Auto Paint miles of ROW in seconds...

[peacockg]

Hi Scott
This 4 year old artist has just changed his track ballast from brown to grey. Then I have created a grey ballast.ace to use and I am experimenting with that.
My results with snow have not been successful so far. I think that OR is displaying the generic OR snow terrtex file and I have a sharp line between track and ground. But I have some thoughts on this so will play with it tomorrow.
So far I have not been brave enough to try this on my actual route, just on the test route.
Thanks
Garry

[GokuMK]

drop it on AceIt to convert to an ACE - then place the ACE in your Terrtex directory... I preface all my custom textures with my initials so they are all grouped together and easy to find... I’d recommend using at least 1024x1024 on all your base Terrtex - makes the painted ACE size about 3MB a tile - you can compress them when done so they take up less space if desired...

For painting you can just use png or jpg files. No need for conversions.
But auto conversion to ace file for putting textures sometimes doesn't work, so to avoid possible errors, maybe it's better when you use only ace files.
While painting TSRE will always scale base texture to 512x512 pixels. So, 1024x1024 is not required.

[scottb613]

Hi Scott
This 4 year old artist has just changed his track ballast from brown to grey. Then I have created a grey ballast.ace to use and I am experimenting with that.
My results with snow have not been successful so far. I think that OR is displaying the generic OR snow terrtex file and I have a sharp line between track and ground. But I have some thoughts on this so will play with it tomorrow.
So far I have not been brave enough to try this on my actual route, just on the test route.
Thanks
Garry

Hi Garry,

Sounds like a perfect way to start... I used to attempt similar in Mosaic - and it was massively time consuming and a royal PITA...

Yeah - just keep looking for seamless textures and grow your collection - I've been doing it for years - see what works and what doesn't...

Best of luck !

Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

For painting you can just use png or jpg files. No need for conversions.
But auto conversion to ace file for putting textures sometimes doesn't work, so to avoid possible errors, maybe it's better when you use only ace files.
While painting TSRE will always scale base texture to 512x512 pixels. So, 1024x1024 is not required.

Hi Goku,

Thanks for the clarification - will keep in mind going forward...

Regards,
Scott

[woodfyr]

Scott,

"RE: [F2] [Load] [Texture] - Select Brush and Size. " ???

I have been trying for a week to get to the point where I can paint without covering a whole tile. The TSRE manual is no help.

(F2) No problem
(Load) No Problem
(Texture) No Problem
- Select Brush and size How ? Where?

Totally Baffled

[NW 2156]

Scott, What to do about these weird missed spots when auto painting the row?

[NW 2156]

Goku, Might need some amendment to not auto paint near tunnels or bridges.

Robert

[scottb613]

Scott,

"RE: [F2] [Load] [Texture] - Select Brush and Size. " ???

I have been trying for a week to get to the point where I can paint without covering a whole tile. The TSRE manual is no help.

(F2) No problem
(Load) No Problem
(Texture) No Problem
- Select Brush and size How ? Where?

Totally Baffled

Hi...

All the controls are right below the window that shows your selected texture...

You can't paint a color instead of a texture (I can't think of a valid use for this)…

You can select the brush by clicking on it - cycles through those available...

You can select the brush size...

You can select the intensity of the texture painted...

I use a two texture ROW at the moment - I lay down a dirt texture first [default brush - size 30 - intensity 100]…

Then lay a ballast over the top [default brush - size 22 - intensity 100] - which is what you see in the image below…

Works pretty well for me - hope this helps...


paint.jpg


Regards,
Scott

[scottb613]

Scott, What to do about these weird missed spots when auto painting the row?

Hi Robert,

That only happens one in a while - very seldom - and I just move my mouse near the skipped section and auto paint it or control click on it... I haven't seen any I can't paint...

Bridges and tunnels - I just load the default terrain texture and paint over what I want to fix - really only takes seconds - not too much of an issue for me...

Regards,
Scott

[NW 2156]

I doing an old desert route and it has more bridges and tunnels than I care to admit. A royal pita when auto painting.

Interestingly now that I have auto painted the terrain the route no longer loads in the MSTS RE? Argh! Why can't things just work for once.

Robert

[Salsocided]

Consider using a terrain patch that is completely one texture, not a combination that you show in your window. The corner that has the foliage color is in line with the "painting" portion of the terrtex. I had the same problem and I created a terrtex that was entirely one texture and no problems!

[GokuMK]

Interestingly now that I have auto painted the terrain the route no longer loads in the MSTS RE? Argh! Why can't things just work for once.

It should work. So, if you find what's causing it, I will try to fix this bug.

[NorthernWarrior]

I doing an old desert route and it has more bridges and tunnels than I care to admit. A royal pita when auto painting.

Interestingly now that I have auto painted the terrain the route no longer loads in the MSTS RE? Argh! Why can't things just work for once.

Robert

I just had a similar issue which I also logged on Goku's forum. Having had great fun doing some custom painting with some textures I knocked together in Paint Shop Pro, I found on trying to load my route in the MSTS RE was getting "Failed to load *.ace" on 2 or 3 of the custom texture tiles. Hitting Yes to click past put me in the route, but with great white void where even the default terrain.ace should be and then CTD after a few seconds.

Tried restoring the tiles to default in TSRE where the route loaded okay, but on saving and trying MSTS RE again, same fault persisted. Route is effectively trashed, luckily a recent backup has restored it okay and the only real work I lost was renaming the Russian tree descriptions in the .ref so Route Riter doesn't choke on the Cyrillic when it tries to compact it later on.

Not sure what would cause this, maybe it's the 770kb file size MSTS doesn't like (though there was only about 6 custom terrtex in total) or some other incompatibility. Maybe I was just unlucky.

Anyhow for now, looks like terrain painting in TSRE other than the MSTS method is off the menu and it's back to the tedium of creating all those quarter and half matching pieces in Paint Shop Pro (which is why we haven't seen that many new terrtex sets, in almost 18 years!).

[GokuMK]

Maybe the textures were just broken? It is good to check.
Does it worked good in OR?

[NorthernWarrior]

Installing the latest exe seems to have cured the problem.