Simple plane error into TSRE

[vline45]

Hi there, I'm trying my hand at a route just slowly learning and I've made a simple one-face plane in Blender, measuring about 680m x 65m, added a texture to recreate a concrete yard surface. When I try adding it in route with TSRE, nothing shows except two extremely long blue lines, as shown:

cncrt_yd_err.jpg

And this is the plane in Blender:

cncrt_yd_err2.jpg

Have I missed a step or something? Thanks.

[eric]

Is the MSTS Material set? That's a different dialog pane.

[vline45]

Yep, I think so, it's just adding the texture path into this small box on the right isn't it? After I point to the location and add the texture into 'BaseColorFilepath', the whole model (simple plane in this case) goes black though, is this normal? It seems to export without error to an .S file.

I just tried quickly adding a smaller plane (1m x 1m) and adding some colour and the same thing happened, it opens, but couldn't see it with the TSRE shape viewer, which is odd, as I exported a locomotive WIP not long ago and have it running in OR. So I must be missing a step?

Happy to share the plane blend file if that may help tell me what I'm doing wrong. Thanks

cncrt_yd1.jpg

[eric]

Aside from the path for the texture, that all looks right.

What does the raw .S file look like? Just open it in Notepad and copy & paste it in a reply -- it shouldn't be that big but .S files can't be attached.

[vline45]

Sorry, the reply box wasn't holding the formatting so I took a screen shot:

cncrt_s_file.jpg

[eric]

Your images section is blank, which I'm guessing means you didn't create a UV Map for it.

Select your face, go to UV Editing, open your texture image in the left hand pane, and then on right hand UV menu (or possibly the right mouse menu), unwrap your face to the texture (from memory... there might be a few more steps needed...)

[vline45]

Ok,so had a look, I had created a UV Map, I think i can see what is going wrong but not sure why.

This is the shader with everything plugged in:

shader_pre1.jpg
And as soon as I click the BaseColorFilepath box for the MSTS Materials and select the texture in a directory, it disconnects everything as shown in this pic:

shader_post1.jpg

So now I know why it's going black and exporting without a texture, it gets disconnected when adding the dds into BaseColorFilepath, but why is it disconnecting?

Thanks.

[superheatedsteam]

I cant read the text for the shader in your screen shots, but I would suggest un-checking the 'Update Shader' check box under the BaseColorFilePath and re-open the texture file and see if that makes a difference. That may be dropping the noodles for the nodes in the shader window.

[eric]

Yeah, not sure. I've always used a BMP or TGA for the UV map.

[superheatedsteam]

Also in Blender, use the Window>Toggle System Console menu options to open the console window. You can see the operations that are being performed in Blender but more importantly you can view the progress of the .S exporter that may log potential issues.

[vline45]

Ok, so after checking everything over, it is now successful. But, of course, it was a simple hierarchy error, the main shape was outside the MAIN_2000 collection, and I saw this because of the Blender console output distance error, so thanks for that. Appreciate the pointers even if it helps anybody else out, thanks.

[pwillard]

So, here is a workflow hint.

1. Work with convenient image formats within Blender, like PNG, TGA, or BMP.
2. Build the model with the hierarchy expected by the ORTS Exporter.
3. UV Map and texture the model, ensuring the MSTS texture section shows a valid image reference. (That's the one that counts)
4. Export the model.
5. Convert the PNG file to ACE or DDS as desired.

I have a little script here that will set up your collections panel with the Exporter's preferred layout.

import bpy
# Function to create a new collection if it doesn't exist
def create_collection(name, parent_collection=None):
    if name not in bpy.data.collections:
        new_collection = bpy.data.collections.new(name)
        if parent_collection:
            parent_collection.children.link(new_collection)
        else:
            bpy.context.scene.collection.children.link(new_collection)
        return new_collection
    else:
        return bpy.data.collections[name]
# Create the main collection "MAIN"
main_collection = create_collection("MAIN")
# Create the sub-collection "MAIN_700" under "MAIN"
sub_collection = create_collection("MAIN_700", parent_collection=main_collection)
print(f"Created collections: {main_collection.name}, {sub_collection.name}")
sub_collection = create_collection("MAIN_2000", parent_collection=main_collection)
print(f"Created collections: {main_collection.name}, {sub_collection.name}")​