Is there a "null" texture on DLS?

[mjolnir]

OK. I admit it. One of the mistakes I made yesterday (I allow myself two a day, but one of the default two, is making a mistake in counting the number of mistakes) was to paint some ground textures on a "real route", instead of my usual practice of using a one baseboard testbed. I wasn't satisfied with any that I tried, and now I want to get rid of them. I did use the asset replacement tool, and managed to get all of the ones I tried replaced with one, but I don't like that one, either. So is there a "null" texture that I can use to replace the last one, and erase it?

Or am I pulling my usual trick, and overlooking some other completely obvious solution?

ns

 

[Dermmy]

There's a texture called 'SurveyorGrid' on the DLS that you can use to texture over existing textures. That leaves the old textures underneath though and they will negatively impact performance. The best way (bit more work though) is to delete/disable the unwanted textures, then load the route and select 'Delete Missing Content' from the main menu. That way they are gone gone.

 

[cascaderailroad]

So if you have Forest1 texture, and texture over it with SurvyorGrid texture, Forest1 is still underneath SurveyorGrid texture ?

At what point, if you apply textures on top of one another, when does the bottom textures get erased by top textures ?

In other words, if you paint 100 textures on top of each other ... how many are actually there (hidden) ?

 

[wreeder]

In older versions of Trainz that had a texture detail slider in the performance settings, the max was 9 layers of textures at the highest setting, 5 at the medium setting and 1 at the lowest setting. This slider is still in the options>video settings panel but it doesn't behave in the same way as before. I'm not really sure that it does anything at all anymore.

The surface of a blank baseboard is a built-in texture called Grid. It just has the "secret" tag set to 1 so it doesn't show in the texture panel of surveyor. You can copy and paste a blank area of baseboard over the textured area to visually remove many textures at once but I'm not sure they are removed from the route.

William

 

[RPearson]

So if you have Forest1 texture, and texture over it with SurvyorGrid texture, Forest1 is still underneath SurveyorGrid texture ?

At what point, if you apply textures on top of one another, when does the bottom textures get erased by top textures ?

In other words, if you paint 100 textures on top of each other ... how many are actually there (hidden) ?

The gnd file format for TRS06 allowed 255 textures per route and the table associated with each vertex could handle up to 255 and each had a scale, rotation and weight factor. Weight factors were values between 1 and 255 and the sum of all weights within the table had to sum to 255 hence the 255 limit. What Surveyor/Driver would actually handle was not published - it may have been only 10. The game however merges all the textures in the vertex table based on scale, rotation and weight with 255 being full opacity and displays the result on the terrain. I don't know the current file formats other than the overall texture limit is now per baseboard not route.

As to how many textures are hidden I think the answer is none - all textures listed in the table are merged and displayed. Effectively if the weight factor for the texture is very low its overall effect is negligible. Surveyor probably has a limit on the number it can handle that may be around 10. In which case newer textures painted over will displace older textures in the table when that limit is reached. I haven't seen any thing published that indicates exactly what that limit is.

Bob Pearson

 

[Ricke82]

I did some testing in TS2010 a while back (and just duplicated it in TS12) which leads me to believe that this isn’t really an issue. I created a blank map in Surveyor and saved it. It had the following dependencies:

Calm water
Default Region
Grid*
No Cloud 01

Then I layered half a dozen textures one on top of the other making sure that each one covered the previous texture. CM showed the following as dependencies:

AJS Grass 01
AJS Grass 02
AJS Grass 03
AJS Grass 04
AJS Grass 05
AJS Grass 06*
Calm water
Default Region
Grid*
No Cloud 01

Back into Surveyor to layer another 3 textures on top of the earlier ones, again making sure that each one fully covered the previous ones. This time CM showed the following:

AJS Grass 06
Calm water
Default Region
gravel a
gravel b
gravel c*
Grid*
No Cloud 01

In each of the cases, the asterisk indicates the textures that were visible when the route was saved. It looks to me like Surveyor saves the textures that were visible when the editing session started and all of the textures which were used during the session, whether they are actually visible or not when the session was saved. As a final test I left the textures alone and added a tree. CM showed only the visible textures as dependencies for the route:

3DE_Pg_Abh_Db1_2-1980
Calm water
Default Region
gravel c*
Grid*
No Cloud 01

This doesn’t “prove” that unused textures are actually removed from a route, only that CM doesn’t report them as dependencies in a very limited test. Since this seems to be a fairly common question, it would be helpful if someone with a understanding of the Trainz file structure could take a look at the appropriate file(s) with a hex editor and settle the question once and for all.

