RWDecal, a tool that automates and simplifies decal creation has been released. This tool makes this tutorial only useful to those who still wish to make decals by hand. Visit http://www.rwdecal.co.uk for more details or take a look at this thread.
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This is my first post to the forum but I have been loitering for a long time and have taken up an interest in route building since the release of Rail Works. I am working on a Route from York to Leeds and including the lines to Harrogate and Bradford.
This tutorial will show how to import many Google Earth (GE) images as a single decal into Rail Works. This saves time and removes the need for you to align multiple decals in Rail Works to cover larger Yards or Stations.
What you will need
- First of all you should read and understand the process of bringing in a single decal from GE into Rail Works described in the excellent tutorial by "moranb". This has been indispensable to me when I started out with GE decals.
- An image editing program that has the ability to resize images with out constraining their dimensions (allow distortions during resize)
- Google Earth
- Microsoft Image Composite Editor Free Download
- Rail Works Convert to ACE tool (or some other method of saving as an ACE). Free Download - at bottom of page
** EDIT START 26/June/2010 ** RS.com seem to be blocking linking to the download (comes up with 403 - Forbidden) so you have to go to the site and click the link your self! ** EDIT END **
What do I do?
The first thing to do is start GE and find the area you wish to capture. This is ideal for stations, yards or complex track areas but there is nothing to stop you doing this for anything. Once you have found the area you wish to import to Rail Works make sure that your compass is pointing direct to north (click the N in the compass control) draw a rectangle around it using the Polygon tool. Make sure you leave a little extra space around the area you want to capture.
Top Tip
Enable the "Grid" view in GE to make it easier to draw the straight lines you need for the rectangle.
Once you have you polygon measure the height and width in meters using the tape measure tool. Take a note of these as you will need these later.
Now navigate to the section you wish to capture first within your polygon and adjust the altitude as necessary so that enough detail is shown for what you require. I find an altitude of 200m works well. Also make sure that the camera is not tilted at all (you need to be looking straight down).
Now take a series of pictures using the "Save Image" option (CTRL + ALT + S) making sure each image overlaps by a reasonable amount and that you capture past the area of the polygon. We will crop the image later to the size of the polygon so you don't need to go much further.
Note
I have an issue with my GE where I must save each image twice before moving to the next one otherwise the saved image is corrupt. This is probably my machine but worth checking before you save 20 or 30 images.
Once you have the images saved you need to start the Microsoft Image Composite Editor (ICE) and then drag and drop either the whole folder or selected images onto the ICE window. The software will then attempt to automatically stitch the images together. Providing you have enough overlap on the images this seems to work reliably.
Once you have the stitched image crop it down to the size of the polygon using the crop option. Then Export the image as a PNG using the best quality possible.
Once you have the stitched image you need to resize it to a height and width that is 512, 1024, 2048, 4096. Now most decals are done at either 512x512 or 1024x1024. However as this is likely to be a large image and we want to keep all that fine detail we have captured adjust these figures as you see fit. I saved one at 4096x4096 with no problems. When I went to 819x8192 RWAce would not convert my image due to an out of memory message. Obviously to resize to a fixed size the image will become distorted. You don't need to worry about this.
Once you have your resized image saved as a PNG we need to convert it to an ACE. There are several ways of doing this but the easiest I have found is the RWACE tool. This is very easy to use.
Once you have your ace we need to make a blueprint to allow us to import this into Rail Works. This is described in detail in the tutorial by "moranb"
Once you have it imported open up Rail Works and you should have your decal ready to use.
Top Tip
Export some named markers from GE into Rail Works to allow you to position the decal accurately.
