Spinning Textures (or something like that)

[gus1911]

I believe it was in the old forum that I saw a reference to "spinning textures" in surveyor. What is this? And how is it done? What's the effect?

 

[trackplate]

Hi gus1911
Texture rotation is handy for breaking the straight-line effect with the repeat patterns of some textures when this is undesirable and correcting the direction of others for example cut grass tends to look best if kept in the same direction as a fence line
Rotation is achieved in the paint pallet by rotating the compass
Regards Bob V

 

[gus1911]

Mr V

Thanks. I know about the compass. But somewhere (perhaps in one of my train nightmares) I recall associating rotating or spinning with an effect that "smears" the texture thereby smoothing it out and softening the edges. Not so?

Maybe I need to adjust my meds!

 

[TomDean]

Hi Gus

If you hold down the [ or ] key while 'texturing' then you don't get the pattern effect caused by some textures and the result is a totally random effect. Try it. It works!

TD

 

[gus1911]

Yeah - I think that's what it was. Off to my artist studio Kewl! Now I don't need to adjust my meds.

 

[ldowns]

The down side...

Hi Gus

If you hold down the [ or ] key while 'texturing' then you don't get the pattern effect caused by some textures and the result is a totally random effect. Try it. It works!

TD

But-- be aware that you're in effect overlaying different versions (because of the different angles) of the texture onto the same square, and the rendering engine has to process all of them (including the ones on the 'bottom' of the heap) when rendering the screen. If you do this everywhere with your textures it can have a significant effect on your frame rate, especially if you're also including a lot of high-poly scenery items. You can have quite a few (256?) layers of textures in each square (if my memory serves me), so if you go back and overlay other textures on top of your originals things can get really sluggish. Worst of all, unless you use something like Erazor you can't erase the textures once you've put them down; overlaying them with new ones just adds more work for the computer.

A few tips I've found useful with textures:

1) Don't spin (hold the ] key down); instead press it every second or two as you brush over an area. Usually this is enough to keep the textures from being too repetitive, as long as you also:
2) keep the scale dial set high enough and your radius low enough that you aren't painting an entire texture tile at a time.
3) When you're done, if you see areas that seem excessively tiled, try turning your scale way up and just single-click around here and there, pressing the ] key once between each click. This does wonders for breaking up patterns.

Hope this is useful,
Lamont

 

[Moojgoo]

What's Erazor and how do you get it?

 

[gus1911]

ldowns

I was wondering about excessive texturing and the effect on fps. Thanks for the tip. Seems as though it's not really worth it, especially in routes that are already highly detailed.

 

[colhad]

But-- be aware that you're in effect overlaying different versions (because of the different angles) of the texture onto the same square, and the rendering engine has to process all of them (including the ones on the 'bottom' of the heap) when rendering the screen. If you do this everywhere with your textures it can have a significant effect on your frame rate, especially if you're also including a lot of high-poly scenery items. You can have quite a few (256?) layers of textures in each square (if my memory serves me), so if you go back and overlay other textures on top of your originals things can get really sluggish. Worst of all, unless you use something like Erazor you can't erase the textures once you've put them down; overlaying them with new ones just adds more work for the computer.

A few tips I've found useful with textures:

1) Don't spin (hold the ] key down); instead press it every second or two as you brush over an area. Usually this is enough to keep the textures from being too repetitive, as long as you also:
2) keep the scale dial set high enough and your radius low enough that you aren't painting an entire texture tile at a time.
3) When you're done, if you see areas that seem excessively tiled, try turning your scale way up and just single-click around here and there, pressing the ] key once between each click. This does wonders for breaking up patterns.

Hope this is useful,
Lamont

I'm one of the guilty ones then as I rotate pretty much all the time. The only time I don't roate is when using crop textures.

 

[narrowgauge]

There is another thread on this subject called 'Rotate tool for textures' in this same forum, and using 'Search' would have found it.

The quote below is by Bob Pearson who has researched Surveyor limit quite thoroughly.

George, I think there is a limit of 5 textures associated with each grid point at least that's what I remember reading but otherwise it behaves as you indicate. The file format for the gnd file doesn't have a specific limit for number of textures associated with each grid point so Surveyor must set it. There is an overall limit of 250 textures for the entire map. But as you say the same texture could be used many times at any number of grid points. Each of the 5 possible instances includes its own weight factor, scale and rotation.

Bob Pearson

It appears that spinning will lay down 5 texture repeats but that is all. These repeats do not count to the total of 250, just one count for the first use of the texture. It seems worth noting that overpainting textures will probably have the same effect on frame rates.

About Erazor

erazor - tool for erazing groundtextures

Hello all,

after some discussion in the route builder's forum I buildt a routine called erazor, which erazes (no kidding!) groundtextures.

You find it http://www.uelasticus.de/erazor/erazor.zip

You got to download texture kuid 44700:11992 from DLS as well. This is used as a marker. Just apply it to the area on your board where you want to have your groundtextures removed, exitz TRS and run erazor. In the marked area all textures are wiped away leaving the yellow on grey grid.

See the reedme-file for details.

Best regards

Norbert

Cheers

Narrowgauge