So are you using splines or turffx?

C

Chris750

New member
I was wondering what most people are using on their TRS19 routes, I have tried using turffx but I find I always end up deleting it and going back to grass/bush splines, I think for the fact that I can put these splines exactly where I want them and not worry about them popping up in the middle of a highway etc.

Now I appreciate that turffx is much faster to paint a board with, but it can be a bit of a fight at times eh.

What do you think? If most people use turffx on their routes then maybe I just suck at it.:confused:
 
Well I just found a reason not to use turffx. Decided to work on my route and first thing I did was level a track spline, this put it under water. WTF! says I, there is no water anywhere near here, so I lowered the ground in random spots, then all over the 20+ boards and every board was water. Tried using the delete water tool, then thought maybe a water spline went nuts but nope, then after an hour I stumbled upon turffx water, I never added it but it was added and was flooding my entire route. Delete the stupid water layer and all is fixed.
 
Chris750 said:
Well I just found a reason not to use turffx. Decided to work on my route and first thing I did was level a track spline, this put it under water. WTF! says I, there is no water anywhere near here, so I lowered the ground in random spots, then all over the 20+ boards and every board was water. Tried using the delete water tool, then thought maybe a water spline went nuts but nope, then after an hour I stumbled upon turffx water, I never added it but it was added and was flooding my entire route. Delete the stupid water layer and all is fixed.
Click to expand...


They redid water and now it acts as topology. It adds it everywhere and you need to edit it.
 
hert said:
They redid water and now it acts as topology. It adds it everywhere and you need to edit it.
Click to expand...

I don't use either, i use single or grouped grasses . i found turf fx was hit or miss, I loaded up a lot of examples form the dls and could not apply some, at other tie4ms the turf fx disappeared or would not grow even though I made sure i was following the correct steps there's also the issue that people with macs wont see any turf fx and my routes are going to go on the DLS I now wor4k on pc but when I was on macs routes that had turf fx looked awful on the mac. also its not that easy to be accurate using turf fx. Ive found here are downsides re grasses in 2019 no matter what one uses turf fx looks great when it works , I've found a lot of the older grasses are too dark when viewed from one side, we really could do with a lot of newly designed items made for the latest version of the game. I just don't like most grass splines and find they slow things down a lot, not keen on them. it does however take a lot longer to apply single or group grasses , i usually apply some grass textures under them to make them stand out from a distance.
 
In my experience, the routes that make TurfFX work make it work really well - the West From Denver route in '22 is a great example. That said, it takes a lot longer to set up nice looking TurfFX than it does nice looking splines.
 
I use TurfFX, Clutter and single or grouped grass and bush assets. The only time I use plant splines is for hedges and orchards. Splines, by their nature, are repetitive which is fine for fences, roads, track and power lines but not for grass which, by its nature, is random.

Because TurfFX and Clutter are painted on they are far easier to add than individual objects, including splines, and they work far better on slopes. I do limit their use in most cases to close to the track.
 
pware said:
I use TurfFX, Clutter and single or grouped grass and bush assets. The only time I use plant splines is for hedges and orchards. Splines, by their nature, are repetitive which is fine for fences, roads, track and power lines but not for grass which, by its nature, is random.

Because TurfFX and Clutter are painted on they are far easier to add than individual objects, including splines, and they work far better on slopes. I do limit their use in most cases to close to the track.
Click to expand...

I use splines for the taller weeds and plants that grow along the ROW and TurfFX grasses of various lengths and colors for the grasses.

I also limit the distance of the TurfFX grass to about 5 or 10 meters from the track since it doesn't quite look right in the distance and use similarly colored textures for that instead.
 
I use a combo of both but mainly splines. Not a fan of watching the turfFx being drawn so close to the camera (I have it maxed on draw distance too).
 
justinroth said:
Not a fan of watching the turfFx being drawn so close to the camera (I have it maxed on draw distance too).
Click to expand...

The same is true of many grass and bush assets. Their LODs can make them suddenly appear as your train (camera view) approaches them. Speedtrees also suddenly change their foliage colour and appearence for the same reason as they get closer to the camera view.
 
Very interesting posts. It seems that those who do not like turffx have the same view as me, hard to place correctly and make look great. I did try turffx on my current fictional route (a combination of Trenton, Nova Scotia; Medicine Hat Alberta, and Vancouver British Columbia) and ended up deleting it, I used long grass along an abandoned work site but as others state it looked funny and grew as you approached.

