I was wondering, how I can decorate the route I am currently working on (Hauptstrecke Hannover - Hamburg) - How do I paint the ground? How to add grass and roads? - How do I add asserts like Trees and vegetation? - How do I add rail road crossings? - How do I make tunnels? - How do I make bridges (especially the ones in Hamburg) - How do I make the scenery? Light? - What route currently has the best nature Asserts like trees and all the vegetation? Thanks for everyone helping!
Paint the ground using the mesh paint [Shift + 5] and add vegetation using the foliage tool [Shift + 3]. I didn't do that yet to help you out much, but Unreal Sensei explains it in his Unreal Engine course. Look at the timestamps to jump to certain sections: There are several possibilites. Either you can make customized ones in Blender or Sketchup and import them into the Editor or if it comes close to bridges you want to have, just use complete bridge assets or even just partial bridge assets to build your own bridges from the DLC folders already created by DTG or Third party. I found several very good bridge assets without the need to dig me futher into creating my own custom ones. Alternatively, you could also get some bridge assets from the Unreal Marketplace or anywhere else, either for free or for a few dollars. Do you mean wha's the easiest way to create a scenery? I think using only assets which are in other DLCs already, and no costum ones. Niddertalbahn. The trees do not only have a huge variation in height and style, but also are moving in the wind. Don't know if the last point is actually valid for other DLCs, but I just encoutered that as a big plus when looking these assets. Might take some performance for it though.
Ok, thanks for your Help! What would you recommend performance wise, since my route will be the biggest in TSW history. With Unreal Engine, is only the area loaded that I am currently in or is the entire map loaded all the time? Is there a limit in terms of size of my Projekt? Do you think my project will be playable and not to big?
[Disclaimer: All of this information comes from someone who just is in the same spot as you and not really well experienced yet with the TSW Editor nor Unreal Engine. This is just my assumption or knowledge at the moment. So the truth may vary and anyone feel free to correct me if I am wrong.] I think the biggest problems performancewise are the amount of trains (player one + AIs) actively being on the entire map. Because with regard to the next question of yours below, these I think also affect map parts/tiles which are not spawned yet. For example, if we take a look at the 9 key map on any Dovetail Games DLC route, you can see trains driving or standing around the other end of the route. I don't know if these trains are actually "spawned" in the sense we understand. But fact is, that they do already exist and therefore take performance. My conclusion to that is that trains still are the number 1 issue for the performance. I think it's the first. And you already can see this in the Editor. Some map tiles are spawning when you come closer to them, while others from which you go farther away are despawning. I don't know if there is actually a setting anywhere in the UE settings to change the render distance of the map tiles + all the assets placed on them. So I wouldn't worry just because of the length of your route. What matters is how many trains are on it and how much performance they cost I think. Not as I'm aware. DTG should have teached us more about things like that. We're left alone to try and find the answer to this by our selves I guess. As I said before, I don't think the route length is the problem. I don't even know if your route from Hannover to Hamburg (Altona) about 161 km will even break the record of Kassel-Würzburg and become the longest route in TSW. But even if it would, you're not making a route which is that huge way longer than Kassel-Würzburg. So, it should be fine. But again, KWZ is not a commuter line and the amount of services are less. Maybe that's the secret why it works as it should. I think Matt said somewhen about the Schnellfahrstrecke Köln-Frankfurt that the performance around Frankfurt (probably Cologne, too) would be a problem to create that route. I highly guess it's because of the amount of trains and commuters on that route.
I took a look at the tutorial today, but when I do what be does (drag the grass texture into the box), in the tutorial the ground turns to grass. When I do it, the ground turns black. Can you please help me
By dragging the texture in the box you mean your landscape material into the box in the landscape details? If this is the case, it's normal that all of your ground gets the first color you set up an layerinfo file for. That happened to me, too. Or did you dragged just a simple texture into it? I think this would not work. Did you set up your landscape material for your project? Anyways since my last post in this thread I tried what he did in the tutorial, adapted the technique to the TSW Editor and really it worked after a couple of hours. But I was not that happy with painting the material yet, so it's not in my route yet. However, since I understood how it works, I already thought about creating a tutorial for it here in the forum. Problem is only tomorrow I got a very important and stressful appointment, so I might can do it at Tuesday. By the way my advice with the mesh paint tool was wrong. It's under landscape Mode [Shift + 1] then Paint sub mode.
ok thanks, I might not have picked up on it. But would it just be possible to paint the ground with like a simple paint tool instead of changing the entire tile texture? Also, might be important, I use the textures from the European Content pack
As I see it, the change of the complete terrain's texture happens as a kind of unwanted side effect when creating the layerinfo file for the first texture layer of your landscape material. I don't know why this happens but I'm about to find a way to revert this back to the grey default pattern or at least change the texture for terrain. But I don't quite know if I'm refering to the same issue as you describe with that. You can of course use the paint tool to paint some areas with a certain texture. The only issue is this texturen of the complete terrain thing, which personally don't like. I don't think that issue is related to the textures from the ECP per se. I used the textures from the Niddertalbahn Content and same thing happened to me. However, the ECP is just a collection of meshes, blueprints and textures which originally come from other DLCs, so we in theory we could use the same faulty materials. 2 weeks ago I had a problem with malfunctional Formsignale of the European Content Pack and as things turned out and pilot21 explained to me, that the signals came from Niddertalbahn and are faulty (they crashed my Editor and it was very hard to delete them out of my project again). But in the end, I don't think this is the case here.
So, I took myself the time today to do it: Here is the way how I would guide you through painting the terrain: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/how-to-paint-texture-terrain-using-materials.77914/
