Clone an asset, make no changes, it is now faulty

[radionut44]

I have clicked to clone an asset, it says I have successfully cloned it, but it shows up as faulty, the report says the texture files are missing. I show the clone in Explorer and in the Body folder all the texture files are there with todays date and time. What am I doing wrong? I made no changes whatever, did not even open any of the files.

 

[johnwhelan]

I have clicked to clone an asset, it says I have successfully cloned it, but it shows up as faulty, the report says the texture files are missing. I show the clone in Explorer and in the Body folder all the texture files are there with todays date and time. What am I doing wrong? I made no changes whatever, did not even open any of the files.

The textures are probably (99%) compressed in an odd format. If so you'll need to break them out with Pev's imagetotga.

Cheerio John

 

[pware]

What am I doing wrong?

If the original asset was listed by Content Manager as Built-in or Base. meaning that it came installed with your version of Trainz, then it has been highly optimized to load quickly and take-up less space. This is normally done by saving its texture files in a non-standard format.

It also means that it cannot be cloned or saved as a .cdp file - both of which require that the textures are in a "normal" format - e.g. JPEG, TGA, BMP, PNG, TIF, etc - which they will not be hence the description in CM that the "*.texture.text file is missing for texture resource 'name of file'"

I just tried this to confirm it.

 

[radionut44]

2 useful answers. I cloned it so I could try to make some changes in the config file. Is there a reference available of step to step how to fix this problem?

 

[norfolksouthern37]

trainz uses .texture files for graphics not .bmp .tga or .jpg etc. except in specific user interface circumstances. These files are compressed and mipped (texture level of detail) versions of the original image files. The error you are getting is likely that the .texture resource is missing so there is no source image (.bmp. tga .jpg and so on) and .texture.txt file that the .texture was made from as they are removed from built-in items to save space.

Sometimes you can use the images2tga program to get a representation of the original image and save that to use but for most of the built-in items the .texture file format is slightly different and will not read.

to fix the problem would require the source image and the .texture.txt file for that image to be present. depending on what the item is you could make your own to replace the base images. not really a better answer to that.

 

[radionut44]

The major thing I wanted to do was try changes to the enginespec. I HAVE cloned the enginespec kuid and submitted with no changes (yet) and the clone is marked as modified but not marked as faulty.
Can I for my own use change the enginespec reference to my clone kuid without making the original non-cloned built-in asset not faulty. The asset would not have been given a new kuid, just had in edit in the engine spec which now would reference the clone kuid.

 

[johnwhelan]

The major thing I wanted to do was try changes to the enginespec. I HAVE cloned the enginespec kuid and submitted with no changes (yet) and the clone is marked as modified but not marked as faulty.
Can I for my own use change the enginespec reference to my clone kuid without making the original non-cloned built-in asset not faulty. The asset would not have been given a new kuid, just had in edit in the engine spec which now would reference the clone kuid.

It should work fine.

John

 

[Forester1]

I have tried understanding what the answers above have said, but here is what I do: First, download and install Images2TGA from PevSoft. Then right-click the faulty asset in CM, select Open - Show in explorer. When it opens in explorer you will see files ending in ".texture". Double-click each one (one at a time) and they should open with Images2TGA. Select "Save As", and it will automagically save a .tga image file and a ".texture.txt" file. Submit edits.

For reasons I have failed to understand, it is ok for assets to have .texture files UNTIL you open them for edit. At that point the program chokes and doesn't like those, so you do this procedure to change them to .tga images and .texture.txt files. They say that the .texture file is much more efficient, so I don't know why this happens, but it does. The only time this procedure might fail, is I have come across some assets that have "normal" .texture files, that when Images2TGA opens they just appear as flat white instead of the normal purple embossed look. In this case the program can't change these, and it will say "Nothing to save". At that point I don't know that there is anything you can do, the author has encrypted the file or something. Hope this helps!

 

[norfolksouthern37]

The only time this procedure might fail, is I have come across some assets that have "normal" .texture files, that when Images2TGA opens they just appear as flat white instead of the normal purple embossed look. In this case the program can't change these, and it will say "Nothing to save". At that point I don't know that there is anything you can do, the author has encrypted the file or something.

A little off-topic but its likely the alpha channel.