TRS 2019 and AssetX

Must be a problem for ye olde Photoshoppe then. This from it's Help file;

"PNG format

Developed as a patent-free alternative to GIF, Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format is used for lossless compression and for display of images on the web. Unlike GIF, PNG supports 24‑bit images and produces background transparency without jagged edges; however, some web browsers do not support PNG images. PNG format supports RGB, Indexed Color, Grayscale, and Bitmap mode images without alpha channels. PNG preserves transparency in grayscale and RGB images."

No mention of RGBA there and certainly when I try to save an RGBA to a PNG format, there's no option to choose 24- or 32-bit (like there is with TGA) and the program only saves a 24-bit image. :'(
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
No mention of RGBA there and certainly when I try to save an RGBA to a PNG format, there's no option to choose 24- or 32-bit (like there is with TGA) and the program only saves a 24-bit image. :'(
Click to expand...
PNG does support a 24-bit format that allows transparency. It is done through a colour index table (http://www.w3.org/TR/2003/REC-PNG-20031110/#4Concepts.Indexing ) where there is an additional alpha table that indicates the transparency for each colour. It was never widely used, and I doubt if there is any reasonably recent application that supports an indexed PNG file.
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
...
- PEV MeshViewer and AssetX don't read mesh textures made with PNG images.
...​
Click to expand...

AssetX version 3.3 will display a png file in its viewer including a png file with an alpha.

I'm not sure about MeshViewer as I don't have a non PBR asset that uses png images. It throws a texture error and appears to show only the albedo which is png.

The discussion about PNG and alpha channels has been interesting to me as I've been looking at the standard with a view of adding png to one of my utility programs. I had been reading the 1990 version and not the 2003 ISO version.
 
pcas1986 said:
AssetX version 3.3 will display a png file in its viewer including a png file with an alpha.
Click to expand...
pcas1986 said:

I'm not sure about MeshViewer as I don't have a non PBR asset that uses png images. It throws a texture error and appears to show only the albedo which is png.

The discussion about PNG and alpha channels has been interesting to me as I've been looking at the standard with a view of adding png to one of my utility programs. I had been reading the 1990 version and not the 2003 ISO version.
Click to expand...


AssetX 3.3 failed to properly display an .im mesh with an m.tbumptex material made from PNG files (diffuse and normal). Just showed the object in what I call its "missing texture grey" skin. Same with MeshViewer. The object did display more or less correctly in TRS2019.

I don't like GIMP either. Maybe this new version will be organised better than the one I remember trying.​
 
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Dinorius_Redundicus said:
AssetX 3.3 failed to properly display an .im mesh with an m.tbumptex material made from PNG files (diffuse and normal). Just showed the object in what I call its "missing texture grey" skin. Same with MeshViewer. The object did display more or less correctly in TRS2019.
Click to expand...

OK, I thought you talking about displaying a PNG image rather than a material using PNG. AssetX won't display a PBR material either which is hardly surprising.
 
I looked at GIMP 2.10, but it's still hopeless in my opinion. To add an alpha channel to an RGB, you need to add it as a Layer, which is just a horribly illogical way to think about it (again IMO). And then to add a greyscale image to the alpha channel, well there might be a way, but it was beyond me.

Luckily I found a free plug-in called SuperPNG for Photoshop CS3 (and up). It allows 32-bit PNG files with a proper alpha channel (not a Layer) and fully editable in the way that I'm accustomed to. Installation and use was not well-described in its PDF manual, but reference to a blog helped me work those things out.

SuperPNG

fnord software blog


..
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
I looked at GIMP 2.10, but it's still hopeless in my opinion. To add an alpha channel to an RGB, you need to add it as a Layer, which is just a horribly illogical way to think about it (again IMO). And then to add a greyscale image to the alpha channel, well there might be a way, but it was beyond me.

Luckily I found a free plug-in called SuperPNG for Photoshop CS3 (and up). It allows 32-bit PNG files with a proper alpha channel (not a Layer) and fully editable in the way that I'm accustomed to. Installation and use was not well-described in its PDF manual, but reference to a blog helped me work those things out.

SuperPNG

fnord software blog


..
Click to expand...

Try Paint.net. It's so much easier to use. :)

GIMP is throughly confusing to use even for the simplest things.
 
Paint.net doesn't seem up to the job to me. I can see how the greyscale value of the Alpha channel can be set in Paint.net, but that's just a uniform colour value. For use in Trainz, we often need an image in the Alpha channel, not just a uniform colour, and we need to see what the image is and be able to edit it, even delete it, if necessary. How can that be done in Paint.net?

Since I'm familiar with Photoshop, and it seems much more powerful and even intuitive, I'll be sticking with that for as long as I can.
 
I too tried to check the function before posting, but am also unable to create a .texture file.

Although the name of the program makes it obvious what it is supposed to do, it is not obvious that the internal format of the .texture file is the same in TRS2019. The forum is full of comments and complaints that various file formats have been changed with each and every version and update of Trainz; why not the TRS2019 .texture format?

PNG files definitely support alpha channels and the majority of other programs that I have that require images, support them. I have Photoshop CC which supports them without problems.

Regards

Mike
 
Dinorius_Redundicus said:
Oh plug-ins. I was looking in the menus. :eek:
Click to expand...

Paint.Net is driven by the plug-ins. There are hundreds of them. You have to be selective or the list becomes unmanageable. But generally the descriptions are good and there are often tutorials for each one. You can also set up different installations with the plugins tailored for different purposes. Creating your own plug-in is also very easy - there is a template and you just fill in the details.
 
Paint.Net is driven by the plug-ins. There are hundreds of them. You have to be selective or the list becomes unmanageable. But generally the descriptions are good and there are often tutorials for each one. You can also set up different installations with the plugins tailored for different purposes. Creating your own plug-in is also very easy - there is a template and you just fill in the details.​
Click to expand...

Right you are. My earlier opinion about Paint.Net obviously referred to the program "out of the box", as I was unaware of how reliant it was on plug-ins.

In a way, it makes me even more impressed by the ancient version of Photoshop. It had so many features already built in that in the last 10 years, I've only needed to add 1 plug-in (a Normal map utility) to give me everything I needed to do Trainz creations. Now with PBR, it needs just 1 more (to process 32-bit PNG files). For convenience I'm now learning Materialize for PBR images, but I could probably still get by with Photoshop alone if I needed to.

That's not bad going for a program introduced in 2007.


.
 
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Quite a lot of the Photoshop plugins work in PSP including the Normal map one, I use PSP as it's cheaper than replacing my ancient Photoshop which won't work in Win10.

Gimp is horrible, It was horrible when it first appeared in Linux many years ago now and hasn't really got any better IMO.

Worth having a look at Materialize from Bounding Box, very interesting free software for texture manipulation does normals plus all the PBR stuff height metal etc supports png as well as jpg, tga bmp and tiff.

And you can use it just for old style diffuse and normals or full blown PBR stuff, It has has online video tutorials which need looking at first! http://boundingboxsoftware.com/materialize/

It's the one N3V are recommending here https://contentcreation.trainzsimulator.com/category/software/

Someone who will remain nameless for the moment has produced some rather good Gmax models using it to tweak the textures.
 
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