Help...spline trees turned into ghosts

[JimDep]

I'm looking for a suggestion to either fix the spline tree ghost problem or a suggestion for a decent replacement. I was using dmdrake's Loblolly Pine 30m spline for pine trees which always worked fine until I changed desktops.....from an AMD card to a newer PC with an Nvidia card. Now his trees are ghosts. Suggestions please...thanks

BTW, this is for Trainz 2012. Would I have the same problem with T:ANE with this particular spline, or is it video card driver issue?

 

[whitepass]

Try a new video driver first.

 

[JimDep]

Thanks for the reply. I just tried another driver and no luck.

 

[clam1952]

Got a screenshot? as just checked the spline in TANE and it seems OK, well as OK as a billboard tree spline can be, definitely an issue in TS12 though.

Might need to increase you anti aliasing settings however....
In TANE I have kuid2:233404:37136:4 installed from the DLS, has a black and white Alpha
In TS12, same kuid but builtin asset, has an embedded blended Alpha, that's the problem, blended alphas cause things to become transparent in 2010 upwards, looks even worse on a low antialiasing setting!
As you have TANE easiest fix is to open it for edit in TANE, edit the config to change the version number to 5, as in <kuid2:233404:37136:5>
In TS12 import content and browse to your TANE editing folder, select the assets folder and it will install in TS12. Upversioning will render the builtin obsolete and that should fix your problem.

To add, nearly forgot, revert the TANE version to original when done.

 

[JimDep]

Got a screenshot? as just checked the spline in TANE and it seems OK, well as OK as a billboard tree spline can be, definitely an issue in TS12 though.

Might need to increase you anti aliasing settings however....
In TANE I have kuid2:233404:37136:4 installed from the DLS, has a black and white Alpha
In TS12, same kuid but builtin asset, has an embedded blended Alpha, that's the problem, blended alphas cause things to become transparent in 2010 upwards, looks even worse on a low antialiasing setting!
As you have TANE easiest fix is to open it for edit in TANE, edit the config to change the version number to 5, as in <kuid2:233404:37136:5>
In TS12 import content and browse to your TANE editing folder, select the assets folder and it will install in TS12. Upversioning will render the builtin obsolete and that should fix your problem.

To add, nearly forgot, revert the TANE version to original when done.

Thanks for your detailed and helpful information. In the screenshot below, you'll see a batch of trees in the middle doing the ghost thing.
My Trainz 2012 is doing another data base updating so I can't get in to the route right now to give a better sample.
I have not imported this route to T:ANE yet so once it's done doing the data base update I'll follow your directions. So, if I'm allowed to edit the image file on dmdrake's KUID and change the alpha to a black & white, that should fix the problem too ? If so, that would be great because there is some other vegetation that I don't use anymore because of the transparency problem. Either way, now you've given me some hope for these pines !
Thanks....now just waiting for the update to finish.....tick tick tick tick

 

[clam1952]

I suggested using the one from TANE as it's a separate bmp file used for the Alpha whereas with the TS12 one the alpha is embedded in the TGA, not easy to separate it to edit. You can do it with irfanview under Image > show channel, select Alpha then edit it and save as alpha.tga, then you can either merge it back into the TGA using images2TGA or leave it as a separate alpha file and just point the alpha= line in the texture.txt to the alpha.tga

Changing alphas to pure black and white is the standard fix for transparent billboard trees.

 

[JimDep]

I suggested using the one from TANE as it's a separate bmp file used for the Alpha whereas with the TS12 one the alpha is embedded in the TGA, not easy to separate it to edit. You can do it with irfanview under Image > show channel, select Alpha then edit it and save as alpha.tga, then you can either merge it back into the TGA using images2TGA or leave it as a separate alpha file and just point the alpha= line in the texture.txt to the alpha.tga

Changing alphas to pure black and white is the standard fix for transparent billboard trees.

I downloaded Infranview, and it does not recognize the TEXTURE file. Under Image, show channel, select Alpha...they were all greyed out.
It's probably me not knowing what I'm doing...

 

[JCitron]

I downloaded Infranview, and it does not recognize the TEXTURE file. Under Image, show channel, select Alpha...they were all greyed out.
It's probably me not knowing what I'm doing...

Use PEV's Images2TGA to convert the .textures to their .tga files.

Open up the .textures and do a save as for the .tga file.

 

[Dinorius_Redundicus]

Jim

Hi. You need to first use PEV's Images2TGA to split the .TEXTURE file into its .TGA and .TEXTURE.TXT components.

Then use Irfanview or Paint.net (or whatever) to deal with the alpha channel in the .TGA.

~ Deane

** D'oh! Citron got in first **

 

[Vern]

It is a great shame that some of the prolific tree creators from yesteryear cannot be persuaded to update their creations so they work better in more recent iterations of the sim. Not talking about speedtree'ing them, just update the billboards and splines so they display correctly. Back in the day, the JVC range or Dave Drake's "arboretum" was the go-to place for good trees that didn't tank the frame rate and still looked the part.

 

[JimDep]

Thanks, I've never heard of the Images2TGA utility. It sounds like something I could have gladly used a decade ago when I was busy making content. Right now, since I haven't done this in years, I feel like a need to back to the "how to make a brick" tutorial. I'll do an update here once I can get into the alpha pic.

 

[clam1952]

Images2TGA can be downloaded from here, along with the rest of Pev's extremely useful tools http://trainz.shaneturner.co.uk/tutorials/index.php/home/utilities/pevsoft-trainz-tools

 

[JimDep]

Thanks clam,
I appreciate the links. I just opened a nasty can of worms when importing my 2012 route into TANE. It will take a while to untangle this mess and for the moment the ghost trees dropped in order of priorities. I did get to look at them in TANE and the transparency problem still exists, maybe not as bad, but still needs to be addressed.