Tutorial: Getting the most from PBR and why you should be using it in TRS19

[johnwhelan]

Well there is PAYWARE and if you are creating that You are getting PAID and should be able to afford it. If you are creating FREEWARE with no cost to the end user that is considered NON-PROFESSIONAL at least here in the US...

Look I am just trying to help LOL I buy mine but sheesh I have spent more for lot less

My understanding is anything that is uploaded to the DLS can be incorporated in Payware and for that reason it has to be licensed for payware. I have some textures that are licensed for non-commerical use and those models cannot be uploaded to the DLS for that reason.

>I am gonna take a guess here and guess you do not like change very much.

Changes and computers was very much my business before I retired. In the early days of email the connection between systems was X.400, I was involved in the design of my department's system and when my boss's boss made a presentation about it the comment was "and this box here is our internet connection. I'm not sure what it does but John has worked hard so we thought we'd let him have one." within a year most of the email traffic was running through the internet. I was involved in the way that the Canadian Federal government changed its procurement for purchases under $5,000. Before the change it would take about six or seven months to buy even small items. After the change a couple of days. That saved a chunk of money. I changed the typeface we used by default before sending things to be printed. We saved around a $1,000,000 a year on that one. Database servers, I consolidated thirty odd systems and got better response times to the users. On the email side I added external modems to the email server it wasn't used very much until we were restricted from the building for a couple of weeks. Suddenly we had 3,000 workers out of 5,000 teleworking using those modems and this was before teleworking was fashionable.

What working with lots of changes taught me is you have to have everything in place before introducing a change then even a big change doesn't seem that bad. Looking at PBR and TS19 at the moment in my professional opinion it isn't there yet for what I'd call the main stream content creator. It might be coming but at the moment it is bleeding edge.

By the way in an earlier post you made an assumption that my computer wasn't good enough for TS19 and PBR. I run a six core Xeon with an RTX 2070 which I think is sufficient.

Cheerio John

 

[dangavel]

My understanding is anything that is uploaded to the DLS can be incorporated in Payware and for that reason it has to be licensed for payware. I have some textures that are licensed for non-commerical use and those models cannot be uploaded to the DLS for that reason.

>I am gonna take a guess here and guess you do not like change very much.


By the way in an earlier post you made an assumption that my computer wasn't good enough for TS19 and PBR. I run a six core Xeon with an RTX 2070 which I think is sufficient.

Cheerio John

yeah John tends to want to cater for those of us who don't have top end computers, hes considerate. Likewise, I want as many people as possible to be able to run a route that I make , not just those who can afford top end stuff.

 

[mrscsi]

By the way in an earlier post you made an assumption that my computer wasn't good enough for TS19 and PBR. I run a six core Xeon with an RTX 2070 which I think is sufficient.

Cheerio John

Well I looked back over every post I made in this thread and nowhere did I mention your computer. Now if you want to take what I said about 2d photo textures vs PBR to mean that I guess you really do not work that big ol machine all that much

 

[paulhobbs]

Well IF you are taking any class at a local community college as long as you have a student ID you can get a student license yearly for free

That's fine and Dandy, what are you planning to do when you can't get a Student ID anymore? Once again, you don't need to spend any money at all to make PBR assets, and I recken that correctly made assets will perform better than older ones and will look better for sure. If performance is a problem then you could restrict yourself to one board model railway type layouts instead of trying to build the whole US of A...

Paul

 

[Kilrbe3]

To sum up this thread.. lame, old excuses everytime.

"It screws up my workflow"

"Now I have to re-learn"

"PBR isn't mainstream, why bother"

"Why fix what's not broken"

"Well X runs a toaster, so I make it for toasters"

"I am cranky and I like to complain"

"I live in 2004 and don't have a modern computer"

The same old tired excuses that the same lot of you spew each PBR/19 thread comes up. Instead of trying and embracing the new change, its just immediately labeled as "too advanced" and towel is thrown in before the kickoff. Then i love the back stories that are provided of how "i know better, because I did this job for 30 years, and here is my paragraph of my resume" to further cement why PBR is bad and old way is better. I think a lot of you should go look at DCS World pre 2.5 version, and after 2.5 and see how nice PBR can make a cockpit feel. How that texture effect can all of a sudden turn that cockpit into a worn, dirty war bird that looks like she has taken some names. PBR has changed the industry, and there is no going back. There is a solid reason why sims were the first to pick it up and embrace it over the AAA industry making call of dooty. Because of that level of pure immersion realism detail PBR provides.

