Using Vue Infinite for skies/clouds and/or terrains

Sparticum

New member
I'm TOTALLY new!!:confused:

If anyone is familiar with this program, can any of these things be transferred to TRAINZ??

Or any other 3D graphic program that supports these? Especially if volumetric.

Any way to do procedural textures - or script them?

Showing total ignorance here.

Thanks.

Jim
 
How about terrains - I forgot all of the formats it saves to - I know DEM is one of them.

Nothing procedural possible with textures?

Can you use multi-layered clouds with alphas?

SOO many questions!

Is it possible to clog up your system with too many asssets? I think I already DID this. How do you get around this problem??

Help!!

Thanks.

Jim
 
How about terrains - I forgot all of the formats it saves to - I know DEM is one of them.
Only one I know of unfortuately. You can use standard Ordinance Survey maps with pre built assets (or make your own, its simple to do in Max, trust us!)
Nothing procedural possible with textures?
Sorry, I'm confused
Can you use multi-layered clouds with alphas?
From what I can see from the 04 CCG, no, it has to be 3 maps showing 3 different times of days.
SOO many questions!
I know, and that leads me on to your final one...
Is it possible to clog up your system with too many asssets? I think I already DID this. How do you get around this problem??
By clog, if you mean "horrendously slow down your computer", then yes, as each item needs a certain ammount of resource, in order to process properly. The mesh has to be converted to a 2D image for displaying on the monitor, then the graphics card needs to load in the textures into the memory (Texture memory, someones confused me about this recently, as they think textures are loaded into the systems ram, rather than the cards own memory - so I'll skirt around the locations for now), then the program needs to load the necessary scripts and process them.... etc, etc.

All this takes time and resources and the more objects in the scene you have, (different ones admittily) then the bigger impact on performance you'll have.

If possible, use as few variations as possible, but not put down too many objects.

(also, some objects are very bad, that they waste horrendous ammount of resources, mostly due to their unnesscarly large texture sizes for the task or polygon count, the ammount of triangles used to make an certain kind of object up - again, depandent on the task.)

HTHs
 
I appreciate you patience with me!! You guys seem so Nice.

Procedural textures are textures created using mathematics/noise, such as modified perlin noise. I'm sure 3D Max uses them. (I haven't had time to delve into gmax yet, but have 2 gmax books laying beside the sofa:) - Guess I'm hoping to learen Ike Garfield - by osmosis) This allows textures to respond with greater detail during magnification. They CAN be "baked" on a poly surface - but that sort of defeats the purpose though some great effects can be produced.

I'll have to play with the cloud thing - I love to make software do what it isn't s'posed to do :) Sometimes clouds move in two different directions - It would be nice to get that effect.

As for the last question - I installed immense numbers of assets! - Now the Content Manager takes forever to load!! I'm afraid to start the sim if it has to read through this enormous amount of data. When I tried to add more content <blush>, the HD ran forever and the task manager indicated that the content manager was running over 50% of the CPU and was using about 300 MB of RAM. Aparently you can archive this stuff and move it to another external drive or DVD - but I'm not sure how this works, since I haven't a clue about dependencies or even how to ID what is what (though I see there are thumbnails in the cache) or how to get it back when I want it. I currently have 6.25 GB of CDP files in a cache folder. Then I seem to have files called chum (I think that's what they are called) and maybe they do the "work" and the CDP files aren't needed? I think they take up about the same amount of room as the CDP's :( Can you tell I like technical explanations? Hehe - If Auran would just let me at the original code, I might sort it out - FAT CHANCE!!

I'm hoping to model some. I haven't used 3D Max - I use Cinema 4D, Rhinoceros, Silo, Lighjwave and Hexagon among others. But I guess I can move a .3ds or .obj file to gmax to complete it for the program.

Seems like I read somewhere that Maya could be used, but I don't use Maya. Actually I like texturing more than modelling. Is there a reason that many of the ground textures are so much worse than other textures (some of which are superior!) in the program?

SO much to learn - but then, I'm a learner. I'm just anxious to get on playing with my "choo-choo's"!! (And suffering from gross impatience!) It's obvious I need to learn a lot about trains in general. I even thought about taking the Canadian rail over the rockies to visit some friends in Seattle - but $6000 USD each is WAY over my head.

I ordered one of the CD's from RailDriver - The one on ancillary buildings. I certainly don't want to begin by modelling a loco! I thought that might be easier to start with - besides - as I said, I really prefer texturing. I think I can make some buildings look well-used :)

OK, I've rambled forever - Hope some of it made sense.

Thanks again.

Jim
 
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