How do you read a .texture file

[harvan75]

Hi people. This is my first post, but unlikely to be my last

I've been a 2006 Trainz user since 16 January 2007. I have some experience in virtual 3D environments having been a beta-tester for Adobe's Atmosphere project about 4 years ago (the project ran for about 2 years before getting axed just after 1.0 release) and have been very impressed with what Auran has achieved. I have also found the experience extremely frustrating, probably because of what I want the product to do (at this stage to reskin a railcar into my own fictitious colours), and because I don't have a railroad background of any sort.

Any answers to the following questions would be gratefully accepted.

A - In terms of trying to reskin a railcar I used the Y1 provided with the DVD. Firstly, it doesn't show up in PaintShed. A search of this forum shows that paintshed isn't popular with the community, probably because it doesn't give much flexibility and so a lot of locomotives aren't reskinable in this way. Not a problem, although I can see why Auran appears to be trying to persist with this approach for people like me

Q1 - is there a way of finding out if a locomotive can be reskinned in paintshed before downloading from the Download Station?

Q2 - is there a tutorial available on how to create a locomotive that can be reskinned in Paintshed?

B - So Paintshed isn't going to work so I looked at a couple of tutorials, OK so I needed to clone a locomotive, amend its config file and edit its bmp and tga files. Unfortunately the first couple of railcars I downloaded had missing dependencies. OK so back to the Y1. Guess what, no bmp or tga files. Rather a set of .texture files.

Q3 - what is a .texture file, and how do I edit it?

C - And now a simplier question. Using the term 'railcar' as a search in the Download Station has not identified the range of vehicles available (eg I just lucked over the Westrail vehicle I will be using - it uses bmp and tga files ). Generally it appears you need to know the vehicle identifier.

Q4 - Without knowing what a vehicle is called (here's my non-railroading background coming out) what is the best way of searching for a vehicle that meets my needs?

D - I have noted that 2006 Content Manager has improved error checking, as well as flagging problems with Meshes that I have downloaded.

Q5 - Should I be sticking with 2006 content?

Regards

Andrew Harvey
Bassendean Western Australia

 

[VinnyBarb]

Hi people. This is my first post, but unlikely to be my last

I've been a 2006 Trainz user since 16 January 2007. I have some experience in virtual 3D environments having been a beta-tester for Adobe's Atmosphere project about 4 years ago (the project ran for about 2 years before getting axed just after 1.0 release) and have been very impressed with what Auran has achieved. I have also found the experience extremely frustrating, probably because of what I want the product to do (at this stage to reskin a railcar into my own fictitious colours), and because I don't have a railroad background of any sort.

Any answers to the following questions would be gratefully accepted.

A - In terms of trying to reskin a railcar I used the Y1 provided with the DVD. Firstly, it doesn't show up in PaintShed. A search of this forum shows that paintshed isn't popular with the community, probably because it doesn't give much flexibility and so a lot of locomotives aren't reskinable in this way. Not a problem, although I can see why Auran appears to be trying to persist with this approach for people like me

Q1 - is there a way of finding out if a locomotive can be reskinned in paintshed before downloading from the Download Station?

Q2 - is there a tutorial available on how to create a locomotive that can be reskinned in Paintshed?

B - So Paintshed isn't going to work so I looked at a couple of tutorials, OK so I needed to clone a locomotive, amend its config file and edit its bmp and tga files. Unfortunately the first couple of railcars I downloaded had missing dependencies. OK so back to the Y1. Guess what, no bmp or tga files. Rather a set of .texture files.

Q3 - what is a .texture file, and how do I edit it?

C - And now a simplier question. Using the term 'railcar' as a search in the Download Station has not identified the range of vehicles available (eg I just lucked over the Westrail vehicle I will be using - it uses bmp and tga files ). Generally it appears you need to know the vehicle identifier.

Q4 - Without knowing what a vehicle is called (here's my non-railroading background coming out) what is the best way of searching for a vehicle that meets my needs?

D - I have noted that 2006 Content Manager has improved error checking, as well as flagging problems with Meshes that I have downloaded.

Q5 - Should I be sticking with 2006 content?

Regards

Andrew Harvey
Bassendean Western Australia

Well, here goes of what I know:

There are some tutorials available that show how to use PaintShed, I personally did never try to use PaintShed, hence I am not familiar with it. I guess this is only used for AURAN's inbuild stuff as other creators do things often different when applying textures.

If I want to reskin something just for my own use, I would use the item's texture and retexture this. In TRS 2004 you find the item's Kuid folder in World/dispatcher/downloads, which has all relevant files in it. There you can modify any texture graphic to your heart's content. If you want to use your texture modification and upload this to the DLS, you need the creator's consent to do so, unless he/she stated otherwise in a readme file in the Kuid's folder.

In TRS 2006, the texture is hidden in a .texture file. There is a "TGA tool" or "TGA2 tool" (search with Google or search the forum) which reads this and lets you edit the texture through CMP.

Searching the DLS for content, I use, say, the "locomotive" icon for these, the "rolling stock" icon for, well, rolling stock etc. to refine your search, you can search for say, Western Australia, NWS, Queensland or whatever content there. You will not always to get what you want, use the "Title" or "Description" clicks to refine your search. Or search for "box car, "tanker", tracks. etc.

If you know a particular creator who made several items you would like to see, search with his user name or his KUID number to see all his created content.

