Ok NV3 i'll ask again, any plans regarding vegetation ? .

[Vern]

Trs22 is on sale now by the way, 40% off.

Funnily enough just got the email from Steam. I had assumed it was just TSW and TSC (Dovetail) items that were in the sale. Looks like it's time to invest!

Right, that's done then.

And as regards the trees - I had noticed a bit of transparency creeping in working with '19 but like I said, 90% of my route building effort is on model layouts these days so you're not looking more than about a scale mile or so.

 

[dangavel]

Just adding this here to try and get it seen by more content creators , Cayden spent weeks developing this tutorial , which sadly has had almost zero response since he posted it recently.

"recent forum post “Ok NV3 I’ll ask again, any plans regarding vegetation ?” (May 12, 2023) got me thinking the same question. I thought perhaps it is because there are few tutorials on how to accomplish the task, that is, how to make a tree for Trainz. There is one from N3V Games, “Trainz – Content Creation - #11 - Creating Speedtrees Assets for Trainz”. But Speedtrees has a relatively expensive subscription licence and the version compatible with Trainz, version 6, is no longer available. I contacted SpeedTree and they were not so sure they could/would provide me with a license for version 6. Instead of pursuing that route, I decided to have a look at what would be involved to make a tree using Blender.

I had a look at other software available from the Internet. But, again, many were expensive and/or copyright would limit my ability to make any assets I created available to the Trainz community. Those that were free or relatively inexpensive were cumbersome to use and/or didn’t promise to be able to produce anything that resembled a real tree.

So, I went it on my own, trying to create a tree from scratch. What evolved is a series of five video tutorials on how to make a tree for Trainz using Blender 3. The first video, “01 Introduction” covers much of what I have said here, lays out the software that I used in addition to Blender, and gives an overview of the workflow to follow in the subsequent tutorials. The second video focuses on create the skeleton for the tree, the branches. I star from scratch, but also suggest the Blender’s add-on, Sapling, can save on some of the work. The third video presents a way to create the leaves using Bake Wrangler’s Bake Node Editor. One of the challenges with working with transparency and PBR texturing was to create an emissive layer for the parameters file. This was accomplished with the Bake Node Editor. The fourth video describes PBR texturing for the four seasons, winter, spring, summer and fall. The fifth video put is all together in a Trainz asset. In particular, I describe how to create a config.txt file for seasonal content.

I have concentrated on providing the mechanics of how to make a tree for Trainz using Blender. My hope is that with will allow you to provide the artistry to make your trees look and perform as you would like them to. I use a sugar maple sapling as my model to keep the repetition (number of branches) down and accentuate the seasons, the sugar maple having bright red leaves in the fall. But the techniques should be applicable to any tree. Indeed, they could also be applied to shrubs and other vegetation.

I look forward to seeing the results of your application and artistry.

Cayden