Terrtex Lines

[charland]

Hi All, Merry Christmas.

Back when I was working on the mid 50s version of the DAR I started using Guku's editor to add sub-roadbed, paint fields and creeks, and add parking lots. It looked great but a couple of things I was having a problem with, the Terrtex file almost doubled when I was finished just 14 miles of this, on a route that would have been around 250, I don't think I would have been able to upload the completed route. One thing I did notice that I was never sure if it was something I was doing wrong, or just hadn't found out how to do right, lines around every sub tile I painted... you can see it at the bottom center going straight up through the field, onto the terrtex, across the track.



I'm down to a few miles left on the ONR route and am starting to think about completing and old project. About ten miles total so I was thinking about painting tiles again. Is there any way to get rid of these lines or are we just supposed to "not notice" them?

Paul :-)

Great, can't post a link to the picture.

[charland]

[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

TSRE does not compress the Terrtex ACES it also doesn't add MipMaps. I'm using 2048x2048 Terrtex now that are Approx 12MB in uncompressed ACE without MipMap. I convert them to DXT1 Compressed with MipMap DDS files that are Appox 3MB. MipMaps will make your file size larger but they are needed. I would expect the same kind of compression ratio with whatever size you choose to work with.

If you choose to stay with ACES - RouteRiter should compress them for you - not sure if it can add MipMaps.

I wouldn't compress them until you're sure you're done with edits - as with compression there is loss - so it's not something you want to repeat on the same textures.

Regards,
Scott

[charland]

[charland]

Hi Scott,

Is this something you're able to do in TSRE or are you using another program? I take it you're able to combine all the sub-terrtex tiles after you finish painting into just one large terrtex tile and give it a different name then the common terrtex in the background. When I was working on the DAR route it wanted me to create an new tile for every tile that I hadn't painted and create a new tile for every tile just to get the same winter snow, even then the tiles I painted appeared grey and not the proper white like the main winter terrtex.

Do you still get these lines around the perimeter of your tiles?

Paul :-)

[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

I just use the standard tile painting in TSRE - I use an external program to convert the resulting textures to DDS. I don’t combine tiles into larger ones.

The grey tiles in winter are an issue - as it’s because TSRE does generate the necessary texture in the winter folder. The grey tiles are simply untextured. Goku added a feature to paint winter tiles but it’s not great. I’ll see if I can find the post where he mentions it.

I haven’t really noticed those lines - I’ll look - sometimes the orange tile borders have an effect on textures.

Regards,
Scott


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[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

This was Goku’s solution on Winter.

https://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?332829-Winter-TERRTEX-in-TSRE&

Regards,
Scott


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[charland]

Thanks for looking that up Scott, I've bookmarked it, now I'll have to download the proper version of TSRE.

Paul :-)

[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

Good deal - I don’t think you need the specific version of TSRE mentioned in the post - simply anything later than that version should work fine.

Regards,
Scott


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[charland]

Hi Scott,

Interesting, I have 0.699 bu it didn't try to convert the ties I painted to winter tiles by itself, must just need to change the:

seasonalEditing = true
season = Winter

lines.

Paul :-)

[charland]

Hi Scott,

I'm trying to run an experiment to see how much smaller the route gets when running it through Route-Riter with all the extra terrtex files from painting tiles. I have the DAR_56 route I painted but the painted tiles have no snow terrtex. I've opened the settings text file in TSRE5 and added:

# seasonal terrtex
seasonalEditing = true
season = Winter

To the bottom below the # misc entries.

When I run the route through Route-Riter it eventually stops to tell me that I have no Snow texture for the painted tiles and asks me if I want to substitute the TerrtexSnow.ace file for the 1260ish painted tiles that have no snow terrtex. I renamed the snow terrtex that I already had in the Terrtex folder to TerrtexSnow and placed a copy in the main Terrtex folder, the Terrtex Snow folder, and eventually the Texture Snow folder. Each time I try, I still get the same error message, R-R can't find a path to the TerrtexSnow file.

Is there a way around this?

Paul :-)

[scottb613]

Hi Paul,

Yeah - I don't normally use RouteRiter myself. If you want to stick with ACE - I could probably write you a little bat file that uses AceIt to compress and add MipMaps to any ACE files in a given directory. To keep it simple - just copy my bat file and AceIt into the directory - run the program and remove when done. You would then need to move to Winter and do the same. No checking anything involved - just converting textures. I'd recommend you save a complete set of uncompressed ACE files before running the program. I'll see if I can put something together tonight when I get in.

Regards,
Scott

[charland]

Thanks Scott.

Paul :-)

[scottb613]

Thanks Scott.

Paul :-)

Hi Paul,

You can try this - dirt simple "for loop" to take every ACE in the current directory and process it with AceIt - to DXT1 Compress and add MipMaps. There are no "Are You Sure" protections - it overwrites every file in the directory so be ABSOLUTELY sure you save a good uncompressed backup.

Just copy the two files in my Zip to whatever directory you want that has the ACES you want to compress - then doubleclick on the "DXT_Compress.bat" file - you should see it start processing all the ACE files immediately. You can remove my two files when done.

During a quick test - 1024x1024 ACES compressed to around 500K or so.

You don't want to compress an ACE more than once.

Again - BE SURE YOU HAVE A BACKUP.

Use at Own Risk - Buyer Beware.

File Attachment:
DXT_Compress.zip

Regards,
Scott

[charland]

Thank you Scott,

I keep copies of each route as it's being made, so I'll just make another copy to experiment with.

Paul :-)