How are you *supposed* to use PBR ground textures

frogpipe

Yesterdayz Trainz Member

Various anomalies can be seen here, the track somehow over AND underground, and the warping of the grass beyond it at one point. The textures look great if things are flat, but as soon as the ground has contours the edges of reality start melting. So what I am doing wrong?
 
What I've seen in the video that will happen when you mix the PBR and the legacy textures with each other when a spline item is present.
Only way to fix it is to either use PBR or the legacy textures for spline items.


cheers
 
Feels like how it renders is very broken.

Oh well. I only did a small area thank God.

I'm also gald I'm not the only one who feels like it look like I'm on drugs. :)
 
This has been covered numerous times. There are to roughly explain it, full real PBR textures and there are other PBR textures that aren't using the 3D height effect. Then there are the older none PBR textures. If you use both full PBR and any other types near any spline you will get this problem. Near splines you either make sure you use either full PBR ONLY or none full PBR ONLY. The other problem is there is no way to tell which PBR type is being used as that info isn't given so you are forced to use trial and error to try and figure that out. Hm.
 
I tried them briefly and was hugely underwhelmed. It seems like a complicated way to make a bad ground texture to me and heaven only knows we have enough of those already.
 
PBR textures are used just like any other. The parallax effect can be hidden with cliff splines or vegetation. If you are using PBR textures under track, always use at the minimum scale and don't mix non PBR textures in. There are interesting ways to use the height mapping to advantage. Such as laying it on flat ground at full scale and pushing water up through it to make puddles, large scale for rock faces. It is just a matter of learning how to use them for best effect and how to hide the worst effects.
All of the routes I have in production are completely PBR and I wouldn't return to flat textures. Onward and upward.
 
I don't use them, the parallax effect is just not right on anything other than a flat surface or a very shallow angle.

The effects are discussed here...

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?150699-TRS19-PBR-Baseboards-causing-visual-problems


I call them Jellytex!

Cheers,

Graham.

That thread was very helpful. Thanks.

I'll be leaving my setting on ultra, but avoiding PBR textures for now. I went back and redid did the spot in the video with my selection normal hi-res 2D textures and it looks fine now.

My take away is that its simply overdone. It should be one of those things you only notice when its off, not that hits you in the face with a 2x4 full of nails screaming "LOOK AT Meeeee!!" when you look around.
 
frogpipe --

I'd suggest you keep on experimenting with the PBR textures for a while. I began using the PBR textures when TRS19 was first released and at that stage I was limited to just the built-in textures. Some I found unusable because the "bumps" were far to high for general usage. But after a while I found those that worked the best and I now generally still limit my selection to those. Here is one of my early TRS19 layouts with PBR textures, made before I had full confidence in using the TurfFX grass effects:


Perhaps consider downloading the layout to see which textures I used and the scale settings. The layout is on the Download Station and all dependencies are either built-in or from the DLS.

Phil
 
Last edited:
I don't use them, the parallax effect is just not right on anything other than a flat surface or a very shallow angle.

The effects are discussed here...

https://forums.auran.com/trainz/showthread.php?150699-TRS19-PBR-Baseboards-causing-visual-problems


I call them Jellytex!

Cheers,

Graham.

I don't use them either and refer to them as jellyfish guts! :D

They are very frustrating, because we can't use small radius applications and this makes them too fiddly and annoying. What cooked it for me is they also cast shadows through them so that any underlying textures look like they're inside a polyester resin casting stuff like we use for model railroading water, or we used to use to cover over seashells and other ornaments to make paper weights. (I'm dating myself here, I think!)
 
Everyone that starts TRS19, no matter what version,
uses PBR textures (no avoiding possible)
-the main menu is full of it
-the basic grid of any baseboard is PBRized
it went from 164k in older versions to 14mb in TRS,
why? to have unrealistic bolts/knobs noone ever asked for.


using PBR here very sparingly
-the standard built-in Procedural track are PBR,
combine it with the matching PBR texture is looking nice
so only direct along the used track.
-PBR textures are often up to 80x as big as normal textures,
just use 1 or 2 is no problem.
when use many, the loading of a route is drastic slowed/affected
-using turfx on top of a normal old-school texture, gives a more realistic image
than PBR texture alone.
-Driving trains often over 140km/u here, so the area between stations
you don't ever see the PBR if used there.


