Old dog new tricks

[Thai1On]

Coming from model railroading to virtual railroading has shown me I need to learn a whole bunch of new tricks. So far with help from the members I have repaired almost all the downloads I have gotten recently. I'm amazed how many hours slip by "fixing" this stuff.

As I am starting to build my first layout I find I want to alter how some of the built in buildings look. I just want to weather them as some of them look a little too new for my tastes.

Because I'm a teacher here in Thailand I have access to Photoshop CS5 at school. My question is how do I import what I'm guessing is the texture files into Photoshop so I can "age" them? Anything I make will be for personal use ONLY!

 

[William0d0]

Take the asset you wish to age and clone it so as not to mess up the original.

It will now be in your "open for edit" tab.

Select it, then select "edit in explorer".

You should now be viewing a folder containing the various files that the asset is made up of.

Some of them will be image files which you can then open with Photoshop.

Edit and save as required being sure to save the edited files into the assets folder.

When your done commit the asset and the aged version will be ready to use.

 

[Thai1On]

Thank you William but the file in question does not contain any "picture" files that I can see. I was expecting to see at least a .tga file but alas no. Do I need to open a .texture file and if I do will Photoshop open it?

 

[jjqburch]

You need the PEVSoft Texture 2 TGA program.
Jonny

 

[William0d0]

I guess I got great luck.

Was playing around with a building and it did have .tga files already in it.

 

[Thai1On]

Installed PEV's tool and got the texture into an older version of Photoshop. Man I made it look old (old dog tricks). Now how do I save it as a texture file again and replace to old file? I'm still an old dog and it takes me a little longer to learn these new tricks :hehe:.

Dave

 

[Ricke82]

Now how do I save it as a texture file again and replace to old file?

You don't. PEV's Images2TGA created two additional files xxx.tga and xxx.texture.txt. These are used by Trainz instead of the xxx.texture file you started with (the xxx.texture file can be deleted).

If you replaced the old file with the new one when you saved it you should be ready to commit the asset. If you saved it using a different filename (yyy.tga), you will need to edit the xxx.texture.txt file to point to the new file name (change the line reading Primary=xxx.tga to Primary=yyy.tga). Or you can rename yyy.tga to xxx.tga. It doesn't matter as long as the Primary entry in xxx.texture.txt is exactly the same as the name of the tga file you want to use.

You also need to make sure that the new file was saved as a 24 bit/pixel uncompressed image. In my version of PS that's done in the Targa Options window that pops up when you save the file.

 

[shaneturner12]

I don't think that is possible, unless Photoshop directly supports it.

You will probably have to save it as a TGA file and update the .texture.txt file.

Shane

EDIT: Looks like someone else has posted basically the same thing.

 

[ray_whiley]

Is it possible to clone and then alter built-in objects? My understanding was that the texture files of those are not accessible,

Ray

 

[captainkman]

Is it possible to clone and then alter built-in objects? My understanding was that the texture files of those are not accessible,

Ray

Using Textures2TGA it is possible to reskin built-in objects. A .texture file is locked, but Textures2TGA converts them to TGA files so they can be altered.

 

[ray_whiley]

Thank you for this information on Textures2TGA which opens up a new range of possibilities for me.

Ray