Upgrading a route

The 16 texture per baseboard limit alters dramatically the look of my prototipical routes, where I have spent years carefully texturing. I wonder if N3V could raise this limit for the next release, otherwise I would have to dedicate a massive amounts of time and effort retexturing the routes, or either skip the whole HD thing. I suppose many of us will be on the same situation

thank you

Grid is not available without upgrading the route to HD.

You are right. If you create a new route in this build, it is already in hd, so my confusion. I edited my post

You can convert HD back to 5m or 10m (with obviously some loss of detail).

With current hardware, 16 textures is as high as we can go, but remember that you're not comparing like with like.

Color tinting gives you a variety of different looks with a single texture, and the smaller brush allows you to add additional texture detail to each 10m x 10m tiling texture you are using now.

And last but not least, adding clutter and turffx layers mean that the underlying textures become less important.

Keep experimenting and you'll see the limitation is not really an issue for new routes, and ultimately provides more flexibility and variety.

I am sorry to disagree, Tony, but it is a very serious issue for me. In places like open fields it is easy to save a few textures hiding the ground using turfx and clutter (and if u are a Mac user you dont even have these choices), or color tinting. But there are many other places, specially in complex routes, like industries, towns, roads, tracks, streets, river banks, etc where this is not an option. You need a minimum number of different textures to do a good quality work.I was unable to fix this texture mess in none of my routes, which they look terrible in this beta update. (once the limite is reached in a baseboard, if u try to paint with a new texture, one of the existing ones will be substituted, so this does not work ). You argue that the limit is a hardware matter. Do you think that it would be possible to make this parameter adjustable according with hardware specs? (as you can with post processing, for instance) Thank you.

I agree, limiting to just 16 textures per baseboard is pretty limiting, especially in certain situations. Sometimes you can get away with it, but not always. And like was said earlier, Mac users do not have full access to certain features, which limits those users even further. It also seems pretty arbitrary to do this, when the smaller brushes are encouraging people to use more textures to add detail in small patches. As for hardware limits, I don't know if I really buy that, but whatever. The issue is present, and it rankles.

Tony_Hilliam said:

You can convert HD back to 5m or 10m (with obviously some loss of detail).

With current hardware, 16 textures is as high as we can go, but remember that you're not comparing like with like.

Color tinting gives you a variety of different looks with a single texture, and the smaller brush allows you to add additional texture detail to each 10m x 10m tiling texture you are using now.

And last but not least, adding clutter and turffx layers mean that the underlying textures become less important.

Keep experimenting and you'll see the limitation is not really an issue for new routes, and ultimately provides more flexibility and variety.

Click to expand...

Well all of my routes would have more than 16 textures to a board,a board is a large area, it can contain many different assets and features that detailed modellers would find very hard to create when restricted to that number of textures. if this is the case, I wont be upgrading to HD in the future, this is one step forward , two steps back territory. Unless one could mix HD with standard terrain its a killer.

This was the first annoyance that I mentioned after the HD terrain was introduced because this 16-texture limit effectively kills map textures for routes imported from TransDEM. The map textures on the baseboards become useless blobs that obliterate the important details needed for building the route. To me this is the equivalent of forcing users to go back to EVGA graphics cards and while we're at it, we may as well as go back to 640 x 480 or 800 x 600 displays at the same time.

Did anyone notice the line in Tony's post above?

Tony_Hilliam said:

With current hardware, 16 textures is as high as we can go

Click to expand...

Can anyone suggest a solution to this that would not break the bank?

Keep in mind, more textures, the bigger the route files are going to be. It could be that TransDEM can recode so it cimes in under 16 textures or uses the painting method, however that means a ton of work to reverse engineer the file formats, intermediate file format is released, or internal file formats are released.

pware said:

Did anyone notice the line in Tony's post above?



Can anyone suggest a solution to this that would not break the bank?

Click to expand...

