Turfx needs smaller radius to paint

davesnow

Crabby Old Geezer
I love the ease of painting grass on my route, but it's either paint with a large (too large most of the time) circle or not at all. We sorely need to be able to paint turfx grass with a smaller radius circle. After working for quite a few hours applying Turfx grass along side of my mainline track, I suddenly noticed (my eyes aren't that great) that the grass was covering the track in many places. That's quite unrealistic for a mainline, so I'm now having to go back and erase a lot of the grass so it won't cover my track. As a consequence, a lot of the grass will not be as close to the edge of the ballast as I was hoping it would be. Kind of aggravating.

I'm hoping in the future we can be able to paint Turfx with a smaller radius circle.
 
I agree with you Dave, it's too hit and miss to be used near a road or track.
There should also be an area outline/fill facilty like the one you can use in normal textures.

Also, have you seen how TFX looks from above or from a distance?
This LOD thing ruins screenshots and long distance views.
 
I agree with you Dave, it's too hit and miss to be used near a road or track.
There should also be an area outline/fill facilty like the one you can use in normal textures.

Also, have you seen how TFX looks from above or from a distance?
This LOD thing ruins screenshots and long distance views.

You can kill the lod or rather stop it displaying as black nastiness by messing with the width- scale settings, quick and dirty test, the grass is actually "planted" all the way up to the hedge in the distance:

 
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This is same radius tool we've had since the beginning of trainz.
The same ones that have been asked to be made smaller the whole time as well
Not only do we have trouble with sculpting terrain and painting textures because of the brush size now we can add turf to it as well
We keep getting improvements to make things look better but why not the tools to use them as intended
With the dials we have it's like trying to paint a smile on a pin head with a crop duster
 
Grass up to track roads etc, can be done if you set the height below the ballast or road surface, as in short grass!

Example:

 
Thanks for the info Malc.

I played around with the width scale settings and got the exact effect I wanted.
The grass was great close up and faded to a skinny shape in the distance...
These are the settings for very long grass!

Very-Long-Grass.jpg

My next stage is to try to be more accurate with the 'painting' by changing settings in the Turffx Density settings.
First I need to read the Wiki and watch the tutorial videos again.
I just wish we could save the settings to re-use again, screenshots are a good substitute particularly if you have the grass in the background (as above).

Malc, painting near the PBR track might be a bit fiddly, PBR ground textures can even poke through the sleepers if you're not careful!

We'll just have to keep experimenting :D
 
My next stage is to try to be more accurate with the 'painting' by changing settings in the Turffx Density settings.
Try a 2.5m density close to the track with a small radius, but make it a separate TurfFX layer so as not to use too much file space. A 'scene budget' comes back into importance now with TurfFX.
cheers
Graeme
 
Hi All
Just to confirm, the '10m' value (by default) is going to be effectively your minimum brush radius.

Keep in mind that smaller values for this do use up more of the available data for the TurfFX, so if you create too many effect layers with this set to a lower number, you will be told you cannot create more effect layers.

I'd recommend having a 'trackside' effect that you use with a lower density distance, and then all others keep to a higher setting.

Regards
 
In post #8 Graeme mentioned a "scene budget" What is this? Is it a function of memory in either RAM or the video card memory, or is it a limit placed on Trainz independent of the computer configuration. Or maybe I just don't understand the term.
 
Hi Paul_Bert
There is a limited amount of data available for 'data bindings' for effect layers (effectively, these are points on the map that the clutter/turf effects are tied to). Using a smaller 'density radius' (the '10m' figure next to the density value in the screenshots above) will use more data, but will give a higher resolution/accuracy to the 'paint brush'. Same goes for using higher 'int'/'float' options for the density, and other, settings.

Regards
 
In post #8 Graeme mentioned a "scene budget" What is this? Is it a function of memory in either RAM or the video card memory, or is it a limit placed on Trainz independent of the computer configuration. Or maybe I just don't understand the term.
Hi Paul, sorry if I confused you. I was referring to the data available for data bindings in comparison to the days of counting polys so Trainz didn't bog down.
The counting polys is a lot less an issue with today's computers, but we've now been given an overhead to be aware of.
cheers
Graeme
 
I tried Graham's setting shown in post #7 and it helped a great deal. My question is, both the Width Scale near and far settings have four boxes with numbers. What is the role of the four numbers. Do they change the width scale based upon the LOD or is there some other purpose. The writeups and explanations of all the settings are woefully inadequate for TurfFX. Nowhere do I find an explanation for the different effects based upon changing these four numbers in the Width Scale setting boxes.
 
I’ve watched the video several times now. But it doesn’t seem to explain the role of the four boxes with numbers in the width scale boxes. In the wiki notes there are three grass configurations shown: square tops, medium, and narrow. There are four boxes shown in the width scale settings. How do these four boxes relate to the three grass configurations shown? I see no difference if I enter the number 1 or 0 in the fourth box. I see no difference between the configuration of 1,01,0,0 and 1,1,0,0 for instance in the boxes. Are the changes that subtle or is this not the way to use numbers in the boxes?

Someone at N3V must know the answer. All there examples use 1,1,1,0. In the wiki write up most of the other patemeters show the range for the numbers that can be used, but not for the width scale boxes.
 
Looks to me as if it controls the lod, fill in all the 1s and it will always be visible and probably look black in the distance! If you don't need that start zeroing working backwards from the right of the second row of boxes, 1 is the maximum value, 0 is not visible.
 
The Turfx I use with Bob's (MSGsapper) directions show up fine even when zoomed way out. I've never had them turn black on me.
 
I’ve watched the video several times now. But it doesn’t seem to explain the role of the four boxes with numbers in the width scale boxes. In the wiki notes there are three grass configurations shown: square tops, medium, and narrow. There are four boxes shown in the width scale settings. How do these four boxes relate to the three grass configurations shown? I see no difference if I enter the number 1 or 0 in the fourth box. I see no difference between the configuration of 1,01,0,0 and 1,1,0,0 for instance in the boxes. Are the changes that subtle or is this not the way to use numbers in the boxes?

Someone at N3V must know the answer. All there examples use 1,1,1,0. In the wiki write up most of the other patemeters show the range for the numbers that can be used, but not for the width scale boxes.

The numbers are from left to right mapped to 4 points on each grass leaf, the leftmost number being the bottom, the rightmost the top. The value defines the thickness of the leaf at that spot, as a percentage of the width-scale parameter you set up. 1 is the full setting of width-scale, a width of 0 will obviously make the leaf run onto a round end so thats why its generally used as the last number, but not anywhere else. Using 1 as the last number will instead have the leaf appear at full width at the end to make it appear like lawn that was just mowed.

Overall the most useful setups are 1,1,1,0 and 1,1,1,1 for grown up and mowed grass respectively. Hower you can also make the grass cone shape with somehting like 0.999, 0.666, 0.333, 0 if you wish that. I think its mostly just another possibility to abuse turffx for other stuff than grass, as with some playing around you can also get it to be used for growing something living on top of your fields thats not a flat texture or static spline as well and who knows what else might be possible. This might partially be why some properties like geometry-scale allow you to go to really absurd values, because nobody knows what we might be doing wiht the Turffx system in a year :)



Greets, Mika
 
Hi Paul_Bert
These values control the width of the grass blades at different points along the blade of grass (the first value is the bottom, second 1/3 of the way up, the third 2/3 of the way up, and the fourth is the top).

I have attached a couple of screenshots to show an example of this.

turf-fx-1.jpg
turf-fx-2.jpg

Regards
 
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