Time to get rid of those old 2D or 3D low quality people!

[MSGSapper]

Folks there simply is no excuse any longer to have those low quality 2D or 3D people on your routes any more. While these type people were good in the ancient days of Trainz, they simply look less then ideal in TRS19 or later.

I have over 500 high quality people of all types available for download on the DLS. Almost all of mine have multiple LODs (usually LOD0 to LOD4) which means even those that appear to be high poly people should be no problems on your route.

To make things even better, thanks to Meshy and CGTrader, more authors such as Carvintage, CaseyBerg, and derznovich are now also making available high quality 3D people on the DLS as well.

Time to make your route shine by replacing those old 2D and 3D people with these new much more realistic ones!

Bob

 

[davesnow]

Amen, brother, Amen!!!

 

[KotangaGirl]

Are they modern era people, - or do you have people from the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s as well?

 

[KotangaGirl]

I decided to have a look at some of these new people. I found some by derznovich that looked promising and could be useful for circa 1910. The only problem was that each individual model figure took up 13-15Mb of hard drive space and the poly count was very high. Yes we certainly do need better high quality people in Trainz, but not if they are using up that level of system resources.

 

[ajrf]

If only they didn't occupy a lot of space on the HDD.

 

[derznovich]

I decided to have a look at some of these new people. I found some by derznovich that looked promising and could be useful for circa 1910. The only problem was that each individual model figure took up 13-15Mb of hard drive space and the poly count was very high. Yes we certainly do need better high quality people in Trainz, but not if they are using up that level of system resources.

Note that I have included the Fbx files and been permissive on the license so if somebody wants, they could easily make new versions with a few hundred polys for the highest poly lod and a 512-512 image texture.

I’m a beginner, but as MSGSapper noted, I have included the lods for performance. I hope that helps, though it doesn’t solve the hard drive problem. And thanks for sharing your thoughts!

 

[MSGSapper]

Folks, a bare minimum or limited system that can barely handle Trainz is a problem we cannot solve for you and that has always been a probem in Trainz, and not just with 3D people. It is no different at my end.

I have to periodically upgrade my system storage, graphics and other things to keep up with the changes in gaming technology over the years or risk no longer being able to play the most curent versions of games and simulations. In my case, I have done everything I can to minimize the impact of my people on the system by providing usually five levels of LOD, and in most cases, just a single onetex diffuse texture map, while ensuring a high quality look. Doing this is a very careful balancing game. If you can't handle this, then that is the best I can do for you.

Bob

 

[boleyd]

Perhaps placing the hi-poly items only where viewable from a train and not the helicopter.

 

[Forester1]

Casey Berg has been uploading some great mid-20th century workers that I think would be fitting for early 20th century as well. They run about 8-10MB, so not a lot smaller, but 30 precent is 30 percent.

 

[MSGSapper]

So people are aware: I use the Blender decimation function to reduce poly counts of most of my people. This equates to the following regarding multiple LODs:

LOD0 = full original poly count.
LOD1 = 50% of the original poly count (ie; 0.50).
LOD2 = 25% of the original poly count (ie; 0.25).
LOD3 = 12.5% of the original poly count (ie; 0.125).
LOD4 = 6.25% of the original poly count (ie; 0.0625).

Transition distances for most of my people using the mesh-table-lod-transition-distances parameter is: 50,100,200,250,300

In some cases I have to do it differently, but for most of my people this holds true.

Bob

 

[johnnytrain]

Folks there simply is no excuse any longer to have those low quality 2D or 3D people on your routes any more. While these type people were good in the ancient days of Trainz, they simply look less then ideal in TRS19 or later.

I have over 500 high quality people of all types available for download on the DLS. Almost all of mine have multiple LODs (usually LOD0 to LOD4) which means even those that appear to be high poly people should be no problems on your route.

To make things even better, thanks to Meshy and CGTrader, more authors such as Carvintage, CaseyBerg, and derznovich are now also making available high quality 3D people on the DLS as well.

Time to make your route shine by replacing those old 2D and 3D people with these new much more realistic ones!

Bob

I must say that I appreciate your creations; especially those foxy vixens whose presence lends grace and fragrance to many of my platforms.

 

[KotangaGirl]

Folks, a bare minimum or limited system that can barely handle Trainz is a problem we cannot solve for you and that has always been a problem in Trainz, and not just with 3D people. It is no different at my end.

I don't think my old Xeon computer is quite at the end of its ability to run Trainz just yet. I make things for myself in Sketchup 8 so things like high poly counts and the need to curtail them is something that I'm very aware of.

