Lineside Trees, bushes, flotsam & jetsam, etc.

[Smileyman]

Just wondering what tree and bush assets people use for close to the track.
It's time for me to start populating this route with some nice greenery.
Obviously I'm talking about the UK here, but there's a lot of overlap, and other region trees could possibly work just as well.
Of course, there's not many palm trees in South Wales, so...

I'm about to spend an hour going through what's built-in to TRS22 PE, but thought I'd ask for some recommendations.

A lot of earlier/older assets using the billboard style have that bright/dark texture thing going on, depending on the angle you view from, but there are some that manage to lessen that effect. I've just got to find which ones.

Also, a lot of the more modern ones are super-high poly and not as efficient lod-wise as they should be, with some creators going waaay over the recommended poly-count, and by N3V's own admission, the speedtree implementation isn't as efficient as it could have been, and as I've said before, I like to spend my polys on detailed locos and carriages/wagons, and lots of them, so I'm looking for the 'well-crafted' bushes and trees.

I plan on using turffx in some places too, as a finishing touch.

Any suggestions very welcome.

Cheers.

EDIT: First thing I tried was the American Boxwood series, there's 5 of them in TRS22 PE that I've found, and they look right at home trackside!
Not sure of their poly-count yet, I'll be checking later, but they look great!

 

[marky7890]

I've found the RMM ones on the DLS are the best, look good and have good performance.

 

[Smileyman]

Excellent!
Cheers mate.
That's exactly what I was hoping to find.

Some really nice trees, and the bushes are great, all gnarled and brambly, just like you see trackside.
And good poly-counts on almost all of them.
I would never have found them looking through the DLS.

Thanks again.
These are really going to make a big difference.

 

[stokia01]

I like the RMM trees also. There is a post to translations at the top of this thread - RMM Trees

 

[JCitron]

I also use RMM trees and bushes.

There are some Pofig trees and bushes I think that are built-in. He made some for T:ANE but for some reason gave up. They don't look too bad actually and I mix those in with the RMM trees and bushes to fill in spaces.

I tried the TurfFX grass and while it can look really nice, it brought my RTX3080 to its knees on my large route and I ended up removing it. This really worked well in some areas where I have salt marshes and wetlands like we do along the coast were I live, however, the grass made the fans scream on my video card.

 

[Smileyman]

There are some Pofig trees and bushes I think that are built-in. He made some for T:ANE but for some reason gave up. They don't look too bad actually and I mix those in with the RMM trees and bushes to fill in spaces.

Having downloaded loads of RMM trees and bushes since they were recommended, I've just tested mixing them with the Pofig stuff that's built-in, and being a slightly different shade of green, the combination of the two colours really gives a natural look to an area. Good call!

I tried the TurfFX grass and while it can look really nice, it brought my RTX3080 to its knees on my large route and I ended up removing it. This really worked well in some areas where I have salt marshes and wetlands like we do along the coast were I live, however, the grass made the fans scream on my video card.

Thanks for the heads-up.
Looks like I'm going to use them sparingly then.

If I do get any performance issues as my route fills out, I'll just delete them and use the JVC clumps and spatters of grass and weed.
They still look good.

 

[grazlash]

If you install the Sebino Lake (comes with TRS19) or West from Denver (TRS22) there are some very nice grasses used in those routes by TrainzItalia. The streetlights are very nice also, having a nice large halo on the globe. Orange tinted from Sebino Lake and blue tinted from West from Denver.

 

[dangavel]

A fair few of euromodellers trees are nice too. Beware of the poly count of a number of the large 340 series jvc grasses, they are great for covering large areas, but use the updated ones the ones appended with 'fix' , not his originals, if you are using 2022.

 

[Smileyman]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.
I'll check them out.

Yeah, I always check the poly-count on anything I download/add to my route, and I have dismissed many things because creators either have not adhered to poly-count/draw call recommendations, thinking that more is better quality, or they have no idea of the kind of bottleneck that excessive draw calls can have on even the fastest computers.

And thanks for the tip about the 'fixed' assets of euromodellers trees.

 

[dangavel]

Thanks for the suggestions guys.
I'll check them out.

Yeah, I always check the poly-count on anything I download/add to my route, and I have dismissed many things because creators either have not adhered to poly-count/draw call recommendations, thinking that more is better quality, or they have no idea of the kind of bottleneck that excessive draw calls can have on even the fastest computers.

And thanks for the tip about the 'fixed' assets of euromodellers trees.

actually I was referring to JVC grasses, not euromodellers. !

 

[Smileyman]

actually I was referring to JVC grasses, not euromodellers. !

Oh yeah.
I see that now.
You mentioned euromodeller and then mentioned the poly-count of some of JVCs trees, and 2+2 equalled 5 for me!
I use things from both these creators on my route, but I've also discounted several items from both because of reasons I mentioned above.

You've just got to be careful, and it's always tempting to place something if it looks good.

For example, just yesterday I found a couple of UK houses that really looked nice.
Not too much geometry, just porch and window/door frames mainly, besides the box and the roof that make up the main part of the house.
Also, the chimney looked nice, mainly because of the texture, and wasn't overly done with the poly-count (according to what I could see).
And the textures themselves weren't overly large, just the right size to give good quality up close.
But....before I placed them (there were 3 variations) I checked them in CM, and they were 4000+ polys!!!
Looking at the models in CM, as a modeller myself for many, many years, I honestly couldn't see where they spent these polys legitimately.
On top of that, they took 15 draw calls!
15!!!
By using Atlas textures, they could have got that down to 2 or 3 draw calls, without any loss in quality.
People seem to have lost the art of 'crafting' something, and instead just throw thousands of polys at it.

I have made some exceptions though.
There are locos and rolling stock where the poly-count is 2-3 times what the recommended count is, and many draw calls because everything is it's own texture, but I like them, so I use them.
Still not right though.

Putting my soapbox away now.