Increasing good weather fog

Thanks Joe.

I tend to leave gamma alone. I did try it to see if the fog settings might improve. Like you, I found it didn’t.

I’ve had a play around with five other skies - Himmel, wilgotnosc80, Cielo Griego, EP1-Sky#12, EP4-Blue sky (!).

All are grey and pretty much the same as Surie Misty Sky.

As you say, lets hope N3V will pick up on it. Meanwhile, adjusting the three Performance settings and playing with the weather control with rain/snow disabled seem to get a fairly happy result.

Apart from all of the advice, the only way I’ve managed to get any swirly fog closer to the foreground is by using textures, which of course cannot be driven through!


Cheers
Casper



Imageshack

I agree, would be really awesome if there were more atmospheric options to mess around with... This was the shot i tried to duplicate for the JR comp, the fog and mist were a big part of the composition

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=334184&nseq=104
I tryed to duplicate it using the "FMA smoke on the fields" pack- found here- http://www.spaintrainzrutas.com/fmasplin.html , bit better but still not quite the level of realism i wanted...

Thanks Scratchy.

I wasn't aware of those misty field assets. I've download them and will have a play. It took me a while to work out that they are splines - I thought at first that they were going to be moving particle effect assets (which would have been nice, but would have meant re-enabling the rain and snow to see them). They look like another atmospheric set of tools which will be great to use.

Nice screenshot on the JR comp btw. Nice photo from which to draw some inspiration too.

Cheers
Casper

Those FMA mist effects are really great!

I see they are made by Vendel. Might have guessed. Top quality creative stuff as usual!

I’m well pleased with the results.

Here are a couple of shots with all of the tricks put together.






Imageshack

scratchy said:

I agree, would be really awesome if there were more atmospheric options to mess around with... This was the shot i tried to duplicate for the JR comp, the fog and mist were a big part of the composition

http://www.railpictures.net/viewphoto.php?id=334184&nseq=104
I tryed to duplicate it using the "FMA smoke on the fields" pack- found here- http://www.spaintrainzrutas.com/fmasplin.html , bit better but still not quite the level of realism i wanted...

Click to expand...

Hey, that's really cool to get to see that you had a shot that you were trying to recreate. It was an excellent recreation, BTW, better than the original in my opinion.

Hi Casper,

Great shots, the fog looks more like fog and not like mist, just wondering because the fog is in spline form, does it reduce performance or cause stutter.?.

I've tried what you said in your previous posts about the partical effects slider, I have Trainz 2010 and for some reason I can't find the partical effects slider in Trainz 2010, I am just wondering have they renamed it to something else, or has it been removed, I know it used to be in options in previous versions of Trainz, but I cannot for the life of me find it in Trainz 2010, I wonder if the Anistropy slider has replaced it...

Anyway superb shots Casper, keep up the good work...

Joe Airtime

The splines work really well. I’ve noticed no change in stutter rates. The cache took a while to load when I hot keyed from Surveyor to Driver. However, it normally does in that part of the route. I use high poly track in the station which is a bit overloaded with assets. I was also pulling 12 of Vendel’s VSOE carriages as well, so I don’t think that one spline will have altered anything very much. Switching between Surveyor and Driver was, as always, much quicker after the first drive.

The fog effect spline is quite tall, so at track level it cannot be seen – it just looks like real fog. It looks particularly effective as you drive through and emerge into the normal weather, as you have pre-set it. It works in both directions too.

I set up a large circle of fog which is very effective as you drive into it then through the opposite side emerging into clearer air. I guess forming a snake like pattern of fog along the track will give an in and out of fog patches effect. I’ve yet to try that one!

Sorry to hear that you’re having trouble locating the particle effect control. Hopefully you’ll find it under whatever name it might now be called.

Cheers
Casper

What does the fog look like when you are e. g. riding right on the side or top of the train right in the middle of the fog? I can not imagine an asset (especially a spline) being able to do that without having a huge polygon count, when the asset does not use smoke effects.

Any way, I might just have to check these assets out myself. EDIT: Actually, I juts downloaded all of the splines! Theyall are just too good looking for me to be able to resist.

Regards.

You do need to try it. It does need some "normal" fog setting to complete the illusion.

I can’t do Fraps, so stills only to show the effect.

First shot shows the spline laid like a curtain in front of the tunnel. No enhanced fog.
Second at half snow setting.
Third at heavy snow setting.

You still need some "trick" fog, which is what you drive through. As you can see, the spline "curtain" adds to the already increased effect.

Yeah, I see. I do not think that I really have much of a "good-weather fog" setting set in Surveyor (which equals nice, clear skies. ), so I could probably try turning that up, and even turning up the bad-weather fog, then adding the fog splines (plus some of the other Vendel splines ) to increase the effect.

This might be pretty good looking, especially with me having been fiddling around with U. K. stuff in Trainz here recently (which is especially due to the fact hat I am on strike from U. S. routes until I finish the YARN2 road system ).

I will (hopefully ) be in Trainz later, so I can check this stuff out then. Thanks for the explanation, though.

Regards.

Thanks to all who started this thread, this is a really cool concept and just what I need for my scrapyard island on my updated version of the Montauk, Aberdeen, & Timber Ridge. Have to wait for Trainz 12 to get here from Australia though.......

ish6 said:

Hi Mezz,

If it's not too much trouble, you think you can demostrate your guidelines on a single blank board and e-mail me that board, etc?

Thanks!
Ish

Click to expand...

Hi Ish

I'm not sure what a completed baseboard would do to demonstrate my guidelines.

As far as I am aware it would only be able to contain the assets, textures and structure of the board. The only kuid items which I've used are the FMA smoke on the fields series (available from here: http://www.spaintrainzrutas.com/fmasplin.html), and some plain grey ground texture for the rather poor ground fog effect as shown in post #21.

All of the rest are techniques relating to control settings which I've tried to describe in this thread. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure that weather settings and particle effects would be stored in a .cdp file.

mezzoprezzo said:

Hi Ish

I'm not sure what a completed baseboard would do to demonstrate my guidelines.

As far as I am aware it would only be able to contain the assets, textures and structure of the board. The only kuid items which I've used are the FMA smoke on the fields series (available from here: http://www.spaintrainzrutas.com/fmasplin.html), and some plain grey ground texture for the rather poor ground fog effect as shown in post #21.

All of the rest are techniques relating to control settings which I've tried to describe in this thread. I may be wrong, but I'm not sure that weather settings and particle effects would be stored in a .cdp file.

Click to expand...

Hi Mezz,

Oh, I see --- I was askiing for a blank baseboard using the control settings that you have mentioned, but I see that it would take a bit more then just control settings. etc --- I missed understood your posts - sorry! LOL

All in all, let's just hope the next version will contain fog and mist -- actually, eliminate the monster-size snowflakes, and they might have something there!

Thanks for the link / info!!!

Anyhow, thanks for your quick post!
Kind Regards!
Ish