procedural railroad

[Dune]

I'm afraid not. But it is better to get to know TG2 from the basics upward and then try the more complicated things.
The basic is this: a repeated image map (you'll have to paint that in Photoshop), which is fed into the shader input of a warp shader. A redirect shader is fed into the warp shader's input. The redirect is fed by a power fractal, with displacement on (which displaces the thing)! Then you have a warped line of the one mask, either as color input into a surface shader or as displacement basis. You can add and merge all sorts of things now, as for the railway you'd need several masks (sleepers, and nuts/bolts). The rails are simple shapes, warped the same way. Smartly blend/merge these into each other.... etc.
There are several tgd's and tgc's available that sort of do this, build it up from there.

[Kadri]

I said it in the first page but i can easily say it many times more , you have a very cool technique and images here , Ulco !
2 in fact with the smoke one.
Do you plan to sell it at NWDA or so ? Just curious  

[Dune]

I don't know about selling, might be an idea. But as you can see here there are things to sort out, and it ain't easy. In the meantime I have figured out why I had the blocked rail sides, but there's still the issue of the 'shadow' sleeper displacement in the snow, right beside the sleepers.
This was done using displacement intersection (favor depressions also works), but I had to insert another compute terrain with a patch size of 0.1 to not get a large sleeper 'shadow'. And if I would alter the other two values of the intersection away from 0/0, things would totally change, and rise and dip like crazy. Weird stuff going on.
This is obviously snow, contrary to its title. I had a sand shader right beside it, which I may try another day.

[Dune]

Updated version.

[PeanutMocha]

I tried to follow along as best as I can (for a noob) but my road seems to not only meander (good) but vary in width (bad).  I realize I can smooth the effect out a bit by increasing the feature scale of the power fractal, but that would only mask an underlying issue I guess.  Any idea what I did wrong here?  I hope the node network is clear enough.

[Dune]

You made the wrong links. Here's a basic setup.

[Henry Blewer]

Thanks Ulco. This will be a great start for many things I can think of.

[choronr]

Thank you Ulco, this foundation for many types of roads, hiking paths, railroads, runways and etc. open the door for some new ideas ...appreciate your generosity.

[choronr]

Here you are, ready to go...

Hi Ulco,

I tried the 'painted smoke' file now six times. I opened two instances of TG2 and duplicated all the settings of your file. After I rendered the image, apparently the painted clouds will not show up - only the full clouded area. In trying this several different times, I tried different sequences of applying the settings ...but, still not working. Might you have any additional tips on this?

Bob

[Henry Blewer]

Thanks for the tgd. I have started working with the simple shape shader to make a canal. It will be nice to make it curve decently.

[Dune]

only the full clouded area

Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.

[choronr]

only the full clouded area

Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.

Thanks Ulco, I will check that out and get back with the results.

Bob

[max_thehitman]

It looks fabulous, very cool train 
Excellent idea and art !

Now it just needs some cowboy train robbers on horseback chasing the train for
bags of money

[choronr]

only the full clouded area

Did you check 'blend by shader' in the cloud fractals? If you attach a shader to the blend input of a power fractal or cloud fractal it doesn't automatically check it.
Or post your tgd and I'll check it out.

Hi Ulco,

I found I didn't 'check' the box for the density shader. However, after trying several times, I still didn't get the painted smoke. Here is the .tgd I made following yours. Would appreciate your suggestions.

Thanks,

Bob

[Dune]

Well, you didn't paint anything, no wonder the cloud doesn't turn up! Here a painted version. If you make another painted shader and paint yourself, you can delete this one. Don't bother erasing. First enable the plane again of course.