Terrain Textures

[ghills]

I am relatively new to route building and have only used default and freeware scenery so far but wondered if anyone could give me a clue as to how to amend terrtex.

In particular I am looking to use the US2Grass and UKBGrass, so what I need is the half and quarter textures to "join" things up, as it were.

Any ideas which software would be a good start. Also, which package is best for a beginner to start making buildings?

Thanks for any replies.

GH.

[DarwinS]

Quick answers:

You need TGATools2A as it can open .ace files (Terrtex and other textures). Then you can edit them using any graphics program you have - Paint Shop Pro seems the most popular, if you want that you can probably get a cheap copy of an old version.l

For the how to there is a tutorial on the Australian steam4me site.

To start making buildings - probably Google Sketchup as it is free and you can use Decapod's exporter.

(I found Train Sim Modeller fairly easy to use - but you have to pay for it and there is no support except for the forum on this site!)

GMax is no longer available for new users....

3D Canvas is the tool of the future, as it will work with KRS later....

[dwv1968]

For editing terrtex, Mosaic is also worth a look - http://www.digital-rails.com/dr_mosaic_info.html

[ghills]

Many thanks gents.

[dkightley]

I second the use of Mosaic. It's a superb program!

[ghills]

I've downloaded Mosaic but not tried it yet as it seems I need a paint prog that won't run on my OS. Anyway, I've read some of the tutorials on Mosaic but am unclear as to whether it will do what i want - ie. enable me to make new quarter/half textures of two existing textures (that don't have current quarter/half "joiners").

Any ideas if it does this?

Thanks again.

GH.

[fadedGlory]

Mosaic doesn't allow you to make your own textures, but it makes it much simpler to place your textures than the RE. It also helps you when you want to make textures by letting you to take a snapshot of any tile, showing the placement of track and roads, and use that as a basis for further texturing in a paint program. After having edited the tile you can then use Mosaic to place it back in the route.

This also makes it possible to use satellite pics or maps as terrtex to help place tracks, roads and scenery.

fG

[dkightley]

To qualify fadedGlory's answer, Mosaic is not a texture editor. What it does allow you to do is to select one or more texture tiles and make a copy of them onto your computer's clipboard. You can then paste into your favourite editor...and then copy and paste back into Mosaic...and finally save the updated texture tiles as new files.

I used Mosaic to create the variety of textures on my Crich route.

Without Mosaic I don't think I could have done so...well not easily!

[sundaypm]

For those who don't have Mosaic and in reply to fG, it is possible to make a texture from sat pictures or your own artwork and apply it across a number of terrain patches or even a whole tile (each tile contains 16 x 16 terrain patches). By manipulating the numbers in the tile t file, you can to seamlessly place the appropriate portion of the texture image onto the appropriate patch, although I guess this is harder work than using Mosaic.

I have used this approach to texture distant mountain LO_Tiles to get snow on top of mountains and the sea to look right.

[DarwinS]

If you are having trouble installing or using Mosaic, do contact the manufacturer... they will usually give a quick and helpful reply. (Digital Rails forum i think... long time since i used it, but they did help me find the source of my problems with Mosaic!)

[csantucci]

I have used this approach to texture distant mountain LO_Tiles to get snow on top of mountains and the sea to look right.

Can every distant mountain LO_Tile have a different texture? If yes, how do you do that?

Regards

Carlo

[sundaypm]

Carlo,

This is how I texture LO_TILES, I figured it out by trial and error using the excellent Route Riter software. I am assuming below that we are modifying the usual LO_Tile of the equivalent size as 8 x 8 standard tiles.

First find the .t file in the LO_TILES folder for the tile of interest and most important, back it up in case anything goes wrong. Uncompress it to somewhere convenient using "MSTS File Utilities" in Route Riter. Under terrain_shaders you will see the name of the .ace texture file (which by default is terrain.ace). To apply your choice of texture, change the name of this file. Again using Route Riter, recompress the .t file back to the LO_TILES folder.

When you run MSTS you should now see your texture on the LO_Tile but unfortunarely it will appear repeated in a 4 x 4 patern across the tile. This is because the LO_Tile consists of 4 x 4 terrain patches each of which is fully mapped to your texture. There are two alternative methods I use to get round this problem;

1. Apply a different texture to each patch.
In the uncompressed .t file after "terrain_shaders" , change the "1" to the number of textures you wish to use (16 if you want a different texture for every patch). Next add the terrain_shader(s) for every texture you wish to add. You can do this by copying and subsequently pasting the next 8 lines, each time for each terrain_shader. Edit the .ace file names for each terrain_shader. It is vital to maintain the nesting structure of the brackets whilst doing this.

Finally the easy bit, you need to apply the appropriate texture to the appropriate patch. The details for each patch are found under "terrain_patchset_patches ". Each line corresponds to a terrain patch starting at the top left of the tile, running in rows down to bottom right and consists of 15 numbers starting with "00000000". Some of these numbers are still a mystery to me, but it is the eighth number you need to set to apply the texture you want to the patch. The number should be set to the order that the texture is listed in the terrain_shaders above, in other words, if it is the first listed, then it is 0, if it is second then 1.40130e-045 if it is the third then 2.80260e-045 and so on. (The reason for the strange numbers is that they are stored as 4 byte integer but Route Riter shows them as single point floating format, don't need to worry about this). Finally, recompress back to LO_TILES.

2. The second and my prefered method is to use only one texture for the tile and map the appropriate 1/16th portion of it to the corresponding patch. I find it easier to get seamless patches this way. First edit the name of the texture in the .t file as described in the second paragraph above. Next in all 16 "terrain_patchset_patch " lines, change the 9th to the 14th numbers to something like this;

.... 0.001 0.001 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.25 0.001 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.5 0.001 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.75 0.001 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.001 0.25 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.25 0.25 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.5 0.25 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.75 0.25 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.001 0.5 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.25 0.5 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.5 0.5 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.75 0.5 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.001 0.75 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.25 0.75 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.5 0.75 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )
.... 0.75 0.75 0.015625 0 0 0.015625 1 )

The 11th to 14th numbers represent the size of the portion of the texture that will be appilied to the patch, "0.015625 0 0 0.015625" will give you the required portion of 1/16 of total texture area. The 9th and 10th numbers represent position of the portion within the texture, or more specifically as the position of the top left of the portion in relation to the top left of the texture. Top left (0,0), bottom right (1,1). As before, recompress back to the LO_TILES folder.

Hope all this makes sense.

Derek.

[csantucci]

Well, Derek,
really a great thank you for the very complete explanation! You have saved me much time. I will try that.

Thanks again

Carlo