PBR Textures...

Vern

Trainz Maverick
Find myself back attempting to build some routes in '19. What's the current school of thought about using PBR ground textures, as at one point there were concerns about rippling and bubbling etc. effect plus they don't blend easily with older textures? Is it worth giving them a try or is it better to stick with the tried and trusted items such as JVC, Ultra (some of which seem to bump map in '19 anyway)?
 
Find myself back attempting to build some routes in '19. What's the current school of thought about using PBR ground textures, as at one point there were concerns about rippling and bubbling etc. effect plus they don't blend easily with older textures? Is it worth giving them a try or is it better to stick with the tried and trusted items such as JVC, Ultra (some of which seem to bump map in '19 anyway)?

The jellyfish guts have prevented me from using them unless I turn my performance settings down to standard (I think that's what it's called) instead of high performance. I think part of the problem with the PBR textures is the jellyfish innards reflect light and cast shadows, making them look worse. If that didn't occur it, it wouldn't bother me so much, but because we can see them they get in the way.

If you decide to go this route, no pun intended, there is a way of blending the two textures, but it needs to be done carefully. Sorry for lack of details, but I can't remember the exact process.

Yes traditional textures may appear to lower the surface, but using the traditional raise/lower terrain and adjusting the surface under splines works fine. I use Malc's textures a lot as well as the usual other sources and they work fine for me.
 
Thanks John. Bigger issue now is that ST_RMM trees have started to display transparency when viewed against the sky. That's not good, as up to now among the best trees in '19.
 
Thanks John. Bigger issue now is that ST_RMM trees have started to display transparency when viewed against the sky. That's not good, as up to now among the best trees in '19.

I agree they are among the best. I think that issue is another one related to LOD and N3V needs to address that again.
 
Cranking the Trees up to Ultra may help, not having an issue with rmm trees here though, probably using different ones!
 
They are the sosna (pine) variety, Malc. I'll try Ultra though probably melt the laptop GPU... :)

Edit:

trans-trees.jpg


Nope, this is on Ultra. Shame as the rest of the effects including PBR terrain texture looking quite good.
 
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The whole program is a mess. First off we have N3V changing things which render some of the most recent and best trees in the game as unusable.

So I decided to switch out with some other non Speedtrees - but they looked horrible and the view distance on them was rubbish - faded out at 500m distance, not much use if you want to represent a dense pine forest rolling away across the hills.

Uninstalled this sorry pile of junk until N3V can come up with a steady and stable version where they're not constantly breaking stuff.
 
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Vern --

To return to your original question, there are some issues with the PBR textures. But just skim through the screen shot forum and perhaps a few videos. My conclusion is that the overall effect is much better than with the older textures.

Go PBR. Don't mix them with non-PBR textures. Don't rotate them. Us the smallest setting near and under the track. Choose wisely, my friend -- some PBR textures are better than others.

Phil
 
Thanks for the tips Phil. At the moment I've gone back to TANE but will probably relent and put '19 back on in a day or two! (A couple of hours doing something in the DTG TS editor earlier convinced me for all the warts, Trainz is still best for building routes!).
 
Thanks for the tips Phil. At the moment I've gone back to TANE but will probably relent and put '19 back on in a day or two! (A couple of hours doing something in the DTG TS editor earlier convinced me for all the warts, Trainz is still best for building routes!).
Went back to TANE because all the PBR and TurfFX stuff doesn't work well.

The PBR ground textures will always be a checkerboard because they shouldn't be rotated and the TurfFX has an LOD of 1000m.

Now that there are Jankvis' DIY BillBoard Speedtrees that work great in TANE found there isn't any reason for TRS2019 for me.

Nice to be able to control the forests with no tree blobs far away. TANE lives on.

tane4_0051.jpg


Harold
 
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Hi Vern
On the trees, please check your antialiasing setting. In this case you may need to set it to maximum, as lower settings will result in different looking transparency (so as to improve frame rates).

On PBR ground textures, the bleeding/distortion will depend on the texture itself. The smaller the 'height' changes in the texture, the less distortion it will show on hard angles. OTOH, PBR textures can also be made with 'flat' height, which removes the issue entirely, but of course you lose the 3D height map effects.

