painting the terrain

[chriswillis81]

I'm having difficulty painting the terrain if i want very small lines, for example if i want to create a long garden path its impossible. I went to a blank peice of the screen to test it out and i can click on gravel then click on the terrain and i could do it 4 or 5 times and it will start in a different place every time, or the guide squares even change number, sometimes 6 squares, sometimes 4. Does anyone have any tips on how to paint a straight line or paint in smaller bits?

[theokus]

I'm having difficulty painting the terrain if i want very small lines, for example if i want to create a long garden path its impossible. I went to a blank peice of the screen to test it out and i can click on gravel then click on the terrain and i could do it 4 or 5 times and it will start in a different place every time, or the guide squares even change number, sometimes 6 squares, sometimes 4. Does anyone have any tips on how to paint a straight line or paint in smaller bits?

Precise work is almost impossible.
It' s a little possible in one direction.
But a precise definition is impossible.

Sometimes is use a path or the dirt road to have a boundary.

[bdy26]

You have to lay a path, painting is not really an option. There are some in the library, some in SAD's German Local route and there will be some in the UK Asset pack when I get to refiling my CKPR ones.

Some ability to mask or erase terrain paint would be incredibly useful, not seen it mentioned in the updates though.

B

[haddock1000]

You could, in theory, 'paint' a garden path onto the ground, and then mask the borders with a decal, painted with a grass texture, but fades out into an alpha channel on one side. I don't know of any such decals, though.

thanks,

chaddockdk

[pauls]

Sadly we've only got fully transparent, or fully solid available from the alpha channel (ie black or white) available in RW - unlike Rail Simulator which had the full alpha channel transparency available (greyscale)

I used sizeable decals in Rail Simulator to apply ground shadows for buildings - but lost this ability with the change to RW.

Hopefully we'll get this feature back in one of the updates ? - hopefully RW3 might mean that we don't need this idea for shadows and that texture painting will be of higher definition ?

Cheers
Paul

[belkenn]

Hi guys,
Since nobody told me that you could not have transparent textures in Railworks I went ahead and did it anyway; I needed a semi transparent glass for an old type light and used a grey scale alpha with no problem at all. I also use different main texture colours with varying gray scale alpha channels to give semi transparent coloured class or what ever. And it seems to work fine.

Ken

[Acorncomputer]

Hi guys,
Since nobody told me that you could not have transparent textures in Railworks I went ahead and did it anyway; I needed a semi transparent glass for an old type light and used a grey scale alpha with no problem at all. I also use different main texture colours with varying gray scale alpha channels to give semi transparent coloured class or what ever. And it seems to work fine.

Ken

Hi

Transparency is OK on (just about) everything but true graded transparency (translucency) is difficult to achieve on lofts. It is actually very easy to create paths of almost any size and I have made a few for The Lavender Line (a path and concrete drive illustrated). It is really just a matter of someone finding the time to create a path pack.





You can achieve a pseudo transparent effect on lofts and other shaders that will not support translucency by using a confetti type brush along the edge of your texture with transparency so that you actually get a lot of small holes but from a distance it looks a bit like translucency as the holes get bigger or more frequent to the edge. This can be illustrated by having to do the same thing at the edges of camera facing shrub -

[pauls]

Hi Ken,

It looks like I worded my reply to ChaddockDK badly - it refers to transparent decals only.

Cheers
Paul

[haddock1000]

The confetti-type fake 'translucency' is what I'm on about, It would then fade from lots of the path, wether that be a decal, or a loft, into the terrain painted below.

thanks,

chaddockdk

[FoggyMorning]

Sadly we've only got fully transparent, or fully solid available from the alpha channel (ie black or white) available in RW - unlike Rail Simulator which had the full alpha channel transparency available (greyscale)

I used sizeable decals in Rail Simulator to apply ground shadows for buildings - but lost this ability with the change to RW.

Hopefully we'll get this feature back in one of the updates ? - hopefully RW3 might mean that we don't need this idea for shadows and that texture painting will be of higher definition ?

Cheers
Paul

I might be mistaken, but I thought Edinburgh to Glasgow included graded decals for use at tunnel mouths etc.

Steve

[belkenn]

Hi guys,
I have just uploaded a set of five garden path lofts to ukts; hope they are of some use to someone.

Ken.

[Acorncomputer]

Great stuff Ken

[rivimey]

For those that aren't aware the 3DTrains freeware scenery pack has some decent paths and roads. The payware version just uses higher res textures, but sadly you can't "upgrade" from one to the other - a route uses the free or paid assets.

The 3DTrains assets use transparency at both ends and edges extensively.

On the subject of paths: I recently did a reskin of the default 1L dirt road that was more 1L mud road (just a hint of green at the very edge) that I would be willing to donate somewhere if it were helpful. I've been thinking about trying a reskin using some of these textures also:
http://www.cgtextures.com/textures.php?t=browse&q=12455
especially
http://www.cgtextures.com/texview.php?id=5001

One thing I really hope we get sometime: some lofts can be resized horizontally (e.g. the BarnsRS embankments), but if you do so they "break" with their neighbour: it would be great if we could have lofts that can be resized horizontally by gradually getting wider etc. I have heard hints of this from RW3 talk but not sure if I'm understanding properly.

Regards,
Ruth

[Acorncomputer]

Hi Ruth

I think perhaps Jim (nobkins) could put together a UKTS Loft freeware pack for roads, paths, rivers, fences, etc. as part of the Freeware pack program.

I will ask him.

[paulz6]

In terms of 'painting the terrain' with textures, we have a problem.
RW has an 8m grid terrain mesh. Worse still, there is little sensitivity between one texture and another. A combination of textures on the grid mesh does not work well, because of the dominance of one texture over the other.
As for painting a path along the terrain scape using textures, there is no fine control due to the terrain grid mesh, and no sensitivity in the terrain mixing.
A lofted path is all you can hope for.
Maybe RW3 will change things?