Article: TANE - Let "A New Era" of Content Creation BEGIN

You can view the page at http://forums.auran.com/trainz/content.php?121-TANE-Let-A-New-Era-of-Content-Creation-BEGIN

It's the same old era for some of the community, no means to import their 3D creation into Trainz or TANE.

Pity most billboards are transparent now...

Lets sort out the content "fixing" first - how do you expect a Newbie user to fix 1000 plus faulty TGA to TEXTURE issues - you don't! N3V must take major responsibility for this issue with Tane and fix it or send me a program that will find - change all the TGA's to .texture!!!

phimat said:

Pity most billboards are transparent now...

Click to expand...

Easy fix for the technically inclined, change the alphas from grey to pure black and white, not perfect however not transparent either. Whether you will ever get the original creators to modify them is a whole different ball game though, especially as the preferred format is SpeedTree.

Billboard Trees Can Look Just Fine In Trainz: A New Era WITHOUT SHADOWS depending upon some very technical creation steps needed to be done when the mesh is being created..... Clam1952 is correct, Alpha handling has changed and I understand why the change was needed and making Black/White Alpha's is extremely easy.........

As for this post information, Danny5's Tribute in this post and News Letter was much appreciated. He surely loved his Trainz............

As for other aspects, I am now exiting those topics and Lifetime FCT needs comes back......

Now they tell us, i pre-ordered Tane, and bought a fct for a year after the game was launched. Now they tell me that i should have waited and get the one year FCT free? Thanks N3V games, you made my day again... is a refund or two years access possible for existing clients?

reijmerink said:

two years access possible for existing clients?

Click to expand...

You just already have two years access. Because you can't activate new DLS ticket untill the older one has not experied, but that new ticket has unlimited time for activation. It begins expire only after activation.

TRam__ said:

You just already have two years access. Because you can't activate new DLS ticket untill the older one has not experied, but that new ticket has unlimited time for activation. It begins expire only after activation.

Click to expand...

I didn't see an other ticket awaiting when i activated the one i bought, but i will look in to it

Just checked, i have 1 180 days ticket received, must be the one they promised us when buying the game. no two years acces.. only the one i bought for 1 year is activated by me. This half year ticket wasn't there when i bought the year ticket. but, it's there now. Still ripped off for half a year and got a game that crashes all the time to the desktop.. not really playable.

butler57 said:

Lets sort out the content "fixing" first - how do you expect a Newbie user to fix 1000 plus faulty TGA to TEXTURE issues - you don't! N3V must take major responsibility for this issue with Tane and fix it or send me a program that will find - change all the TGA's to .texture!!!

Click to expand...

I fully agree with you. For this and other reasons, I published this post in this forum:

http://forums.auran.com/trainz/show...down-to-us-now&p=1406246&posted=1#post1406246

as a farewell to Tane.

John

amigacooke said:

It's the same old era for some of the community, no means to import their 3D creation into Trainz or TANE.

Click to expand...

What do you mean by that?
Except for some new tags and some modified processes, the creation and importing hasn't materially changed from what it always has been. I've been creating and importing into T:ANE betas and now release versions all along and haven't noticed any change. Drag and drop of asset folders on to CM still works as well as CDP import.

martinvk said:

What do you mean by that?
Except for some new tags and some modified processes, the creation and importing hasn't materially changed from what it always has been. I've been creating and importing into T:ANE betas and now release versions all along and haven't noticed any change. Drag and drop of asset folders on to CM still works as well as CDP import.

Click to expand...

Not all assets are behaving as you say.

@butler57

The majority of these errors occur in the old ART folder used by legacy assets.

AssetX has two methods that can change Thumbnail art icon tga images to texture.

1. In OUTLINE Pane use 'Find and Replace' with the following values:

Find =icon.tga
Replace= icon.texture

This technique also works for ART 512 images.

Find =512.tga
Replace= 512.texture

2. For batch runs you can use the -Replace or -ReplaceAll macros. See AssetX Help file.

I've incorporated this into my existing Thumbnails.axm scriptlet:

;----------
;THUMBNAILS
;
-Delete|thumbnail\
;
-MakeThumbnailTable
;
;----------
;ART ICON IMAGES
;
-ReplaceAll|icon.tga|icon.texture
;
;----------
;ART 512 IMAGES
;
-ReplaceAll|512.tga|512.texture
;
;----------

I did 1,000 rolling stock assets this morning in under six (6) minutes after loading into AssetX.

Just out of interest Ian, have you found any similar methods for the default.im errors?

Shane

Sorry, I thought the import didn't work at all. As for import errors, that's another story. So far, I've been lucky in that my own assets import correctly. No missing textures since I have the original design folders to import from. When I get around to importing downloaded assets, I'll see what happens or doesn't.

... and to think that until recently I wanted to learn how to create assets ...
Seeing all this, neither crazy!

Preview Mesh

I did this AssetX scriptlet below a long time ago, but I need to revisit it and update. Probably could simplify using wild card *.
Auran used default.im quite a bit in the old days, and that may be why they have used it.
But I think we would have to convert main im mesh names to default.im for it to be universal and work in TANE.
I don't believe that's the best solution though

;TARDIS TS12
;MESH ELEMENTS
;as at 15 May 14
;WIP
;MESH PREVIEW
;adds preview to existing mesh-table
;
-If|preview-mesh-kuid@
;
;do nothing
;
-Else
;
-If|mesh-table\default@
-Save|1|mesh-table\default\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\0@
-Save|1|mesh-table\0\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\default-lod0@
-Save|1|mesh-table\default-lod0\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\main@
-Save|1|mesh-table\main\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\pant@
-Save|1|mesh-table\pant\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\summer@
-Save|1|mesh-table\summer\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-If|mesh-table\track-lod0@
-Save|1|mesh-table\track-lod0\mesh
-Restore|1|mesh-table\preview-mesh\mesh
-Update|mesh-table\preview-mesh\auto-create|1
-Endif
;
-Endif

Tool

butler57 said:

Lets sort out the content "fixing" first - how do you expect a Newbie user to fix 1000 plus faulty TGA to TEXTURE issues - you don't! N3V must take major responsibility for this issue with Tane and fix it or send me a program that will find - change all the TGA's to .texture!!!

Click to expand...

I have written a program to do this but its not fully automated. You must open the asset for edit and then point the program to each texture and press generate. I made it for personal use but I can upload it for people to use.



Of course, if I am not mistaken you can use pev's awesome texture2tga tool. My tool is designed around generating only the texture.txt files.

Seems as good as any thread to ask:

(1) Where is the 'Edit' folder within T:ANE so that I can point Assetx to it?

(2) Is it possible to deploy 'OpenWith' for Assetx in T:ANE if so how?

Any assistance would be appreciated.