Lesser of 2 evils...splines or a bunch of weeds?

[sniper297]

Again I gotta disagree, if the mere condition of being a spline causes stutters regardless of poly count, there would be no hope for Trainz since all track is a spline.

35FPS on a minimum spec system, there are nothing but splines in that scene, not a single solid object.

 

[boleyd]

I had a route, not mine, that I loaded up with splines not paying any attention to the FPS. Then I placed some trains and FPS went down by a lot. So I suspected all the spline things. I pulled a lot of them out. No real improvement. The high detail trains (which I love dearly) were a bigger load.

I agree the splines look repetitive but they stick to the terrain. So I will overlay 2 different splines to eliminate the obviously repetitive look. I also modify the config to remove the LOD limit that is sometimes too small causing spline elements to pop into view. I agree with Sniper (hmmmm) unless tracks have some special program attention a large yard should be a killer.

 

[JCitron]

And large yards are usually a killer. That's why there are different types of track with different repeat points on them and very low-poly tracks too, which sometimes work and sometimes don't. The lots-o-tracks then combined with lots-o-railcars, locomotives, and buildings, are all the ingredients needed for the makings of a slideshow.

There are other issues too with spline trees that no one here has mentioned. All the objects appearing in front of others, making everything look odd. They also have a weird perspective to them, which gives them a distorted look as well. The pine tree in the lower right hand corner in Sniper's screen shot is a good example. These two things were always a fault of spline trees which is nothing related to the later versions of Trainz.

Perhaps the spline objects are great for distances where there's no need to use full-size trees, but for along the tracks, they don't look right.

John

 

[mezzoprezzo]

Here’s a mix of spline hedgerow and individual trees and shrubbery.

There’s not really much there. I tried to make it look a bit more populated by using complimentary textures to help out the illusion of a densely verdant landscape.

Below is the key showing which is which. I prefer the individually laid areas because they are unique.

The “spline only” areas look a bit repetitive to me, but I’m relatively happy with it. The mix of the two types in the overlapping areas help break up and improve the duplicated spline imagery a little more. A matching texture underneath the splines, emulating shadows, helps with the illusion. I've deliberately not done this under the central diagonal spline to illustrate the point.

I can’t say I have noticed any distortion problems with the splines, except perhaps when they are being dragged across the undulating landscape hugging the ground. They look a bit odd in Surveyor during their movement, but look perfectly acceptable once placed, unless they are placed on extremely steep areas.

 

[JCitron]

Casper,

This looks awesome and proves a of good points we've been discussing. The spline objects look quite nice and so do the alpha-blended flipboards in TRS2004. Sadly in the newest versions, their coloring is marred by the way they're rendered. If you look carefully at Sniper's tree spline in the very right hand corner, there is that weird perspective of the tree as though it was photographed at the wrong angle. Maybe you were lucky with how you place these objects.

John

 

[sniper297]

Again, that has nothing to do with being part of a spline - it's an old cruciform tree which does the exact same thing in the fixed object. Look at a grass clump object and the matching grass spline object from the same angle, an X is an X.

 

[mezzoprezzo]

John,

Yes, I can see your point after looking at Sniper’s screenshot.

I do get occasional transparency problems where one plane jumps in front of another, but it is only noticeable when the landscape is moving. Even then it’s not entirely unacceptable. It reminds me of the effect you sometime get looking through a real train carriage window at speed. It’s minimal on my setup, and nothing like as pronounced as the example you have highlighted. It certainly seems to have reached a more unacceptable level in later versions. Pity!

With my setup, once the image is stationary there seem to be no problem at all. The worst I can achieve is as seen in the example in my last post where the billboard star pattern shows against a lighter ground texture. Here’s a closer view. There is something odd looking with the spline bush to the left of the yellow compass. It has some transparency issues but it seems minimal

As stated in my last post, I’d normally texture some “shading” below it to visually anchor it to the ground and mask the obvious cross effect. It then looks OK.

Casper

 

[BobCass]

Rock Uplift..

You Know, I think that splines are just like buildings..You can get good ones or bad ones as far as frame rates are concerned..But you can also create things that you cannot do with Textures..

 

[sniper297]

I played with them rock cliff objects for a while, unfortunately either the terrain sculpting tools are too coarse or I just haven't gotten the hang of using them since I had too much difficulty getting a realistic transition.

 

[Paulsw2]

Artistically, I think that individual objects are the winners for middle to close views....Conversely, a spline will generally always look the same. However, used sparingly in combination with individual foliage objects, splines can sometimes be made to look a bit more unique, but you can usually spot them.

I agree. Where are the splines here?

Judicious use of splnes with 3D objects makes for very good foliage. For users with TS10 and 12 you can see the benefits of the latest 3D foliage, efficient splines and speedtrees which is so much better than the old billboard style objects which really only work for screenshots.

Paul