Well, procedural textures are what springs to mind and maybe the addition of procedural terrain is foreshadowing them as the future in a Phased Development™ path. Geometry Nodes could also offer a path away from the dependence on Nvidia only turf effects.

But that being said, while the conversion process is indeed hard on old style textures based on images, Surveyor 2 offers ways of mixing PBR textures in many exciting ways to create a unlimited range of appearances from just two textures.

capdiamont said:

Keep in mind, more textures, the bigger the route files are going to be. It could be that TransDEM can recode so it cimes in under 16 textures or uses the painting method, however that means a ton of work to reverse engineer the file formats, intermediate file format is released, or internal file formats are released.

Click to expand...

And here we go down another path. N3V refuses to worth with Dr. Ziegler so he can upgrade TransDEM. They have effectively killed prototypical route building by typically making things very difficult for the users by forcing them to go through hoops that are beyond what is necessary to enjoy a hobby. There are ways of working around this but it's yet another way to drive route builders away from building prototypical routes.

Oh, I agree. N3V seems to be getting rather tone deaf when it comes to the needs and desires of the community that keeps their franchise alive.

JCitron said:

There are ways of working around this but it's yet another way to drive route builders away from building prototypical routes.

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I build prototypical routes and I don't use TransDEM. Sure it takes a long time to do without such aids but its a hobby, not a race, and I enjoy the manual process. It makes me feel that it is all my work and not the product of some automaton that I have little or no control over.

On another matter I have just made a bug report on the HD conversion process. For a test I converted my current project from 10m grid to HD grid. The Content Manager file size went from 187MB (for the 10m version) to a whopping 835MB for the HD version, so I don't think HD will be a viable option for this route - at least not for every baseboard. The route uses PBR textures everywhere, including all the track ballast, which is why I decided to test the HD conversion process. My previous conversion test was for a large route without PBR textures.

The conversion took a full 4 minutes to complete and was interesting to watch from up high above the terrain - it was like a tsunami wave sweeping across the landscape. The process completed without any error messages - so there were no baseboards that exceeded the 16 texture limit.

However, while exploring the route to admire the texturing, I noticed a number of what I have come to call "The Great Walls of HD". Each occurs at a baseboard boundary (but not on every boundary). The curious thing is that they are visible from one direction only and disappear when you view them from the other side. They may be related to another known bug that produces small visible gaps on some of the baseboard boundaries.



Another "Great Wall" is also visible in the distance. Also shown in the foreground is one of the thin gap "artifacts" of the HD conversion process.

There is a bug that you have to convert the whole route to HD, otherwise you have problems between baseboards. That is separate from the bug you found.

Building a route already takes a long time, so it is nice having tools to speed up the process whenever possible. TransDEM is nice in that it not only does 5m or 10m automatically but lays a map on top to place things accurately. I don’t think a good deal of routes would be attempted without TransDEM or another such utility.

I'm getting very worried about the HD features.

I haven't looked into them much but going by what people are saying and experiencing there seems to be a lot of issues. The 16 texture limit per baseboard seems to be a big deal. I can understand this by routes that I use a lot, there seems to be a lot more than 16 texture per some baseboards.

I feel like customers are being driven away from Trainz especially with the two main issues which have been mentioned above (16 texture per baseboard limit and TransDEM) in a time where N3V are saying that they need the subscription system to help drive development.

I believe HD is a great game changer and I am very much looking forward to it but, I would love and appreciate it if we could see some full routes using it with the 16 texture limit. Even though screenshots of small area's look fantastic, I think we need to see what the bigger picture looks like in a large route.

At this point, it doesn't seem worth converting a route to HD with the limits mentioned and as mentioned, I would love to see a full route in HD with it's limits to give me confidence in it.

cabnz1 said:

I haven't looked into them much but going by what people are saying and experiencing there seems to be a lot of issues. The 16 texture limit per baseboard seems to be a big deal. I can understand this by routes that I use a lot, there seems to be a lot more than 16 texture per some baseboards.

