EPB EMUs with interiors showing through

[F2Andy]

This is a problem with Eurostar's otherwise excellent EPB units.

It looks like this:

Hopefully you can see that the interior is appearing through the walls of the unit; it is as though Trainz has got confused about what is in front of what. This happens with both motor and trailer units in three different liveries. Is there a way to correct it?

I should say that I have edited config.txt to (i) remove two empty tags, and (i) for the trail, the passenger stuff has been copied across from the drive unit. Having done that, there are no errors or warnings being reported.

 

[Conductorphil]

I'm no expert (Haha, who is?) but I'd say that its probably a texture problem. Not the sort of texture issue that Trainz cares about, but the sort where transparency and positioning has gone out of whack. This mostly occurs when importing old locomotives and rolling stock from pre-Trainz Classics (There seems to have been a small change in texture management with Trainz Classics 1 and 3). What version of Trainz were these made for? If it was made for Trainz 2009, I'd suggest talking to the locomotive creator...

 

[JCitron]

I'm no expert that this, but have seen these issues caused by either an alpha channel problem, or a mesh issue.

Alpha channels allow for transparent areas, but if they're not mapped properly on the mesh, or there is a change in the way TS12 interprets alpha channels, then weird things can happen.

Flipped normals can cause a similar issue to this, where there are holes in the surface and you can see through.

John

 

[F2Andy]

They were made for TS2004, so pretty old. Is it possible to correct it myself or am I stuck with them like that?

 

[sam11]

Ha, I have exactly the same problem.

sam11

 

[stovepipe]

Yes it is possible to fix them, but it's not straightforward.

There is a texture called "sides-int" which has an alpha channel. I split this texture up into seperate primary and alpha textures, using a .tga file and a.bmp file. I think I may also have edited the alpha texture so that it was pure black and white. It was a long time ago, so I may not have that exactly right.

 

[F2Andy]

That makes sense. There are three layers here, the exterior wall, the interior furnishings and the interior wall, and whaty is happening is the interior wall is being draw on top of the exterior wall where it is not obscured by the furnishings, so it certainly sounds like an issue with the wall.

I have tried saving both as 24-bit BMP (no alpha channel), and painting the TGA to blackl except where it is transparent. Then I changed the texture.txt file to this:

Primary=Sides_SR_ext.bmp
Alpha=Sides_SR_ext.tga
Tile=st

Sadly, no effect. Do you have any further hints?

 

[p-dehnert]

-Open the tga files using PEV's Images2Tga
-Right click on the alphamap and select edit
-convert the image to black and white
-save the image (without changing the name) and exit the editor
-save the changed texture from Images2Tga

The trailers have 2 texture using an alpha channel, the motorcars have 3.

After using the above procedure, the glass of the windows becomes invisible.

Peter

 

[Wessex_Electric_Nutter]

You do all know that the reason why this all happens is because Trainz can't handle alphas with grey in them? Its the way the Z ordering happens. However, if you want an EPB that has no transparencies, 2 interiors and a 416 DTS, then I have some available, they are also rather poly heavy and not available on the DLS. And may have missing dependencies:

http://81.6.245.27/files/EMU

Oops! I shouldn't of plugged that. (And yes, there is a 465, but it doesn't include the driving motor cars as of yet.)

 

[stovepipe]

-Open the tga files using PEV's Images2Tga
-Right click on the alphamap and select edit
-convert the image to black and white
-save the image (without changing the name) and exit the editor
-save the changed texture from Images2Tga

The trailers have 2 texture using an alpha channel, the motorcars have 3.

After using the above procedure, the glass of the windows becomes invisible.

Peter

sides_int.tga is the only file that needs to have the alpha set to pure black or white. Leave the others as they are and the window glass will show fine.

 

[F2Andy]

That worked. Yes, only sides_int.tga needs to be changed.

Thanks a lot for the help guys.