procedural railroad

[Dune]

Painted shader, set at 3D. Paint on a plane 'through' the object. Delete the plane.

[Dune]

Here's the actual image of my query into the floating trees in 'discussion'. Behind the bridge you see trees floating. Strange!

[j meyer]

  Thanks!

[otakar]

The smoke and steam are true achievements. Thanks so much for the tip, will have to make an attempt. Enjoying every new render, what a thread!

[Zairyn Arsyn]

i had a floating population problem as well with my "The way through" renders (some of the earlier ones)
i discovered negative displacements from the painted shader were apparently causing the the grass to float slightly above the ground.

http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=11588.0;attach=28712;image

[choronr]

Painted shader, set at 3D. Paint on a plane 'through' the object. Delete the plane.

Tried this and it didn't work. What do you mean by Painted shader set at 3D?

[Dune]

Here you are, ready to go...

[choronr]

Here you are, ready to go...

Thank you so much Ulco for your file. I continued to try a number of approaches without success. I really appreciate this.

[choronr]

Here you are, ready to go...

Hi Ulco,

Tell me, where does the 'canvas' come from? I don't see an active button or other choice that produces a canvas.

Bob

[Dune]

It's a plane (object), set upright. I've shoved it aside here, as you can see.

[choronr]

Thank you Ulco, I've got it now; and, will be using this in the near future. It has a lot of possibilities for some future ideas I have. Appreciate you coming back on this.

[Dune]

Used my 'canvas' method again for the smoke, and rendered the upper left part separately, even that took 4 hours or so with the dense smoke. Without smoke the whole thing was done in 45 minutes. Even though the smoke layer was only 20m high. Blended the two in Photoshop.
There must be a way to do this differently, I'm not very satisfied with the result either, as there still was a lot of grain (despite RTA). I softened that in PS. Cloud density was 2, sharpness 5, quality 1.2.
Bush still floated near mud level, but I did some painting in PS.
I don't like the ground surface, so I'm moving to another setup again. Thanks for looking.

[Henry Blewer]

Stunning work here Ulco. It has been cool watching/looking at this develop!

[choronr]

That is looking fine Ulco. Eventually, with enough experimentation, I feel you will find a better way. I really like the painted smoke method.

[PeanutMocha]

I'm amazed by the railroad tracks!

Tried to understand what's being said in the "Tutorial" post, but as pretty much a beginner, I'm having a hard time pulling it all together.  Is there a TGD out there somewhere that demonstrates the basic road/railroad technique?

Thanks!