Click to expand...

The HD terrain feature is a beta release and problems are normal, even expected, with beta versions. Naturally, people will report problems that they experience that is why the beta has been made available for those who are brave enough to try it. Beta testing is not for the faint-hearted. This beta has far fewer issues than other betas for earlier Trainz versions that I have tested - T:ANE currently holds that record.

I personally do not believe that the 16 texture per baseboard limit is as serious as issue as some are posting. Remember this is 16 different textures per baseboard, NOT 16 different textures per route and as I have found using PBR textures instead of normal textures greatly improves the "look and feel" of a route.

In two large completed routes that I have so far fully converted to HD only one reported that a single baseboard has exceeded the 16 texture limit. Neither route was built with a 16 texture limit per baseboard in mind - that was just the way I constructed them. When I looked at the "faulty" baseboard (the conversion report gave me its XY co-ordinates) I could see nothing amiss - the conversion process replaces any "additional" textures (over the 16 limit) with one already in use on that baseboard. One route had 53 different textures in total, and the other had 39 (and it was the one that exceeded the limit for just ONE baseboard).

cabnz1 said:

I believe HD is a great game changer and I am very much looking forward to it but, I would love and appreciate it if we could see some full routes using it with the 16 texture limit. Even though screenshots of small area's look fantastic, I think we need to see what the bigger picture looks like in a large route.

Click to expand...

You won't be able to see any until the full HD Trainz version is released. The HD routes have a build number of 5.3 which will not load into any current version of Trainz and cannot even be uploaded to the DLS.

pware said:

You won't be able to see any until the full HD Trainz version is released. The HD routes have a build number of 5.3 which will not load into any current version of Trainz and cannot even be uploaded to the DLS.

Click to expand...

Thank you for your reply pware.

I understand that no routes are released yet under 5.3, what I meant was maybe a video of someone who has either converted or made a new route with HD.

Your comments in regard your results do give me some confidence and I look forward to the final release.

I converted my large route just for kicks and it went from 349 MB to a whopping 2.3GB! No way is that useful with a route that large due to the inability to compress that into a CDP and then read it back.

During the conversion process, I had some shark tooth hills appear on a couple of baseboards but I when I tried the process again, they disappeared. With the route being very old, meaning started in January 2004 and going through various Trainz versions over the years, I chocked that up to old route file corruption. With the Great Wall of HD appearing, what I ran into apparently is not a one-off thing and needs to be reported.

As far as using TransDEM, it's a lot different than the old manual method which I have done. There's nothing like working with a route that has the topographic maps placed down on the surface as textures. This makes locating abandoned railway grades much easier than eyeballing it. There's one route I've been working on where the majority of the line was consumed by a reservoir. With the height lines still shown on the map and placed on a current DEM file, I was able to locate the grade and lower the water to its original level, albeit with some difficulty and a lot of guess work.

To be honest, with all the new fancy features N3V is putting into this version, it's sad to see them neglect the serious hobbyist in favor of the ones that will create a gazillion Highland Valley and British Midlands routes we have on the DLS. I suppose that's where the money is but it's the long-time serious hobbyist that invests in the computer hardware and supports the community more so than the latter.

capdiamont said:

There is a bug that you have to convert the whole route to HD, otherwise you have problems between baseboards. That is separate from the bug you found.

Building a route already takes a long time, so it is nice having tools to speed up the process whenever possible. TransDEM is nice in that it not only does 5m or 10m automatically but lays a map on top to place things accurately. I don’t think a good deal of routes would be attempted without TransDEM or another such utility.

Click to expand...

I'm working on a route that's half transdem, half of my own making. I know which method I'd rather use, whilst it was a nice challenge creating the 14,000 ft high Mt Princeton, I'll take transdem over manual construction any day , but then I'm making parts of the Rocky Mountains.
Simply in terms of saving a lot of repetitive work transdem is a very handy tool.