Railworks America

Hi,
I have made my own 3d track with 3d sleepers and ties. Everything works good except the 3d sleepers. The 3d sleepers are not present in the junction. How can i rectify this.
Also, i would like to know few more thing-
1.should the ties/clips(the small curled object that hold the rails), be an independent object, because i have attached it to the sleepers.
2. Should the rails be a child object of ballast or the other way around.

BTW, i have used LoftTexDiff.fx shader for both rails and ballast and texdiff for the sleepers.
Procedural Shape blueprint for the sleeper blueprint.

Picture for ref-

Hi,

The 3d sleepers are not present in the junction. How can i rectify this.

Unfortunately you can't. On switches the renderer uses a flat texture, referenced as the "supersleeper" in the track's blueprint (in each individual track BP, not the track rule BP). It's basically just a texture of a tie/sleeper that gets stretched across the legs of the switch as needed. Check any existing track blueprint for the term "supersleeper" and the surrounding lines and it should all make sense.

1.should the ties/clips(the small curled object that hold the rails), be an independent object, because i have attached it to the sleepers.
2. Should the rails be a child object of ballast or the other way around.

1) Attached to the ties sounds right for 3D ties. Seperate objects might not even work because you can only attach one shape as "middle geometry".
2) The track loft has only one node: 1_2000_track, the cap loft has two nodes 1_2000_ballast and 1_2000_rail, where ballast is parent to rail. Judging by your screenshot you seem to have set it up correctly.

One other thing regarding 3D ties: as far as I know, these can't be used on super-elevated curved track. I only tested this some years ago and it might have changed by now, but back then the "middle geometry" objects (3D ties in this case) would not get "tilted" into the curve along with the track loft. Which looked quite bad on heavily tilted track. If this is still how TS builds super elevated track, a better way to go, also for the game's performance, is probably to make the ties part of the actual rail loft. Study the tracks on Stevens Pass, Portland Terminal, the VNH Springfield Line, or I believe also ScaleRail in close detail and you'll see what I mean.

Your track model looks really good by the way!

Edit, PS: LoftTexDiff.fx, for the ballast another option is also LoftTexDiffTrans.fx with added b/w alpha channel added to the edges of the ballast so that it blends a bit better with the terrain textures underneath.

Cheers
Michael

Thank you Greatnorthener,
I have been able to get the 2d sleepers to display in the juntions. But it looks odd with the 3d sleepers, because the 2d image lacks the 3d feel.
Also, there is another problem that you might have noticed,a small/thin area in the rails seem to be lighter in texture.I am no able to find the reason why this happened.

That "small thin area" just looks like a track joint to me.

Ericmopar wrote:That "small thin area" just looks like a track joint to me.

Maybe, but it looks odd and i think other tracks, the default ones do not have it

The problem with the texture is solved..it was a problem in my track texture..the shadow map was a bit smaller than the diffuse texture..