So I switched to grass splines, I put them in different directions criss-crossing so they don't look like a blanket.

**I just went into my route and I noticed I had four different turffx layers sitting there, I only used one, grass and shrub. Does TRS19 create them by default when you start a new route? I have nuked them now.**
 
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Yes, the growing in is weird due to the LOD. The other issue I found is when working with large routes, Surveyor becomes more and more laggy as time goes on when placing the grass down and eventually all the grass disappears due to memory running out. This isn't N3V's fault, I don't think and is related to how the grass is rendered in the GPU. Eventually, the resources run out and the grass disappears.
 
JCitron said:
Yes, the growing in is weird due to the LOD. The other issue I found is when working with large routes, Surveyor becomes more and more laggy as time goes on when placing the grass down and eventually all the grass disappears due to memory running out. This isn't N3V's fault, I don't think and is related to how the grass is rendered in the GPU. Eventually, the resources run out and the grass disappears.
Click to expand...

Ah, that is good to know John, you taught me something, thanks.
 
Chris --

You just have to go with TurfFX. When used with PBR textures TurfFX has the potential to give so much better results than splines (full screen / HD):


Phil
 
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Hmm, Phil, not sure. The grass seems a bit overdone (the asset itself) to me and was it just the video or were the distance shots blurry? The route looks great BTW. Do you know how many times I grabbed my mouse attempting to pan the shot?!

Thanks for the feedback, I will take another look at my route; I do like that turffx is faster to lay down, too bad there isn't a tree turffx.
 
philskene said:
You just have to go with TurfFX. When used with PBR textures TurfFX has the potential to give so much better results than splines (full screen / HD):
Click to expand...

I am in total agreement. My current project is using both (plus Clutter) with all the ground textures now PBR. There is a learning curve but the results are worth it. I have not yet looked at the new water layer tool.

My observations.
 
Hi Chris --

" ... and was it just the video or were the distance shots blurry?"

It's to do with the way that youtube processes uploaded videos (or at least, ones that I've uploaded).

That particular video was made using my old monitor which maxed out at 1080p and using FRAPS as the recorder, which also maxes out at 1080p.

Since then I have updated the monitor to one with a resolution of 1440p and started using OBS Studio (freeware) and Bandicam (payware) as the recorder, both of which support 1440p. If you can, play this video full screen and at 1440p. You will see the blurriness has disappeared.


The above was made with OBS Studio. This one with Bandicam, again at 1440p:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pt4MjHtAeNU&t

I've come to the conclusion that it wasn't worthwhile going payware.

Phil

Edit:
Forgot to mention, I used a mixture of TurfFX with SpeedTree grasses and bushes.

And, yes, sometimes I too try to use the mouse to take control of the view when watching the video.
 
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Hi Phil; That did look a lot better, the first video was really washed out blurry but that was nice and clear and the grass and stuff looked really good. Ok, I guess I will have to try turffx again on my route, from what I know people say to only put it near the track as it kills FPS, is that correct?
 
pware said:
I am in total agreement. My current project is using both (plus Clutter) with all the ground textures now PBR. There is a learning curve but the results are worth it. I have not yet looked at the new water layer tool.

My observations.
Click to expand...

I asked Phil in the next post but perhaps you will let me know, how is the turffx on FPS? Do you only use it near the tracks (makes sense to me).
 
I have not noticed any effect on the FPS. The new Trainz Plus beta, with its use of higher file compression, actually shows performance improvements with far less "stutter" for the same route on the same computer compared to the non-beta version.

Most TurfFX and Clutter I only use close to the track, upto 40-50m out. I do have two TurfFX "grain crop" textures that I use further out, up to a baseboard out from the track, but only sparingly and they have no noticeable effects.
 
Watched a video on turffx and decided to give it a try but keep getting an error message (which I cannot google an answer to) "this effect type is disabled in the game settings..." I looked all through TRS19 for the turffx setting or something like that but cannot find anything. Ideas?

I noticed in the video they say to set turffx at about 2.5m for near track and up to 40m far away, I will have to test it once I get the error figured out and see what the difference is.

***Figured it out, it is the tab DETAIL SCENERY***
 
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