So people are aware: I use the Blender decimation function to reduce poly counts of most of my people. This equates to the following regarding multiple LODs:

LOD0 = full original poly count.
LOD1 = 50% of the original poly count (ie; 0.50).
LOD2 = 25% of the original poly count (ie; 0.25).
LOD3 = 12.5% of the original poly count (ie; 0.125).
LOD4 = 6.25% of the original poly count (ie; 0.0625).

Transition distances for most of my people using the mesh-table-lod-transition-distances parameter is: 50,100,200,250,300

In some cases I have to do it differently, but for most of my people this holds true.

This is good information, - thank you very much Bob.

 

[dangavel]

I very much appreciate yours and others efforts Bob, especially as you are paying our of your own pocket, but I think there's a little bit of jumping the gun here, with a few exceptions, the ones under 2mb, each one is quite a large sized file. Some are VERY big....for instance ....47 mb for ONE static person ?
Use a few, ok, thats manageable .. use hundreds, a big hit to the game and also there are storage issues.
Do you have a passenger set to go in carriages of all eras? .
Got UK or Australian figures from the 1920s to the 1950s?
Sub continent indians to go with a revamped DHR route ?
Got a lot of 1890s -1920 US people ?
Victorian era, civil war ?
As much as it sounds tempting, its not really possible yet for many routes. I'll certainly use some of your classic US railway workers in older costumes when I return to Alpine valley, but I cant use them for my other Australian route as they do not fit the era and also, most are obviously american - Does the license allow other versions made by users who did not purchase the items to be uploaded to the DLS ?

We really need a hell of a lot more figures as the older ones are pretty dated in many cases , but there is no way I'm going to include figures that in some cases are bigger file sizes than some large buildings, I have so much storage dedicated to trainz its absolutely crazy, many terabytes , as it all has to be backed up .

 

[Paulsw2]

I guess there's a question here about how much detail - in terms of triangles and texture size - you want/need for different kinds of assets in the Trainz world. The assumption being that locos and rolling stock should take priority. This leaves 'people' assets, especially as they're fairly small objects in the scheme of things, quite far down the pecking order. Another issue is that people don't tend to come in just ones and twos, we need to populate whole carriages and stations with them.

These figures are wonderfully detailed, but I do question whether they need 2048x2048 textures? I've just taken a figure (kuid:439337:117742, SAP_Railway_Worker_8), resized its textures to 1024x1024 and reduced its size from 8 to 4MB. I don't think it looks noticeably different in Trainz, but it is a bit easier on the hard-drive.

All this in no way detracts from the work you've done here Bob as these figures do look amazing; I'd swear that Railway Worker 8, who's wielding a large hammer, actually has a look of determination on his face!

 

[jeff1959]

I have to commend those wonderful people who use their time, talent, and money (LOTS of each of them) to help us make better-looking routes. Bob's stuff is mindblowing to me. However, my artistic ability is limited to drawing straight lines with rulers. Thank you to each of our fine content creators.

 

[H222]

50000 poly people are obscene in just about any circumstance.

The 10K ones are nice - especially when they lod down to 600 polys pretty early.

 

[paulper]

I wish there was an easy way of finding out how many polys these people and other assets are without having to download and preview, etc. A simple column in CM would do.

 

[mick1960]

Kick the asses of the CC!
In my descriptions you can always find the poly count per LOD ...

 

[dangavel]

I guess there's a question here about how much detail - in terms of triangles and texture size - you want/need for different kinds of assets in the Trainz world. The assumption being that locos and rolling stock should take priority. This leaves 'people' assets, especially as they're fairly small objects in the scheme of things, quite far down the pecking order. Another issue is that people don't tend to come in just ones and twos, we need to populate whole carriages and stations with them.

These figures are wonderfully detailed, but I do question whether they need 2048x2048 textures? I've just taken a figure (kuid:439337:117742, SAP_Railway_Worker_8), resized its textures to 1024x1024 and reduced its size from 8 to 4MB. I don't think it looks noticeably different in Trainz, but it is a bit easier on the hard-drive.

All this in no way detracts from the work you've done here Bob as these figures do look amazing; I'd swear that Railway Worker 8, who's wielding a large hammer, actually has a look of determination on his face!

Yep I halved artwork size on a test figure and I can't see any difference , I think this could be applied to almost all pbr assets , unless you are using a 4K screen the differences are negligible. I hardly use any of the pbr buildings because of file sizes , I also question the need for pbr interiors, unless they are trackside buildings such as signal boxes, when was the last time you spent a lot of time inside a trainz building ?

 

[MSGSapper]

I wish there was an easy way of finding out how many polys these people and other assets are without having to download and preview, etc. A simple column in CM would do.

They are in the description.

Bob