Texture and TurfFX "Overspray"

[skittlekicks]

I've always wondered why this is a thing. Whenever I texture, it seems to act like rattle can spray paint causing textures to fade outside spray zone. For example. If I make a radius of 5m for ballast texturing, placing the said radius in the center of the track it goes way beyond my parameters. For me I don't want 10 feet of ballast on either side of my tracks because it looks ugly (and it's worse in the 10m grid). I'm sure this has been a thing for a long, long, long time in other versions. This same thing is true with TurFX grass. Going where I don't want it (even into areas with no baseboards). And yes I already tried the spread setting for TurFX and it does nothing.

How it should be is everything stays within the diameter of that radius.

 

[JCitron]

The reason is textures are drawn from the intersection on the grid and not on the area of the brush. This is also true with TurfFX causing grass to "grow" in the middle of roads and ROWs. What we do to get around the grass in the roads is to use shorter grass closer to the roads and taller grass further back.

Ballasting tracks is an art. There are different things you can do such as putting down another texture first then placing the ballast texture on top. I will usually put down a darker ballast or gravel first then place the actual ballast under the tracks using a smaller radius. The issue we run into when using a smaller radius is points that stick out especially on curves.

There's a technical term for this kind of rendering however age has intervened and I can't remember what it's called anymore and this is how it's been for as long as I can remember.

 

[Forester1]

Is this the effect caused by the square grid? It seems like early in my Trainz experience I learned that even though textures were applied with a circular tool, they tended to form to the square grids, leaving points sticking out here and there. It was very apparent in the Sherman Hill ROW, where the dark ballast tended to spray points out on the light-colored plains. Seems like that was supposed to be remedied in HD?

 

[JCitron]

Is this the effect caused by the square grid? It seems like early in my Trainz experience I learned that even though textures were applied with a circular tool, they tended to form to the square grids, leaving points sticking out here and there. It was very apparent in the Sherman Hill ROW, where the dark ballast tended to spray points out on the light-colored plains. Seems like that was supposed to be remedied in HD?

We see it on the square grid because of the points where the texture is placed. The effect is remedied in HD because the points are closer together but it's still there.

 

[skittlekicks]

HD textures push the limits of GPUs and CPU cycles (which means hotter chips, and that can lead to thermal issues). Optimization be damned. For TurFX yeah I had figured distance to objects (like road and track) was the only solution. I was more interested in why they designed the brush tool that way. I do have to hide a lot behind grass splines, but most in the JVC library will lag the crap out of my computer. I think N3V should have gone Unity for the game engine and not whatever they use, but whatever.

 

[JCitron]

HD textures push the limits of GPUs and CPU cycles (which means hotter chips, and that can lead to thermal issues). Optimization be damned. For TurFX yeah I had figured distance to objects (like road and track) was the only solution. I was more interested in why they designed the brush tool that way. I do have to hide a lot behind grass splines, but most in the JVC library will lag the crap out of my computer. I think N3V should have gone Unity for the game engine and not whatever they use, but whatever.

They looked at other game engines and then rolled their own due to various limitations each game engine had including royalties.

Unity is crap as can be seen with Cities Skylines which runs into roadblocks all the time with performance issues. We think TRS22 is bad.

Spline grass and shrubs have always been poor performers and I've avoided them for years due to that reason. This has something to do with how they're rendered.

There are some newer JVC shrubs and grass splines that have been optimized and work pretty well, all things considered. Look for those with build 4.6 and higher. The older ones really have performance issues.

 

[Paulsw2]

Yeah, I think Jan's later stuff is much better optimised (though his trackside splines were a favourite of mine for a long time).