Speed trees

Thought I posted this. Seems I didn't? Can't see it anywhere, so if I did, sorry to repost...

Where can I find speed trees for TANE? How does one use them, etc...? Are they part of the DLC or are they already in the program? Or do you buy them?

Thanks!

See this post I did in a similar thread https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?143236-Question-on-trees&p=1647265#post1647265

Speed Trees are installed as part of the T:ANE package and come with routes. Not all of the installed trees are identified specifically as Speed Trees. There are some nice ones available on the DLS as well. You can generally tell they're Speed Trees because they will move and have a 3d-look about them instead of looking like pieces of thin mylar with tree pictures on them. For some available on the DLS, look for those by Gawpo50 and RMM. Mcguirel also made some as well, which are nice with some of those built-in. They being with M:Ultra or Ultra (Working from my memory).

RMM's trees are specifically named with "st" in them like this:

st_rmm_sosna112_10209_gr

Now his trees are given Russian names, which have been translated:

Maybe I am confused. Are "speed trees" something you can apply in bulk? Like, click on a mountainside, and 40 trees of differing variety and size pop up??? Something like that?

rbunker65 said:

Are "speed trees" something you can apply in bulk? Like, click on a mountainside, and 40 trees of differing variety and size pop up??? Something like that?

Click to expand...

Not that I am aware of. I have not seen any such feature in Trainz for some time now - there was a "gimmick feature" in an earlier (pre SpeedTrees) version that would do that but you could not select which trees were added.

Oh, the old speed tree groups.

They're old assets and no longer supported except for legacy routes because they have inherent issues with how they worked and caused awful performance problems as well.

What you can do is copy and paste a bunch of trees. Use the Add heights/objects option when pasting to create large clumps of trees rather than just replacing heights/trees when pasting (the old way pasting method and default).

You can use add random scenery, you can zoom out and it will fill a square, or do a window on the ground and fill it in with anything you want. Just add whatever you want to put down in the drag and drop window and tell it to go.

i'm looking for the best trees to use in the far distance for the latest version of tane, these are in the far distance so basically they don't have to have any detail as such, just be a shape, as I'm modelling the rockies, pines and junipers are what i need. i note some people talk about speed trees effect on performance, from looking on dls i see that individual speed trees have a small k factor, but the libraries are often large- say 30 mb for robs trees, which sort of trees will have the biggest performance hit ? individual trees that are 150. 300 or 500k each or or the ones with libraries ?

As far as I can tell SpeedTrees have a negligible effect in TANE, with or without libraries, only the meshes for the trees being used get loaded not the whole library, the performance problem with some old version SpeedTrees was in TS12.

SpeedTrees at a distance drop down to lowest lod anyway so nothing to be gained by using low poly billboards anyway as the lowest SpeedTree Lod is effectively the same.

My favorites are the trees labeled Ultra (search term). By doing a mass replace you can replace the terrible 4 sided trees with specific Ultra trees. Take a look at your result and make a different substitute, if needed, after evaluating the change. Be careful and do not Save the changes route, or at least rename it, so you can start over if you end up in a bad place. Bulk replace is a very valuable tool for ridding a route of plastic trees. Another tactic is to create a forest block with a mixture of tree types. Then place that block (with different rotations) in a forested area. It works well especially with random rotations and overlap onto previously placed sections. Remember you can avoid PC load by NOT making forests you can't see from trains. Only your electric company knows they are there.

As mentioned the Limit On Distance (LOD) is your new friend. If you could sneak up on the trees miles away and see their texture you would go "ugh". But a mile away they look real. In Florida you need less trees than you do in West Virginia since those trees miles away are on mountainsides and must be shown. But, at a much lower resolution.

clam1952 said:

As far as I can tell SpeedTrees have a negligible effect in TANE, with or without libraries, only the meshes for the trees being used get loaded not the whole library, the performance problem with some old version SpeedTrees was in TS12.

SpeedTrees at a distance drop down to lowest lod anyway so nothing to be gained by using low poly billboards anyway as the lowest SpeedTree Lod is effectively the same.

Click to expand...

Many thanks, another question , if for instance if I use some of your tn trees and make lower res versions to use in the distance , will that make any difference to overall performance or not ? As I only have a 2gb card and I have very large vistas to cover I've done this and it does seem to speed things up... I've gone down to as low as 128 x128 to use in the far distance .i can restore the originals for when it's released if you had objections to such mods.

The TN trees are low poly anyway as in 16, won't get them any lower without editing the mesh.

As a comparison in Tane, comparing frame rates with my TS12 version of the Ffestiniog Welsh Highland, which uses mostly my Billboards with the TANE version with SpeedTrees the TANE version has slightly better FPS.

clam1952 said:

The TN trees are low poly anyway as in 16, won't get them any lower without editing the mesh.

As a comparison in Tane, comparing frame rates with my TS12 version of the Ffestiniog Welsh Highland, which uses mostly my Billboards with the TANE version with SpeedTrees the TANE version has slightly better FPS.

Click to expand...

if i read you right, basically with a speedtree the quality of the tga file doesn't affect the rendering of scenes ? i presume this doesn't apply to other items without libraries ?

The size of the TGA rendered is adjusted by the game engine depending on how far away it is, it won't be rendering say a 2048 x 2048 at 3,000m, TANE is a bit more clever at handling textures than TS12 and previous iterations.
Libraries have nothing to do with it other than several assets can share the same mesh and or the same image files, thus saving on overheads however with trees that is unlikely they would all use the same mesh as the different trees of the same species would all look identical and they don't.
For example a Birch Speedtree Library has 4 different meshes for the different styles of Birch Tree but uses the same tga files, separate ones for leaves bark plus normal mapping tga's etc. Size of tree for SpeedTrees is set by a config entry.

The tga files used by my trees include embedded alphas, I wouldn't try just resizing them as with most graphics apps they will get corrupted, to resize you need to remove the alpha resize the tga and the alpha separately and then embed the alpha back into the tga or just alter the texture.txt to point to the separate alpha, however IMO that would be a pointless effort as the game engine will have dealt with the image size / quality for far away items anyway. What it won't do is reduce the number of polys in the mesh, that's where LOD comes in.