Actually the biggests assets are often not from 3dwarehouse
but by creators highly appraised by N3v (will not name them)
There are insane sized cabs/interiors, with unneeded libraries
where the creators ignore the wonderful cab tag
outside-visible-from-cabin 1
and after that overthetop work and too big download you get PBR artifacts that make it plain ugly
bad for the game that ego-ware.
No asset stands alone ever and all has to be loaded and stored on your HD
Filter, be selective and your Trainz works better.
This is not a great take on cab views in any way you look at it.
Cab views are, for the most part, expected to be some of the largest Trainz assets. They are seen up very close, and so are expected to have more/larger textures (within reason), and more polys (within reason). It must be noted that when in the cab view, the draw distance is somewhat reduced, to account for viewing the cab view so close compared to viewing the exterior.
If the creator intends for their cab view to be 'generic' (ie usable by other users), or simply usable over multiple different models, then using the 'outside-visible-from-cabin 1' tag is going to cause a lot of visual issues on locos not designed for it. In most cases to make use of this tag on a locomotive, the cab either needs to be practically empty on the exterior model (which, IMO, tends to look bad on many locos), or you need a custom script with the cab being a separate mesh (which means the creator needed to design their loco to use an interior with this tag). Add in the fact that no two loco designs are alike, and this tag would cause a lot more problems than it saves for generic cab views.
Hence the only time using this tag is actually effective is where you specifically make the cab view only work with one locomotive, or at least one series of locomotives. I've used it for a few years on my steam locomotives, and it is effective for this, but anyone wanting to put those cab views onto their own locos is going to be in for a bad time because it is not going to look good unless they make it match exactly the same as my locomotive...
As to PBR artifacts, are you referring to actual PBR artifacts or just shadow artifacts? The two are very different...
frank_dean said:
"G.M." You are quite right in what you said, and we must not forget that the large size of the assets include the large size in number of polygons in objects with a single mesh and without lods, which can be put with a build 4.6 or higher, simply putting in the config.tex tag:"mesh-table-lod-transition-transition-distances x meters".
This object with thousands of polygons of a single mesh you put a build 4.5 for Tane and it comes out wrong, you change the build and add the distance tag and it is not wrong in 2019.
I have done this test with a single mesh object with thousands of polygons that Tane rejects it and in Trainz 2019 it has no error.
The mesh-table-lod-transition-distances tag was added after several years of creators asking for better control over their LOD transitions (it is extremely difficult at times to make a good looking LOD without this). Sadly there are a large number of creators actively misusing this tag to avoid making LOD. We hope to provide better performance testing options for content in the future, but if necessary there are potential options for better error checking in this area in the future, but I'm sure any improvements here will garner complaints from the creators actively avoiding producing LOD as well.
kengreen said:
On the CM the size includes the texture files, if most of this size is made of textures but the lowest LOD is less that 500 is that detrimental. The large size quite often is made up of a texture file and an alpha texture file. In a number of cases if these are very small you start loosing definition. I have many carriages on the DLS most are approx 16.9 MB but if i create CDP files from these they are only 3.0 MB. Which size is actually downloaded 16.9 or 3.0 as the white pages show the lower figure.
Content Manager should, from memory, show the 'installed' size once installed. For DLS content that isn't yet installed, I'm not sure offhand but it may also show the installed size as well.
For LOD, the fewer number of textures you can use on your lowest LODs the better. If you can use one of the textures from LOD0 this is even better, as it means that Trainz doesn't need to load another texture in for the lower LODs (Trainz will reduce the size of the texture as you move away, through a process called 'mipmapping'). However there are also many creators (including myself) who make a relatively simple, but detailed looking, lowest LOD that has a specific texture that represents the entire vehicle.
https://www.zecrail.com/files/stuff/renders/oh-look-another-one-14.jpg
This image (I've left it as a link to stop it taking up the page
) is an example of one of my older assets that uses this method. Personally, now, for traincars I tend to aim for a higher detail lowest LOD (often up to around 500 triangles) since the lowest LOD is used as the water reflection, but even then this method can still be used quite effectively.
Regards