 

[Dermmy]

Hi all - this old chestnut comes up regularly and it is one of those threads where two lines from somebody at N3V could can the debate once and for all. C'mon guys!

The 255 texture per route thing is correct for 06 and older, but later versions are 255 (or thereabouts) per board and no limit per route. I might be wrong on the exact 255 but the per-board limit is so high that in effect there is no practical limit anywhere.

On the how-many-textures-deep thing here is what leads me to believe buried textures do matter. All my routes are DEM via HOG, so they have the blue/red/teal lines all over them. The route gets textured. I try to not use a lot of textures, but I do layer them so by the time I am finished the route there are no HOG textures visible and two/three/four textures overlaying them over the entire route. The HOG textures are still listed in the config though. Pretty much the last step before release is that I remove the HOG textures from the route. I do this by noting each HOG texture listed in the config. I place a swatch of each in a hidden corner somewhere and then use 'Replace Asset' to swap them for a sacrificial texture. Save, quit to CM, delete the sacrificial texture, reload route, Delete Missing Content. All HOG textures are now gone and there is always a significant improvement in raw fps across the route for myself and all testers. The ONLY change made was deletion of the buried, 'invisible' textures.

This leads me to be almost fanatically careful with ground textures, specially the new hi-res stuff. If I get the texturing in an area wrong I don't 'fix' it by retexturing, I quit without saving and start again, or even revert to an archive copy.

The suggestion to copy/paste 'blank grid' is on the face of it a good idea, but does anyone KNOW how this works? Does the 'Paste' remove the underlying textures or does it simply apply a new layer over what's already there? I suspect the latter.

Texture depth matters, and I would love to know exactly how MUCH it matters.

N3V? Anyone???

Andy

 

[4ndylloyd]

..Deleted...Duplicate information posted sorry

Andy

 

[narrowgauge]

There was a discussion about this in the 'old' forum, and we were told that five textures were layered at each vertex. In those days it was 255 textures per route which caused quite a lot of concern. Hiballer had an app that would remove all the textures under a special texture, this does not work with the later Trainz versions.

Peter

 

[wreeder]

The suggestion to copy/paste 'blank grid' is on the face of it a good idea, but does anyone KNOW how this works? Does the 'Paste' remove the underlying textures or does it simply apply a new layer over what's already there? I suspect the latter.

Andy

As Ricke82 says above you have to add an object to map and save again to remove the textures from the config.txt. So the steps would be
1. Copy over the unwanted textures with the blank grid. Remember to unhighlight terrain, objects and track if you want them left in place.
2. Save.
3. Add an object.
4. Save again.

What I don't know is if information about the textures is removed from the other files that make up the route asset.

William

 

[Ricke82]

The suggestion to copy/paste 'blank grid' is on the face of it a good idea, but does anyone KNOW how this works? Does the 'Paste' remove the underlying textures or does it simply apply a new layer over what's already there? I suspect the latter.

It seems to actually replace (delete) the textures. I created two blank baseboards. I opened them for edit and used a hex editor (HxD-free on the net) with a file comparison feature. I compared the two mapfile.gnd files and there were no differences. I added a half a dozen layered textures to the second baseboard and repeated the comparison. They were different--no surprise. I edited the second one and pasted a blank area of the grid over the textures. When I did a third comparison, the two gnd files once again showed up with no differences. This seems to me to indicate that the textures are actually gone.

 

[Dermmy]

@ Peter: I remember those days. That was when folks from Auran perused the forum, spotted something like this and the guy who KNEW how it worked took 10 seconds out of his day to post a definitive answer. I constantly run into issues where I KNOW how trainz used to work, but I have absolutely no idea if that 'rule' still applies. Trainz works differently now, but as to HOW it works we are too often left groping in the dark.

@ Rick - Lovely! Both the test and the result. If pasting 'blank grid' actually removes the underlying textures that's the best news since....

Andy