PBR Textures - worth substituting for older textures?

Lataxe

Member
The Trainz Wiki gives very basic information about PBR textures .... but from a purely experiential view they do seem to look a lot better than many equivalent but old-fashioned textures established in older routes imported into TRS19 Platinum. So ....

Is it worth parsing these older routes and globally replacing the older textures with PBR equivalents (equivalent in terms of the type of "ground" such as grass, mud, ballast etc.)? Are there any performance overheads or are they in fact more efficient? (I have a nvidia GTX 970 GPU processing them).

There are a number of PBR textures that are built-in but I notice nearly 1000 others on the DLS as yet uninstalled by me. Are there some PBR textures that are very much worth a download, in your opinion?

Thanks in advance for any advice or recommendations.

Lataxe
 
Be careful. Using PBR textures will cause a lot of problems on routes made w/o them. The thing that I run into is that PBR textures tend to either make track disappear or float.
 
Be careful. Using PBR textures will cause a lot of problems on routes made w/o them. The thing that I run into is that PBR textures tend to either make track disappear or float.

That and the ground covered with jellyfish guts.
 
I do a lot of renovations with PBR and I highly recommend JohnnyC1's huge range of textures and Msgsapper's truly seasonal ones.
Yes there are some difficulties with PBR, but the results outweigh the issues. Around splines, use at minimum scale. Don't mix Pbr and non PBR near roads and tracks. I haven't found a cure for parallax shift (aka. jellyfish guts or acid trip), but it can be minimised by hiding it behind vegetation or a high def cliff spline (thank you Dangavel). I have not noticed any performance difference with PBR
Have a look at my renovations of Wingersheek & Wiscasset and Morristown & Erie on the first few pages.. https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...oute-Creations-Collaborations-and-Renovations to see what can be achieved.
Happy Renovating
Graeme
 
My route has been transferred from the "old style textures" to using mainly PBR and using Shader Quality - Ultra. It was bit of trial and error initially to work out the best regime to not get the gel look when viewing from cab or passenger view and for the track to not disappear in places. The pbr gel "wave" also made me feel a bit nausea when travelling in cab or passenger view.

My Ultra setting for "Shader Quality" is for the 3d look. When set to "Standard" the gel look is removed and the texture is more like the Classic and the track is still visibily fine. I use "Sap track Wood SG with light brown ballast". In honesty, I like it both ways, but the 3d is pretty cool - just need to get it to behave itself.

The best remedy I found is to use the pbr with the scale dial turned almost, or completely to the left for painting under and near to the tracks. For distance view the old style textures are used more so than the pbr - this to reduce the block/patch look. However when using both types on hills or ground generally, the replace tool is used to make sure the underneath colour (if there is some painted there) is replaced with the new colour and majority of the times the blends look okay - but not always. Some pbr and classic textures rebulk this.

Smoothing off the sharpish edges for a smoother ground helps with reducing the waving gel if using pbr with a higher scale closer to a viewing area. Basically it is a bit of trial and error with some frustration thrown in. However, it can turn out not too bad at all.

Anyway, I like to try and make things work together, even if not quite compatible in some form or another...

PBR- Shader quality Ultra


PBR - Shader Quality Normal
 
In updating both the 2006 Hawes Junct. and The Black Forest, I've only run into a couple areas with problems upgrading to PBR. IMO it's def. worth the upgrade, when you've got your shader set to Ultra, as Arhian7 pointed out. The problems can be fixed easily.

JohnnyC1 and MGSapper both make really good looking PBR that I've used in many routes so far. Highly recommended.
 
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Be careful. Using PBR textures will cause a lot of problems on routes made w/o them. The thing that I run into is that PBR textures tend to either make track disappear or float.

I don't understand this. How can PBR textures cause problems on routes made without them. They won't be there to do so......? Do you mean that a replacement of a non-PBR texture with a PBR texture causes problems? I've globally replaced three or four old textures in old routes imported into TRS19 Platinum with PBR built-in textures and there have been no apparent ill effects (so far).

Lataxe
 
I do a lot of renovations with PBR and I highly recommend JohnnyC1's huge range of textures and Msgsapper's truly seasonal ones.
Yes there are some difficulties with PBR, but the results outweigh the issues. Around splines, use at minimum scale. Don't mix Pbr and non PBR near roads and tracks. I haven't found a cure for parallax shift (aka. jellyfish guts or acid trip), but it can be minimised by hiding it behind vegetation or a high def cliff spline (thank you Dangavel). I have not noticed any performance difference with PBR
Have a look at my renovations of Wingersheek & Wiscasset and Morristown & Erie on the first few pages.. https://forums.auran.com/trainz/sho...oute-Creations-Collaborations-and-Renovations to see what can be achieved.
Happy Renovating
Graeme

Thanks for that - the sort of experience I was after.

Lataxe
 
My route has been transferred from the "old style textures" to using mainly PBR and using Shader Quality - Ultra. It was bit of trial and error initially to work out the best regime to not get the gel look when viewing from cab or passenger view and for the track to not disappear in places. The pbr gel "wave" also made me feel a bit nausea when travelling in cab or passenger view.

My Ultra setting for "Shader Quality" is for the 3d look. When set to "Standard" the gel look is removed and the texture is more like the Classic and the track is still visibily fine. I use "Sap track Wood SG with light brown ballast". In honesty, I like it both ways, but the 3d is pretty cool - just need to get it to behave itself.

The best remedy I found is to use the pbr with the scale dial turned almost, or completely to the left for painting under and near to the tracks. For distance view the old style textures are used more so than the pbr - this to reduce the block/patch look. However when using both types on hills or ground generally, the replace tool is used to make sure the underneath colour (if there is some painted there) is replaced with the new colour and majority of the times the blends look okay - but not always. Some pbr and classic textures rebulk this.

Smoothing off the sharpish edges for a smoother ground helps with reducing the waving gel if using pbr with a higher scale closer to a viewing area. Basically it is a bit of trial and error with some frustration thrown in. However, it can turn out not too bad at all.

Anyway, I like to try and make things work together, even if not quite compatible in some form or another...

PBR- Shader quality Ultra


PBR - Shader Quality Normal


More useful information. Thank you.

Lataxe
 
In updating both the 2006 Hawes Junct. and The Black Forest, I've only run into a couple areas with problems upgrading to PBR. IMO it's def. worth the upgrade, when you've got your shader set to Ultra, as Arhian7 pointed out. The problems can be fixed easily.

JohnnyC1 and MGSapper both make really good looking PBR that I've used in many routes so far. Highly recommended.

Thank you. I'll download a few from Mr C1 and the Sapper, as you're the second person to recommend them.

Lataxe
 
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