Faulty Dependency For Henry's Tender (Sudrian Industries)

[ChugLifeBoy]

Hey, everyone. I recently downloaded Sudrian Industries' Henry model and I'm having an issue with his tender. It says that it is faulty and when I go to check errors and warnings, it says that "The texture 'mesh/blank_normal.png' is a uniform color." I should mention that I have NO idea how to fix this! If anyone knows how to fix this, please let me know! I really would appreciate some help!

 

[Frank_Dean]

This problem should be solved on the website where you downloaded the locomotive.
The problem you have is very well explained in the error that it shows:
"The texture 'mesh/blank_normal.png' is a uniform color."
You have to edit the image file: blank_normal.png and change the color of some pixel with an image editor, that whole image has the same color and that is why the error appears.
If you have not understood the solution and you still do not know how to solve it, go to the website where you downloaded it and ask there.

 

[ChugLifeBoy]

This problem should be solved on the website where you downloaded the locomotive.
The problem you have is very well explained in the error that it shows:
"The texture 'mesh/blank_normal.png' is a uniform color."
You have to edit the image file: blank_normal.png and change the color of some pixel with an image editor, that whole image has the same color and that is why the error appears.
If you have not understood the solution and you still do not know how to solve it, go to the website where you downloaded it and ask there.

Thanks for your help! I was able to fix that issue and a few others while I was at it!

 

[Forester1]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that in today's world this should be a warning, not an error? I have terabytes of Trainz assets, so I really don't care if an image is 64x64 or 256x256 or 512x512 instead of 8x8. There is just not enough difference to matter to me. And leaving the size and changing one pixel is a ridiculous way to fix it as it does nothing for the size anyway, but it is often the easiest fix. So, let's review some of these errors and see if they are really worth the grief they give to so many people. Oh, I forget, all of N3Vs resources are now geared towards getting voices for a console version. Sigh.

 

[JCitron]

Is it just me, or does anyone else think that in today's world this should be a warning, not an error? I have terabytes of Trainz assets, so I really don't care if an image is 64x64 or 256x256 or 512x512 instead of 8x8. There is just not enough difference to matter to me. And leaving the size and changing one pixel is a ridiculous way to fix it as it does nothing for the size anyway, but it is often the easiest fix. So, let's review some of these errors and see if they are really worth the grief they give to so many people. Oh, I forget, all of N3Vs resources are now geared towards getting voices for a console version. Sigh.

The texture size has a lot to do with performance more than disk space. If a texture is too large, this can impact the quick loading of assets. It also has much to do with the version of the asset. Depending upon the asset-version, the older versions could only support smaller textures given the time when that Trainz version came out. Later versions such as T:ANE and later TRS19 and TRS22 can support larger textures and so can the hardware but back in 2003, a GF-9600 XT was a big deal or ATI 9800 LE.

What really still hurts performance not only in Trainz but also other 3d programs is uniform colors. GPUs still have trouble loading and handling solid colors. To get around that, all is needed is a single pixel of a lighter or darker color. A lighter color of course if the uniform color is solid black.

Like all Trainz versions these errors weren't reported at the time due to never trapping the problem and letting the assets load anyway even if they caused really awful stutters and sometimes crashes. As error-checking has gotten stricter, what was once ignored became warnings and then eventually errors.

 

[wreeder]

And leaving the size and changing one pixel is a ridiculous way to fix it as it does nothing for the size anyway, but it is often the easiest fix. So, let's review some of these errors and see if they are really worth the grief they give to so many people.

You're right in that the fix is not going to improve the performance, it is just to make the error checker happy. The real performance hit is that an individual texture which will require a separate graphic call to load into GPU memory has no detail or complexity worth wasting that graphic call on. Perhaps that should be the text of the error message. The proper fix for the creator is to make the texture more detailed so that it really adds to the look of the model in game. Limiting the number of graphic calls per asset is the most effective way to improve performance of the game. Ideally, the creator would remake the asset to use one texture atlas containing all the textures used and along the way improve the overall quality of the textures.

As per Windwalkr, warnings tell the creator to fix this problem now while the asset is still allowed to work in the game before we make it an error in the future and your asset stops working in the game.

 

[Frank_Dean]

For those who don't know about the Henry's Tender bug, here are some details:

TSI-Henry's Tender <kuid:840120:103067> Build: 4.6

Tested on TRS2019, which is the version it was made for:
-It has no errors, just 2 warnings and can be used without problems. One of the warnings is: "The texture 'mesh/blank_normal.png' is a uniform color."
-The texture: blank_normal.png has a very small size of 8x8 bits

So I assume that it is a bug that only appears in TRS2022, which must have a more effective anti-error filter than in 2019.

 

[JCitron]

So I assume that it is a bug that only appears in TRS2022, which must have a more effective anti-error filter than in 2019.

That is very possible. Asset error-checking becomes stricter with each version and update. What were once warnings is now an error. The warnings are for the content creator to go back and update their assets because eventually these warnings will become errors at some point.