Ground Texturing

I've been creating routes on Trainz for a quite a while now (since I first got Trainz in 2009), and have come to accept that I suck at getting a ground texture which doesn't look tiled.

Does anyone have any tips for texturing the terrain so that you can't see repetitions in the terrain?

Thanks in Advance.

Use the smallest brush size and keep either the left or right rotate button pressed while applying texture. I think the buttons are [ and ].

You also need to select textures carefully. Some of the older ones at 128 x 128 resolution do not look good in more recent versions such as TS12 and TANE. You can also use the same texture at a different size setting on top of itself to create a less uniform effect. If you're blending different textures, choose two or three of a similar shade or type which look natural together.

My wish would be to see some sort of "strength" setting able to be applied to the texture tool, which would make it easier to blend different textures.

Someone said that smeared ground textures affect framerates adversely ? True, or untrue ?

I believe that if you apply 10 textures, the previous 9 are still in the config file, even though they are completely painted over

Select smallest radius desired and smallest scale (maybe a bit wider than the track), apply the ballast ... apply the dirt or grass texture next to the ballast, being careful not to paint the ballast ... keep working your way out, away from the track, where you can gradually increase the radius of the paint texture

Totally untrue, rotating textures does not affect framerates.
Apply trackside grass tex first, THEN paint ballast texture over that.
cheers,
Graeme

Look at some of the textures of blue_sky_interactive. Gras series.

exton32 said:

Does anyone have any tips for texturing the terrain so that you can't see repetitions in the terrain?

Click to expand...

Lay your textures with a large brush size initially. Then come back and do partial random overlays several times with smaller brush sizes and different scales to break up the patterning. In both cases, do continuous rotation of the texture by pressing the [ or ] keys. In general, the brush size should match the scale.

Then select other textures with nearly the same coloring and patch in more smaller sections, again in different sizes and scales and with continuous rotation. Use shrubs and grass to conceal the edges.

Vary the texture selection to match the terrain. For example on a slope there will be natural water courses where water will most likely flow during rainy periods. These will have more vegetation, such as grasses, that can be simulated by using a darker shade of green. Closer to the track you could enhance this texturing effect by adding grass and/or small shrub scenery objects. Likewise, steeper slopes may have rocky outcrops exposed so a rock texture could be used there.

I have found that if I want to delete a texture I copy a section of plain grid, and paste it over the textured section, the textured section disappears. Does it actually disappear, or is it under the pasted selection?

I believe the last 9 textures are hidden under it, and are still in the config file, but it really doesn't matter framerate wise

Proceed very carefully when using replace assets on terrain textures. this is a potentially destructive action and as a minimum save your route before proceeding and ideally take a cdp backup.

Two things to relate (in TANE) with regard to the above:

The "undo" button does not proc properly if you try to roll back a texture change. Liable to see severe corruption and lines of texture along grid boundaries, your route is trashed.

There are two options when replacing textures, with a tick box whether or not you want to change the scale and rotation. In my experience just yesterday this is seriously broken. I decided the forest floor textures on my Kovdor route were too light and aimed to replace them with Ultra Textures. Now UltraTex look great at medium to large scale and when swirled but not so great at smaller scale or not swirled. Despite trying both tick box options, Surveyor would not place the ultratex to replicate my original application just a base unswirled appearance. Unfortunately I didn't spot this until I had saved the route, wasn't so noticeable in the forests but where the texture is on distant hills it now has an awful chequerboard look. I tried asset replace using the same texture fixed vs swirled and again with the tick box in both modes but no joy. So I now have to copy and paste the background texture over about 40km of distant terrain, at least where visible. (Or replace it with a flat texture such as the original Auran dark grass).

I've run into the same situation as Vern when replacing assets. I have, however, been able to update them. I ensure I set the option to rotate and scale after placing the texture in the replace-with slot, otherwise, no change is made.

A tip when placing textures in tight places is to zoom out so the texture cursor is smaller. For me anyway it's easier to handle that way than it is as a big honker circle about 100 meters in diameter.

Well while we are on this subject, what do you all think would be a good ground color pattern for a countryside route in the UK?

p.s I just now realized i spelt diarama wrong in my signature. :hehe:

ministerfarrigut said:

Well while we are on this subject, what do you all think would be a good ground color pattern for a countryside route in the UK?

p.s I just now realized i spelt diarama wrong in my signature. :hehe:

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LOL! Correct spelling is under estimated.

Anyway... Check out Clam1952 textures. CL Textures.

I will get on it. It's so difficult to find patterns for routes. I seem to use all the wrong colors in mine. :|

ministerfarrigut said:

I will get on it. It's so difficult to find patterns for routes. I seem to use all the wrong colors in mine. :|

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Yup. I understand. Then you'll hit on something that looks good for the time being then later on replace that because you've found something else. I've done that more than once with ballast textures on one of my routes.

JCitron said:

I've run into the same situation as Vern when replacing assets. I have, however, been able to update them. I ensure I set the option to rotate and scale after placing the texture in the replace-with slot, otherwise, no change is made.

Click to expand...

Interesting tip John, will try that when I next get a chance to work on the route - probably Thursday now as this is my week with 3 x 12 hour shifts Mon, Tue, Wed (and a Late Turn Thur!) which leaves little time or inclination for the laptop.

Edit: I managed to grab 5' last night to test this but doesn't seem to work. Cannot replace unswirled textures with swirled - either the same texture or another. Guess I've got some copy and pasting to do...

I wish that there was a lock for the rotating textures, so you wouldn't have to continuously press the [ or ] key. Maybe I'll wire in a switch to my keyboard to do that - or perhaps there is a method I can use to code it instead, but the hardwired switch would save me a lot of time building the code.
I appreciate the advice here. I had always been using the largest radius and scale while rotating the texture, but I see now that varying these works much better. A lot of us have been asking for an intensity control for several years now, but unfortunately, it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Approach_Medium said:

I wish that there was a lock for the rotating textures, so you wouldn't have to continuously press the [ or ] key. Maybe I'll wire in a switch to my keyboard to do that - or perhaps there is a method I can use to code it instead, but the hardwired switch would save me a lot of time building the code.
I appreciate the advice here. I had always been using the largest radius and scale while rotating the texture, but I see now that varying these works much better. A lot of us have been asking for an intensity control for several years now, but unfortunately, it seems to have fallen on deaf ears.

Click to expand...

When using a touchpad on a laptop, I can add textures in 3 steps by lightly tapping the touchpad, not sure if the same thing works with a mouse, first tap is about 33% new texture 66% old, second tap is around 66% new texture 33% old and 3rd tap is all new texture.

As for the rotate textures tool you can download an auto click program which will allow you to set a certain key to auto click at a regular interval (in milliseconds) which means you can press [ or ] once and paint a texture which will continually rotate.