Unfortunately Parallax Height Maps have no way to prevent this where the angle of the surface is beyond a certain angle (not sure of the precise amount sorry), and this is not just Trainz but for any games that take advantage of POM (Parallax Occlusion Mapping) for height mapping. The other option, in the current situations, is that we simply left that feature out which we did not feel would have benefited the community much. The big thing here is that it is a fairly substantial change to ground textures, and will require adopting new ground textures and new ground texture techniques to get the most out of it.

It's also not recommended to 'rotation spam' ground textures (ie rotating whilst painting). Apart from the performance impact that doing this has, the height map blending means that it won't look that great. OTOH TRS19 introduces 'detail maps' which help to break up the repetitive nature of ground textures (so visually it will 'repeat' over say 40 or 50m or possibly more instead of 5 or 10m), by changing the lighting on the ground texture, so rotation spamming shouldn't be needed (but you might find it good to blend a few different colours of similar 'low height' textures). It's still new, so I'd expect that not all PBR ground textures have this, but it can make a fair difference on ground textures. :)

IMO one thing that would help with this is a range of PBR ground textures with minimal or no heightmap applied, which is something I'm hoping to look at when I have time to make some of my own...

Regards
 
Thanks Zec. Now the red mist has subsided, I'll reinstall '19 and see what happens with the RMM trees. The issue of course being, others who cannot run at maximum AA will see the same horrible artefact if they try running a route with these assets.

Re the PBR textures, this of course turns conventional wisdom about applying these on it's head, where rotating was the default whether applying a single layer or over topping with other textures to get a good mix.
 
Still no better at maximum AA, though notably only certain of the trees which are showing issues - mainly those suffixed with "a".




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The the use of company money to get little bumps in the ground seems misdirected. Yes, under some conditions the PBR stuff looks better BUT are there not more important things such as AI, than these constant attempts to improve appearance versus functionality? While there have been some dramatic improvements, there are more important items than getting "lumpy"/patterned ground.

The first priority should be reliability and functionality of the product not its appearance. In the long run marketeers eventually learn this.
 
Really not loving the PBR textures, at all. Playing around yesterday and unswirled you can't help but notice either the chequerboard effect or how they repeat, particularly once you get 300 - 400 metres or more from the viewing location. They might be great on a virtual model railway but not for painting extensive hillsides or rolling farm country. At the same time, I'm finding some of the tried and trusted textures (Ultra etc.) all seem to be applying with a very uniform dull grey look, not green and vibrant like they did in earlier versions. I've played around with the time of year in case it's a seasonal thing, but no difference. That leaves the older "gras" type textures to play with but these date back to 2006 (or earlier) and are not really optimised for the current version.
 
Really not loving the PBR textures, at all. Playing around yesterday and unswirled you can't help but notice either the chequerboard effect or how they repeat, particularly once you get 300 - 400 metres or more from the viewing location. They might be great on a virtual model railway but not for painting extensive hillsides or rolling farm country. At the same time, I'm finding some of the tried and trusted textures (Ultra etc.) all seem to be applying with a very uniform dull grey look, not green and vibrant like they did in earlier versions. I've played around with the time of year in case it's a seasonal thing, but no difference. That leaves the older "gras" type textures to play with but these date back to 2006 (or earlier) and are not really optimised for the current version.

Take a look at Malc's textures CL grass x (x = some number), and also those by Jointed Rail - I think some are built-in actually.

They look much better than the dated Ultra textures that look like they were printed on card stock with a matte finish.
 
Vern --

You should persevere with PBR. If you get it right it can be impressive. Now I don't claim in any way to be an expert, but overall I find this much more satisfying than non-PBR textures:

TRS19%20Lilliput%2010.jpg


TRS19_YuanGulch_003.jpg


TRS19_Phootnote%26Fourword_0008.jpg


In the past I've found it worthwhile to download routes and layouts by other authors. It's always given me inspiration and instructive. Maybe consider downloading one or two of mine and see how I've "coped" with PBR and which textures I've used?

Phil
 
In the event, I've gone with swirling (I am a bit of a rebel) at least on the fields and background scenery away from the track.
 
Can't see any logical reason to use PBR Ground textures on distant hills or scenery. I view it as a close to the tracks option much as TurfFx and Clutter. Clutters excessively vicious lod counts it out for me, however the individual assets used in Clutter are available as single items and don't disappear so quickly.
 
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