Some things never fully change, but I was happy to smile and see some long time names here are turning to the light and getting with 2020! Slowly but surely. Till then, these same old tiring excuses will be spewed in these threads. See the light folks. Get with the times. N3V also needs to as well and draw a line. You can't cater to all for ever, it just doesn't work. Go ask WG devs for World of Tanks. Eventually you realize your install base must get up with the times and that tech advances not just for pretty shiney graphics, but for workflow for the devs providing you this sim. The back end code that you never see. They forced a lot of their install base in Russia with low income, and low power PC's to finally start to upgrade as the game was evolving, tech advancing, and the software had to advance. WG was afraid of this for many years and knew that regardless of loyal fan base, numbers would drop. But, you'd gain more back from advancing your software. Users will upgrade once they see it's their only choice to continue. N3V is basically following this exact path. Eventually you get to a point in time where you got to put your pants on and speak up and make some people unhappy, for the greater good of the company, product, and your community.

It's better to look forward down the rails, then what's behind you

 

[johnwhelan]

Well I looked back over every post I made in this thread and nowhere did I mention your computer. Now if you want to take what I said about 2d photo textures vs PBR to mean that I guess you really do not work that big ol machine all that much

My apologies it was https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...ld-be-using-it-in-TRS19&p=1794207#post1794207 I took your name in vain.

Thanks John

 

[johnwhelan]

That's fine and Dandy, what are you planning to do when you can't get a Student ID anymore? Once again, you don't need to spend any money at all to make PBR assets, and I recken that correctly made assets will perform better than older ones and will look better for sure. If performance is a problem then you could restrict yourself to one board model railway type layouts instead of trying to build the whole US of A...

Paul

In time it will all come together I have no doubt, but it needs a bit of time to mature and for more average content creators to get their heads around it. It needs a couple of models that show off the advantages such as Camscott's new Board Gauge loco which I understand he hasn't released to the masses yet.

Cheerio John

 

[MSGSapper]

It's interesting to me you should bring this up. Yesterday I realised that Blender's Principled BSDF Shader node does not have a height input and so I cannot bake a height map with the current tool I am using. Delving further it seems that it is common in Blender to mix the height value with the normal value for a composite normal value. The net result might produce a reasonable result but is not what Trainz wants for parallax. There are other ways of baking a height map in Blender but it seems to me that you would first have to bake a normal map, then add some height, if required, and then bake the height map separately. That's rather messy. I recall trying height on a brick texture and deciding it wasn't worth the effort. Brick and rock walls are great for normals anyway.

I am still learning a lot about how to use Blender with PBR and apply it to Trainz content items. I tend to use the generic Blender shader editor node set up shown in the below screenshot:

Once I set up the nodes I copy them for every object and of course change the actual texture files to whatever is appropriate for the object. You can also copy the node set up between Blender projects as well. It saves a lot of time that way. I realize this is a very basic node set up here and I am not using anything advanced in the way of nodes here as I am not sure what Trainz will support and what it will not beyond what I show here.

As an example I learned from someone else that the Emissions shader node is not supported in Trainz when I was attempting to make PBR based night modes. I had to go a different route in the texture itself to solve that problem (ie; the red channel in the parameters files). One note on copying. When you paste the nodes in the shader editor you will need to often reset the Color Space parameter for the parameter and normal texture files back to Non-Color. For some reason during the paste process it resets that parameters to sRGB even though you already had it set to Non-Color.

You can also make things a bit easier by setting up the free Materialize program to generate a parameter texture file as shown below in this screenshot:

In the Property Map section you set up Blue channel (ie; B) to include the Ambient Occlusion map generated by the AO Map. When you are ready you just click the Save Property Map button and save your parameters texture file. One of the shortfalls of Materialize is that it doesn't include or allow you access to alpha channels so you will need to edit the files in GIMP to finish the job.

For a tutorial on Materialize see this link:

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...BR-ground-textures-using-Materialize-and-GIMP

Bob

 

[mrscsi]

To sum up this thread.. lame, old excuses everytime.

"It screws up my workflow"

"Now I have to re-learn"

"PBR isn't mainstream, why bother"

"Why fix what's not broken"

"Well X runs a toaster, so I make it for toasters"

"I am cranky and I like to complain"

"I live in 2004 and don't have a modern computer"

The same old tired excuses that the same lot of you spew each PBR/19 thread comes up.
It's better to look forward down the rails, then what's behind you

Seems like some things NEVER change I went though this in 2012 and left for 8 years LOL Now I will probably get flamed for this but I feel N3V should not support anything other than versions less than 3 years old like most sane game publishers. I mean frankly I do not care what Paul or John or Bob or even you play on your desktop, never have and never will.

