto, the gantry.dat is one of those like the forests.dat which can be replaced at will. You remember me saying in the other thread you could swap ref files around without affecting existing objects, same thing with forests and gantrys - edit it or replace it with a totally different one, it don't affect the already placed ones since those are now in the W files.Well, thanks for the info on the shape offset guys, so if we do this we gotta make clones of each tree/bush/weed shape we want to place, edit with SFM to offset the distance, add to the gantry.dat and then autoadd each one once for each tile. Hmmm. Well, I suppose if it does improve framerates it's worth all that. Too bad about the distance value not working, I guess that's yet another "undocumented feature".

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One thing to note is that gantries (I believe) will stay level with the track, since they are connected (again, I believe) to the overhead wire, visible or not. The point is that floating trees will show up on embankments, as the trees/gantries attempt to stay in line with the track. Here we see floating trees (middle right, below) on a steep embankment.

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Chris:"I will throw together a tutorial in the coming weeks on what has worked for me with this technique."While we're waiting, could you answer just one question:Is there a trick to the distance number, or is the shifted axis for the shape file the one and only solution to getting it farther from the roadbed?I suppose I need a link to the latest SFM, I'm having trouble with the shift, and it's probably because I haven't looked for updates to SFM. When I shift by 20 meters it don't move very far, and the tree shape gets really fat. So I made six pine tree clones, and before shifting I changed the scale to X 0.7 Y 1.2 Z 0.7 to compensate for the obesity effect, then shifted the X axis by 50 to 100 (meters I assumed, does SFM work in feet? inches? rods? furlongs? joules per coulomb?), then changed the Z axis for each one differently to stagger the spacing.Number one runs thru the screens as if it's placing them, but they don't show up unless I replace with the previous shape file, the rest are closer to the tracks than it would appear they should be.On triple track it gets worse:Since I think the distance is taken from the center track. As Chuck says this works best on flat terrain or in shallow sloped valleys, track on ridges isn't gonna work, and it's probably best saved for mainline running.For totally flat areas, here's another wierd idea:I uncompressed USdecidclump1.s, edited in wordpad to change the ace files to three of my hacks of Steve Thompson's and Judd Spittler's pine tree textures, scaled X 0.7 Y 1.2 Z 0.7, shifted by X 50 Z 50, and added them to the gantry.dat. By scaling it smaller in all dimensions and using something like JP2bush1, 2, and 3 ace files in the shape you could carpet the whole ROW with weeds.Nice thinking outside the box on this one, Chris. Where the hell ya been, anyway? Charter member with 33 posts, you've either been AWOL or you don't talk much!Well, I gotta go try that bush clump idea now, I'll be back later to yak more. Nobody ever accused me of being a man of few words!

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LAST EDITED ON Jul-14-04 AT 01:32 AM (EST)

Sniper297:I know I haven't been around the forums much. Most of my postings are on a railfan forum dedicated to the E&N where I get a lot of my prototype reference for my route. I also have a very dynamic career that requires me to be away from home and my PC for lengthy periods. When I am around these forums I am mostly a watcher due to the limited time I have to work on things. However I thought I would offer some advice on some of the techniques that I have worked on with my route building as it may help out the other guys that are short on time like myself. There is no line in the gantry.dat file that I have found that will seperate the gantries to an acceptable distance. In regards to using the shape file manager for shifting the objects, I actually used TSM to do it as all my objects are custom, so I really can't comment on how to do it. I have also used TSM to set mots of my objects 10 feet below ground level to take advantage of uneven terrain. All my gantries actually slope below the road bed to prevent the floating tree problem. I may upload my shape files in the near future but again I need time to through together a package.Happy tinkering
ENR3005

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LAST EDITED ON Jul-14-04 AT 05:02 PM (EST)

Jim> That second value, "Distance ( 20 )" is supposed to be how far the pairs are spaced apart, but whatever number I type in there they always plant right on the edge of the ballast.Simply f.y.i.: No, actually this number has a different function. It is the maximum distance the .s is supposed to span. Thus it tells the RE which .s file to take with which width of the trackbed - or if you prefer that picture it tells the RE which .s file spans how many tracks: If you had, just as an example, for types of overhead gantry .s files, pole_1.s for single track, pole_2.s for dual track, pole_3.s for tripple track, and pole_4.s for quadruple track sections, then you would use the linesDistance ( 5 ) for pole_1.s
Distance ( 10 ) for pole_2.s
Distance ( 15 ) for pole_3.s
Distance ( 20 ) for pole_4.sthus making sure that the correct pole_x.s is placed depending on the number of tracks it is supposed to span, as each track has a width of 4.85m... Provided that the respective .s files have the matching dimensions to do so, everything will look fine. But the line does not "stretch" the .s file to the correct length. If you mixed up shape files by accident and pole_4.s were only a 10 metre span, it would still span the two inner tracks only: The autoplacement feature for gantries always centres the s. file to the track, thus your need to shift the centre of your object sideways (via adjustements to the x-axis as mentioned above). Btw: Another little bit of gantry.dat trivia: As I said, the distance line refers to the maximum distance a pole is supposed to span. As soon as your tracks exceed the maximum for one of the .s files, the autoplacement uses the next available .s file. In the example above, you'll be fine whenever you lay four-track-sections using the default track spacing as four times 4.85m (as in the a4t.... track pieces) boil down to 19.4m. As soon as some of your four tracks branch away a bit, for example for a centre platform between tracks 2&3, you'll have a problem: Once the trackbed becomes wider than 20m, and no wider .s file is available, the autoplacement will simply not add any gantry until your tracks
- either swivel back to the default spacing and fit into the 20m distance again
- or have diverged noticeably enough for the RE to consider the tracks branching away as a new, different line which deserves its own gantries.
This pecularity makes electrifying large yards, depots, or wyes with the autoplacement feature difficult, and usually requires some manual planting and adjusting of poles. Lukas a.k.a Swissie

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Okay, thanks guys. Gonna have to look at that NEC gantry format again, I fooled with the gantries once for another guy's route but since mine's not electrified I haven't used it much. TSM or SFM, either way has to be shifted, one thing I'm finding out with SFM is it works better if I shift first, then rescale as necessary. Sometimes I have to fiddle with the scale several times to restore the original dimensions after the shift.http://www.train-sim.com/dcforum/DCForumID6/12229.htmlMade a test route to swap back and forth to compare methods, since this one is flat the floating trees aren't an issue. I went that way since finding a large flat area on the PO&N is rather like attempting to get milk from a male ostrich. So I think I'm gonna end up sticking to forest regions on most areas, and going to Chris' new autogantry method wherever I have mainline track running thru a wide valley with 10 degree or less slopes on the sides.

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