If you only have TRS 2006 you can still use items created for older versions of TRS, as long as you are aware not all items will work in TRS 2006. Often one can get these to work there by editing the config.txt file of the Kuid or using other items which normally are attached to it which prevent the item to work. Say a TRS 2004 created loco, the body might work in TRS 2006 but the bogeys might not, by aliasing others in the config.txt file it is possible to see the item in TRS 2006. But you have to know what you are editing or you could really stuff things up major. If not familiar, stick to items created for your TRS version.

Cheers and have fun

VinnyBarb

 

[pommie]

The TGA tool can be grabbed here

link removed

I wouldn't have a clue how to use it as I found it for someone else, and its just sat there ever since

Cheers David
ps, weicome

 

[teddytoot]

Pommie

It is very easy actually. To view the graphic in a texture file you just select the trainz option in the load pop-up and load. You can then save it as a tga file. The program is also useful for viewing tga files as it will show the alpha channel, if present. You have the facility to load either the main or alpha files to your graphics editor (as temporary bmp files) for editing. You can also create the alpha image from the main one if you want to.

I use it extensively and tend to load any tga file from a trainz folder via TGAtools to make sure I don't lose the alpha channel.

 

[thegrindre]

All I got was a 404 error. Any new link out there for the TGA2 Tool???

 

[zatovisualworks]

Yes, Rick, there is always a way over here...

Some are public

http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/download/tgatl2.exe

and others... private

Alberte

 

[thegrindre]

He, he, it would be you, Alberte. Do you ever have time to play?

Got it. Thanks a million.:clap::Y:

Rick

 

[johnwhelan]

Hi people. This is my first post, but unlikely to be my last

I've been a 2006 Trainz user since 16 January 2007. I have some experience in virtual 3D environments having been a beta-tester for Adobe's Atmosphere project about 4 years ago (the project ran for about 2 years before getting axed just after 1.0 release) and have been very impressed with what Auran has achieved. I have also found the experience extremely frustrating, probably because of what I want the product to do (at this stage to reskin a railcar into my own fictitious colours), and because I don't have a railroad background of any sort.

Any answers to the following questions would be gratefully accepted.

A - In terms of trying to reskin a railcar I used the Y1 provided with the DVD. Firstly, it doesn't show up in PaintShed. A search of this forum shows that paintshed isn't popular with the community, probably because it doesn't give much flexibility and so a lot of locomotives aren't reskinable in this way. Not a problem, although I can see why Auran appears to be trying to persist with this approach for people like me

Q1 - is there a way of finding out if a locomotive can be reskinned in paintshed before downloading from the Download Station?

Q2 - is there a tutorial available on how to create a locomotive that can be reskinned in Paintshed?

B - So Paintshed isn't going to work so I looked at a couple of tutorials, OK so I needed to clone a locomotive, amend its config file and edit its bmp and tga files. Unfortunately the first couple of railcars I downloaded had missing dependencies. OK so back to the Y1. Guess what, no bmp or tga files. Rather a set of .texture files.

Q3 - what is a .texture file, and how do I edit it?

C - And now a simplier question. Using the term 'railcar' as a search in the Download Station has not identified the range of vehicles available (eg I just lucked over the Westrail vehicle I will be using - it uses bmp and tga files ). Generally it appears you need to know the vehicle identifier.

Q4 - Without knowing what a vehicle is called (here's my non-railroading background coming out) what is the best way of searching for a vehicle that meets my needs?

D - I have noted that 2006 Content Manager has improved error checking, as well as flagging problems with Meshes that I have downloaded.

Q5 - Should I be sticking with 2006 content?

Regards

Andrew Harvey
Bassendean Western Australia

A bit of background first, Trainz has meshes that are covered with textures. How they are applied is determined in GMAX and is called mapping.

The ideal for a reskin is a simple mesh with a single texture file applied. The Paintshed system consists of simple meshes and single simple texture files that have been mapped to the mesh. It has it's own graphics editor builtin and is a simple way for people to do a "reskin". A more complex way is to create a Paintshed reskin then edit the .bmp file with something like PaintShop Pro since it has more flexibility than the Paintshed graphics editor.

It is technically possible to build a simple mesh that could be used by Paintshed, it's just a lot easier and more flexible to build one conventionally. As far as I am aware there are no items on the DLS that can be reskinned with Paintshed other than the simple meshes that are part of Paintshed.

In general rolling stock is less complicated than locomotives and in general easier to reskin. For UK rolling stock I have a few things called reskin kits these basically give you a simple bx and a simple .tga file which you can edit. I'm not aware of anyone else doing anything like this.

When modelling there is a different need for clarity in textures and background colours. The choice is use the same level of pixels per foot all over, good for reskinning, or go for performance and vary the texture size pixels per foot over the model. Early items were more performance oriented.

Some modellers give the loco a wash in one texture then put in planes with a second texture for the loco name etc. The wash colour can be as small as one pixel. You have no chance of changing this to multiple colours because of the way the mapping works. You are also restricted to changing the texture for the name plate to the size that is there already. This means if you want to add two more letters but retain the same font it may not work. In general if it has a number of .tga files avoid it for reskinning.

You'll find that some creators work reskins better than others. I do a fair number of reskins and like to use Paul Hobb's items since they are usually easy to reskin. If you stumble across a good creator that is easy to reskin look at their other work and see what else is worth doing.

I use TRS2004 and TRS2006 items when I reskin. I create in TRS2006 but put in a version number for TRS2004 so TRS2004 users can use the content.

Cheerio John