I will design and make stuff for me, to fit my uses and for me to enjoy and IF I find them worthy I will put them out on my website for .50 or .99 cents each and let those who also wish to enjoy be able to buy download and enjoy.

Now as to Paul and the "what will ya do when you are no longer a student" well Paul I am 58 and still take a class at the community college once a week. believe it or not most are free once you pay the registration fee once and I was just trying to give some of those who claim "oh I can't afford the cool tools crap" an avenue to at least learn it before dismissing it out of hand. I know anyone who has any real idea of what substance can do figures out some way to pay the subscription since it is just THAT GOOD and saves that much time.

Besides, bettering yourselves and finding talents you were not aware of can be profitable even if you are old and work from home.

Now I am not gonna comment further on this thread, hats off to Bob for starting it and carry on my good man carry on...

 

[pitkin]

@mrscsi

I mostly agree, except for one thing. Trainz has 2 elements, one is the platform purchased from N3V, and the other is the vast content that people have incorporated into their creations. Game purchasers simply want to move on to the new game, not import assets from the old ones.

 

[Cayden]

While PBR does produce somewhat better looking assets, in Trainz 2019 they are nowhere near as good looking as they appear in Blender before being imported into Trainz 2019 (note the foundation detail).

I have been tempted to try using larger texture files, i.e., 2048 x 2048 rather than 1024 x 1024, or even use multiple texture files.

What has been your experience?

Cayden

 

[MSGSapper]

While PBR does produce somewhat better looking assets, in Trainz 2019 they are nowhere near as good looking as they appear in Blender before being imported into Trainz 2019 (note the foundation detail).

I have been tempted to try using larger texture files, i.e., 2048 x 2048 rather than 1024 x 1024, or even use multiple texture files.

What has been your experience?

Cayden

It really depends on the structure and the amount of detail involved as to what size of texture you use. Most of the textures I use are 2048x2048 but I also use 1024x1024 and 512x512 ones as well. If the mesh texture has a lot of detail I would recommend the 2048x2048 size.

For ease of application of the texture I tend in Blender to make each specific part of the mesh that needs a different texture to be a separate object within the overall mesh. That keeps it a lot simpler during the UV mapping phase.

PBR does not lend itself well to a texture atlas approach, which was pretty common prior to PBR, although you could do that if you want to spend the time making it work I suppose.

As an example with m.onetex material textures we could have part of the overall texture be transparent to some degree. With m.pbrmetal material textures we can't. This caused me a lot of headaches early on and makes it difficult to retrofit old structures that use such m.onetex material textures.

Bob

 

[clam1952]

There is a Permanent Substance Painter Licence however now Adobe have bought up the company, it is now only available from Steam, not impressed, however it is a lot cheaper than a years monthly subscription, updated for 12 months.

And its going to Adobe's "Creative Cloud"

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-acquires-allegorithmic-substance-3D-gaming/

https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php/topic,27494.0.html

Lot of not happy people ;o)

 

[dangavel]

There is a Permanent Substance Painter Licence however now Adobe have bought up the company, it is now only available from Steam, not impressed, however it is a lot cheaper than a years monthly subscription, updated for 12 months.

And its going to Adobe's "Creative Cloud"

https://theblog.adobe.com/adobe-acquires-allegorithmic-substance-3D-gaming/

https://forum.substance3d.com/index.php/topic,27494.0.html

Lot of not happy people ;o)

Like all these giant companies , they buy up anything promising and maximise the profit . Might be a good time to buy a permanent licence .I hate adobes subscription program.

 

[dangavel]

To sum up this thread.. lame, old excuses everytime.

"It screws up my workflow"

"Now I have to re-learn"

"PBR isn't mainstream, why bother"

"Why fix what's not broken"

"Well X runs a toaster, so I make it for toasters"

"I am cranky and I like to complain"

"I live in 2004 and don't have a modern computer"

The same old tired excuses that the same lot of you spew each PBR/19 thread comes up. Instead of trying and embracing the new change, its just immediately labeled as "too advanced" and towel is thrown in before the kickoff. Then i love the back stories that are provided of how "i know better, because I did this job for 30 years, and here is my paragraph of my resume" to further cement why PBR is bad and old way is better. I think a lot of you should go look at DCS World pre 2.5 version, and after 2.5 and see how nice PBR can make a cockpit feel. How that texture effect can all of a sudden turn that cockpit into a worn, dirty war bird that looks like she has taken some names. PBR has changed the industry, and there is no going back. There is a solid reason why sims were the first to pick it up and embrace it over the AAA industry making call of dooty. Because of that level of pure immersion realism detail PBR provides.

