Recent content by TrainzDev

This is part 2 of 'Using the Trainz AI in sessions'. Please refer to Part 1 for simpler techniques. Breaking up trips at appropriate locations using intermediate trackmarks Using '(drive / navigate) via trackmark' commands to set waypoints for the AI to help it find the path you intend it to...

The Trainz AI is a very powerful, very flexible system. However, this complexity and power can lead to perceived unreliability and recurring problems. Without a clear understanding of what it is doing and why, these problems can prove to be frustrating and difficult to solve. All AI orders that...

When the player enters cab view, the cab interior model occupies the majority of the screen. It's important therefore that cab interior is up to the punishment of close scrutiny. It takes a long time to do a good job and unfortunately there's no escaping it. Sufficient polygonal detail; good...

You can view the page at http://forums.auran.com/trainz/content.php?71-Content-creation-for-Trainz-A-New-Era

I have been asked by several content creators recently about what they will need to do to make content for Trainz: A New Era and our new graphics engine, currently codenamed 'E2'. While we have no E2 specific tools or techniques to discuss at the moment, there are things content creators can do...

When to use LOD? Mesh LOD is most useful in two distinct scenarios: When a single object is very highly detailed, such that it is reasonably "expensive" in its own right. When an object may be used repeatedly throughout the scene, such that it is "expensive" in total even if not per object...

What is LOD? LOD seems to be a confusing topic for a lot of content creators. We often see mistakes being made in LOD configuration which suggest that the author does not really understand what LOD is meant to achieve, and is attempting to apply poorly-understood "rules" instead of making...

If your asset has a script, then you have the potential for all kinds of problems when it comes time to translate it. You must not display text directly from the script file itself. Put all displayed text in the string table, and load it from there. Debug logging is the only exception to this...

The Trainz community stretches right round the world and Trainz fans speak many different languages. An asset that is only available in one language will see only limited use. It will generally only be used widely by the section of the community that speaks the same language that the asset has...

The 'mesh-asset' tag provides a very useful function - the ability to make one asset load a mesh file from a different asset. Consider a set of houses to represent a housing estate. You will often find a number of very similar but subtly different houses grouped together. Making these in the...

The Trainz community seems to have a pretty good grasp of products. Many 3rd party content creators have made products, and there are over 2000 separate products now available in Trainz. However, there have been very few product-categories created, and those that have seem to have been broadly...

With creative use of layers, you can do a lot more within a session than has historically been possible with Trainz. The layers function in surveyor allows you to add any type of object to a session. Not just trains, triggers and trackmarks, but any kind of scenery, spline, or even entire new...

Today I have some route creation tips for you from one of our resident artists. With an urban or industrial scene, think about where people and vehicles move. Introduce variation in asphalt or concrete surfaces based on vehicle movement. Use worn textures where there is heavy movement, clean...

LOD was first introduced into Trainz way back in TRS2004. Initially it was used only for locomotives, but ten years later it is recommended for every mesh based asset. Since TS2009, Trainz has a texture LOD system - it will automatically use a lower mip level of a texture if the object is...

There are a number of new errors thrown up by content validation. This one started being thrown by the download station approvals process recently. You won't see it in Content Manager yet. ERROR: The dependency <kuid:447264:123456> has an invalid KUID User ID and cannot be used This error is...