Railworks America

Hoping to get some pointers or a easier way of modeling large rivers. If you take a look at Google earth and search for Deep Water West Virginia you'll understand the scope I'm looking at. With DEM data imported for this area and the Google overlay in place its a really impressive area.

Thanks

Sir,

Modeling rivers are a bit of a challenge, there is a tool you can use that will "layout" a river just like you would when you layout some track. To me, it doesn't look very impressive as it places a kind of embankment on the sides. The other method that I know would be to "dig" the river out of the terrain by using the terrain sculpting tools. Then you would use the water decal to make the water in the river, you will have to line them up carefully. But it can be done, others may know of a better way to accomplish this task. But these are the only techniques I'm aware of and have used.

How much of the New River are you thinking about doing? A friend of mine was on today's' New River Train excursion. The whole area is fascinating. I have been using the water "decals" to model rivers. Of course the New River drops fast,so you would need many of them.

Thinking of doing from Charlton Heights to Longacre or Smithers. Water decals is what I was looking at as the most feasible. The making of the river bed is going to be very time consuming.

I see you are new,and I am not sure how familiar you are with Railworks,or what is out there. There is a route called COA for short,"C&O Allegheny" that covers much of the route ,but much further south east. Hinton for example. I hope the route will eventually be expanded to the New River Gorge. With DEM generated terrain,it would mostly be a matter of placing the water decals,and adjusting their color/transparency. Also to model any canyon rote,you are going to need cliff rock objects,and there are just a handful,at best,so far in RW. I think this area would be fantastic to do,but I can not commit to it,I have been working on an Ohio route for 3 years now. Your idea of doing a small part of the route is actually very good,its easy to pick too long of a route,and never get it finished.

Once you get the hang of it laying rivers can be done pretty quickly.
For your rivers water colour your best playing about with different ground textures for your river bed then tweeking the water colour.
Do you know that when you click on the water tile that you can stretch it out to cover a large area so you don't need to lay loads of them.
For gradient I find that by laying tiles at a slightly different heights from each other and placing rocks etc hides the step well.

thebigroyboyski wrote:Once you get the hang of it laying rivers can be done pretty quickly.
For your rivers water colour your best playing about with different ground textures for your river bed then tweeking the water colour.
Do you know that when you click on the water tile that you can stretch it out to cover a large area so you don't need to lay loads of them.
For gradient I find that by laying tiles at a slightly different heights from each other and placing rocks etc hides the step well.

Yes,the water textures can be stretched to "run" with the river. I just know that the New River/Kanawha has some rapids,so there are many drops in river level. That is the reason I mentioned multiple "decals". I thought about doing Hawk's Nest just as a short section.

The water lofts are good for rivers, even some wide sections. Just like laying track. Large areas like a bay, use the decals.

gwgardner wrote:The water lofts are good for rivers, even some wide sections. Just like laying track. Large areas like a bay, use the decals.

Yes, I concur. The route I am working on has a large lake at one end and a river that runs all the way to the ocean. It's a fictional route I have been hacking away at for a while now. For the lake and ocean, I used the water decal and for the river I used the GN lofted water which once laid down you can change the width on. Also since it's a lofted object, you can change the gradient for the drops that are mentioned. I was able to lay many miles of river in a short period of time and place streams that feed into it as well.