Some things never fully change, but I was happy to smile and see some long time names here are turning to the light and getting with 2020! Slowly but surely. Till then, these same old tiring excuses will be spewed in these threads. See the light folks. Get with the times. N3V also needs to as well and draw a line. You can't cater to all for ever, it just doesn't work. Go ask WG devs for World of Tanks. Eventually you realize your install base must get up with the times and that tech advances not just for pretty shiney graphics, but for workflow for the devs providing you this sim. The back end code that you never see. They forced a lot of their install base in Russia with low income, and low power PC's to finally start to upgrade as the game was evolving, tech advancing, and the software had to advance. WG was afraid of this for many years and knew that regardless of loyal fan base, numbers would drop. But, you'd gain more back from advancing your software. Users will upgrade once they see it's their only choice to continue. N3V is basically following this exact path. Eventually you get to a point in time where you got to put your pants on and speak up and make some people unhappy, for the greater good of the company, product, and your community.

It's better to look forward down the rails, then what's behind you

You are absolutely right, I apologise for griping and pointing out why some of us aren't that keen to change over and accept new tech . I apologise for spewing forth excuses and I expect , given your enthusiasm , that you will do what Bob has done and convert all your content to the new formats ,make it freeware and , when you have finished all your content , that you will also contribute to converting other old assets like Ben Dorsey's to be able to take advantage of 2019 features. When you have finished with that , I have about 9000 assets that also need to be converted , so let me know when you can get started and I'll send you a link so you can work on them.

 

[johnwhelan]

You are absolutely right, I apologise for griping and pointing out why some of us aren't that keen to change over and accept new tech . I apologise for spewing forth excuses and I expect , given your enthusiasm , that you will do what Bob has done and convert all your content to the new formats ,make it freeware and , when you have finished all your content , that you will also contribute to converting other old assets like Ben Dorsey's to be able to take advantage of 2019 features. When you have finished with that , I have about 9000 assets that also need to be converted , so let me know when you can get started and I'll send you a link so you can work on them.

But Kilrbe3 has, not a single item of his on the DLS is not TS19 and PBR.

Cheerio John

 

[dangavel]

But Kilrbe3 has, not a single item of his on the DLS is not TS19 and PBR.

Cheerio John

I know....., my tongue was firmly inserted into my cheek, but I do admire his enthusiasm and I'm sure he will be a great help to the PBR cause.......:hehe:

 

[Kilrbe3]

Oh look, it's more excuses!

 

[pcas1986]

I tend to use the generic Blender shader editor node set up shown in the below screenshot:
...

You only need that shader node model when you are ready to export the FBX files for Trainz. i.e. you can use other node setups to achieve the effects you want, bake the textures, and then swap to the export model and link the textures as you described.

BTW, you can save that Trainz node setup using the Material Library VX tool located in the material section. I saved mine as a "rename-me.m.pbrmetal". You can do something similar with the other PBR material types.

 

[dangavel]

Oh look, it's more excuses!

No, not at all, we just want you to set an example and walk the walk like Bob has done ( and for which I admire him greatly ) and all those other folks who are busy creating assets for YOU to use.
You see , I don't 3D model, so I'd have to learn a program, since I used to teach media , I know just how long it takes to get a decent understanding of a 3D program, I dabbled with Bryce, 3D max , Carrara ,sketchup and blender and have even produced a few basic models , but given I make routes and am 68 , I figure I will never have the time to make all the 3D assets I need for the two routes I am working on to the standard I'd be pleased to share with others , so I just take other people's assets where I have nothing I can use for building and reskin them as freeware. As it's taken over three years to get out about 3rds through a 80 mile route I am darned if I'm going to work a couple of years extra so all those thousands of original assets to be 2019 compliant just to please someone like you,
Since you are so keen on PBR ,to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'm sure you will take up the challenge. We await your first PBR asset with anticipation that you will do a great job. You can even do some tutorials to show us old fuddy duddys the way. be sure to let us know how you are progressing .
To be serious , if there was a way to batch produce textures and save a lot of time I'd be more keen to take up the challenge . As for Kilrbe3, you need to get creating ,not criticising people like John who have created many items which he has shared with others , especially since , as far as I can see, you haven't created any ( or if you have , you've kept them in house.......)