-Forcing us to use PBR, is good for selling FCT, try downloading 14mb without it
-In a few years we get raytracing, good chance the PBR will be set aside again or drastic changed
-Prefer Photo-realistic textures over PBR, why emulate if you have the real thing?
-I'm so fast with gmax, learning Blender would set me back a year, not even sure its worth it
everything i make in gmax always works direct and many tools/viewers to process later.
-The current exporter via FBX is too complex and leads to errors I don't have or want.
-People make crazy detailed cabs(respect them), but all their work is in vain,
if you see the ugly artifacts, explanation about thin walls, do not solve it for me(or them).


Have fun with trainz, PBRized jelly or not :)
 
frogpipe --

I'd suggest you keep on experimenting with the PBR textures for a while. ... Here is one of my early TRS19 layouts with PBR textures ...

Phil

Your routes are always amazing, but I'm afraid this one shows that same anomaly in cab view or any time your "on the ground".

7PXcCJd.jpg
 
Yes, I have to admit that there is no hiding the "lava flow" effect.

In my defence I always drive in the external 2-key view. Never (well, hardly ever) in the cab view. In the external view the lava effect is not so noticeable, but the improvement in the visual appearance of the ground certainly is.

Phil
 
Turn your shader quality to standard and you will have no problems.

John

The above is one of the best. PBR is like a haunting "honey pot" of material that is quite nice BUT incursions are a plague. A soon as I saw this info I began to test it and indeed I could not get PBR textures to ruin the older material. You really should publish this item on its own for the many people who use PBR for the visual quality and a disgust for the incursions.
Thanks,
Dick
 
If you are using PBR textures under track, always use at the minimum scale and don't mix non PBR textures in. There are interesting ways to use the height mapping to advantage. Such as laying it on flat ground at full scale and pushing water up through it to make puddles, large scale for rock faces.

Yes, the puddle effect is great! I use the shader quality at Ultra.

Agree with minimum scale under the track. I also use it for a small distance out from the track too. Plus under animals and people etc, otherwise they can look like they are floating or have their feet missing. Only small height adjustments to the objects are sometimes needed to finish.

To help reduce the sharp edged jellyfish look in the screenshot (aside from hiding it), I find making a more gentle slope from top to bottom helps in reducing the jelly from being too prominent and combined with minimum scale texture. But of course, when working with limited area, this may not be practical.
 
Last edited:
Hi All
One of the limitation of Parallax effects for textures is that they cannot be used over sharp angles. This isn't just a limitation of Trainz, but in general is a limitation of parallax effects in games. There are alternatives to this, such as tessellation, but these have a much, much, much higher performance cost and are generally used in conjunction with parallax effects.

Currently, when using PBR/parallax textures, there are two solutions to avoiding issues with artifacts.

The first is to avoid sharp angles (ie use 5m grid, and create a more rounded edge).

The second is to choose PBR ground textures that have little or no parallax effect on them.

Additionally, some artifacts occur when 'rotation spamming' when painting textures, and as such it is strongly recommended to avoid unnecessarily rotating ground textures (ie holding the [ and ] keys when painting ground textures) to avoid issues/artifacts from this.

Much like the change from low resolution ground textures to high resolution ground textures, the change to PBR ground textures requires a change to the techniques you use when using them on your route. But they can be extremely effective.

There are a number of games around that use parallax effects on ground textures (there's one quite popular one centered around car driving/racing, shooting, and has a large online mode these days, with a very silent player character in the online mode) which uses parallax ground textures across the map. However due to the artifacting that occurs on 'edges', you'll notice in this that things like cliffs actually become flat textures. Even so, I've actually had some fun finding places where I /can/ get the 'jellyfish' effect to occur even in this several hundred million dollar title...

In the case of the OP's video, you can see the non parallax texture adjacent to the parallax texture. This causes a blending in the terrain that can sometimes 'clip' through objects such as track splines. The simplest fix is to not blend PBR and non PBR textures together, at least in locations close to the player (where the parallax effects are most likely to be seen anyway).

Personally, I've setup a filter in the 'filters' tool that lets me filter to 'minimum build version' = '4.6', and select this when painting ground textures on routes. With a very wide selection PBR ground textures now available, both with true 3D parallax effects and 'flat' parallax effects (to make them appear like older ground textures), there's a lot that you can now do with just PBR textures. That said, if you blend between classic and PBR textures in the right locations (ie away from flatter splines like roads, track, etc) you can generally avoid issues using both, especially if you use them further away from the track.

Regards
 
Back
Top