Railworks America

The new asset manipulation tools/new gizmo are slick. I have not been able to figure out or find an explanation for the 'world and local transform.' Can someone explain?

See the icons in the red box in this screenshot:

I don't profess to having any experience using this, but hopefully this will help you to work it out a bit more.

I've put the house in and rotated it to a jaunty angle. If I have World Transform selected and use the red gizmo arrow from side to side the house will scoot across the ground and remain half-buried.


Selecting Local Transform changes the gizmo orientation so that it becomes based upon the orientation of the asset - can't think how else to describe it. Now when I grab the same red gizmo arrow and move it from side to side the house moves as if it's on a slope...



Possibly also worth mentioning is the Snap Rotation section. This relates to when you rotate an asset whilst pressing Ctrl. By default each increment will rotate the asset by 18degrees, so to turn it by 90degrees it'll take five steps. Change the number in the box to be 45 and it'll take two steps to turn the asset; 90 and it'll be one step. And so on... The little radio button is supposed to select whether it uses the default 18degrees or the figure that's been entered in the box, but at the moment (until it's been fixed) the figure in the box will always be used.

Hope that makes a bit of sense and is of some use. You're now at the same level of understanding as me.

Perfectly clear. Thanks much. All these new features are great.

When you add a new object, it is oriented in the same way as the world, i.e. it's x,y,z axes are in the same directions as the world's x,y,z axes. So its local orientation is the same as its world orientation.

As soon as you rotate it in any direction, its local orientation is no longer the same as its world orientation.

You can test this by adding an object and switching between world and local. You will see the colored axes are in the same directions for both views. Then rotate the object, and now the axes are different.

WIth only world axes, moving an object around in the editor was frustrating, because the world axes seldom pointed in the direction you wanted to move the object. Moving a scenario marker a long distance, for example, was maddening.

By switching to local axes, you just rotate the object so it faces the desired direction, then you slide it on its way.

Also box objects such as houses are always built along their axes, so it is more natural to move them along local axes.
E.g. moving a house along its local axes will move it forwards and backwards, up and down, side to side.