The past couple of weeks I've spent learning and apply new terrain textures to the Fort Kent route. Terrain textures are simply the textures we use to paint the ground with. In RS/RW you have two choices for terrain textures. You can use the standard tiled texture which is simply a small texture repeated over and over on the ground. It's very effective as long as it doesn't reveal a pattern you can easily see like wallpaper. RS/RW gives you another option where you can take 8 of these small textures and places them adjoining each other in a random order to give a large area an effective covering without a repeating pattern. This is what has predominantly occupied my time learning some of the ins and outs and I still have a ways to go but my results are getting better from my earlier attempts. To test out my new terrain textures I created a small scene and thought I would share some of these progress pics.



What you're seeing here is my own weed/gravel/uncut grass/lawn etc textures applied with some of my own structures and Marc's Scaleroads and Rural Landscapes vegetation as well as RSDL Foliage pack.



In this pic I zoomed in on the gravel which wasn't meant for roadside gravel but it could be. From my perspective as a developer the one thing I can't tell when I'm processing a texture like this is just how well specifics within the texture will match up proportionally with my scaled objects in the sim. So in this case this gravel does okay but I may resize it to be smaller. There's a trade-off here as the smaller the specifics in the textures become, you lose that detail as you move farther away from the gravel. I would also like to note that this gravel texture is the standard tiling texture spoken of previously.



There's nothing special in this shot except as an overview with my gravel being placed everywhere but where its suppose to be. I have textures setaside for doing roadside/ballast that I haven't processed yet.



Let's talk optimization. Using the default terrain textures was pretty frustrating in one important aspect. Theres so much versatility in RS/RW its incredible. What the default didn't include was a flora/non flora version of each texture where flora was included. By creating my own terrain textures now I have flora/non-flora versions of the same texture so I can appropriately apply textures with flora where its most needed. In this picture I'm using a lawn texture with flora. This is the more complicated terrain texture at work.



Looking at the dirt road and the dirt texture around it, that's not dirt, that's my riverbed texture. I needed to give it a look so I put some around the dirt road. I think it works good for dirt as well but I have a dirt texture I also plan on using in the next pic.

cont'd

This is my dirt/pebble texture which is right behind the tree. It took a couple of attempts to get the pebbles to be the size I wanted them to be. They're a bit oversized of course but I didn't think most of us would want to zoom in that close just to see pebbles.

The most difficult textures to do thus far have been rock textures for terrain. You can barely see some of my attempt thus far in these pics but so far I haven't hit the right combination to get them to be presentable enough. So it's another week I figure just getting my terrain textures finished before I can begin tackling the scenicing of the route itself.

Rich

Fascinating!

Thanks for sharing, Rich. Your shots and text provide real insight into creating and implementing the scenery, and more than adequately noted the challenges. The more I see, the more I am inclined to take the plunge and put a small route together.

Dave

Looks great Rich.

Thanks guys, much appreciated.

I have only one picture to share this evening. I did a parking lot texture and this one offered its own challenges because I wanted the lot to give the right effect. Typically, parking lots to me look fairly clean for the most part but a bit bleached from the sun but there's also some evidence of use like grease and oil. Keep in mind that I explained earlier that RS/RW has two types of terrain texturing I felt it would have been simpler to just use a standard 256x256 repeating tile texture but instead I opted to go for the more complicated 8 texture technique instead.

There's a couple of things I considered. The one that persuaded me to use the complicated version of texturing was thinking there would be instances where I would need large parking lots. A large parking lot could reveal a repeating pattern so I would of course want to minimize the chance of the wall paper effect. But on the other hand, just how many of these complicated textures can be used within a route without detrimentally effecting the fps in a route? RS/RW seems to handle fps pretty well so I decided to use the complicated version for this texture.

Like the previous textures, the thing that was most important was resizing the original texture so when you go through the process of creating the 8 textures the 'granular' effect of a parking lot (best way for me to describe the look of a lot) wasn't lost. So let's take a look at what I came up with.



To me it looks like it came out fairly good. The lot pictured that granular look without demonstrably noticable patterns to it. There is a presence of subtle variation and nothing so outlandish to make the lot look out of sorts with the surrounding textures.

I still have a few more to do yet, cya then.

Rich

And here's a little bit of shadow trickery added...



Rich

And just a little bit more shadow trickery...



The shadows bring about more 'naturalness' to a scene.

Rich Garber

Looks really good so far. This time around will you be creating objects with dynamic shadows? They would add tremendous atmosphere to your routes in my opinion.

Well, I haven't created any objects for RS/RW yet anyway. All my current RS/RW objects are MSTS conversions built and made for MSTS, not RS/RW. I've got them to import but MSTS objects don't include shadows of any sort. Shadows in MSTS are assigned via the object property tab in MSTS, they aren't defined in the object itself like they can be in RS/RW. So, to answer your question will the new objects include Shadow Models, that's a yes. And without getting into much detail I also say it depends. Shadows can be created several different ways in RS/RW so whichever works best and is the most efficient, that's what I plan to do.

Rich

I've been reworking the gravel and added a ballast and just now finished redoing my sand terrain texture. So I got a couple of pictures for ya. The first is my ballast texture and if you can see it, the gravel mesh is tighter than it used to be as well.



And here's my sand texture. I had to create a small mini scene to show this.



You can see I need to redo the rock texture. That's next.

Rich

Okay, here's a preliminary of the newest rock texture... - Rich

My library of textures is growing. Compare this pic to one above of the dirt road. In that picture I used my riverbed texture for dirt, here's real dirt instead. - Rich

A fellow simmer thought I should tighten up the ballast a little tighter, here's the results:



If you're new to this thread and wondering what all the pictures are about, these are my own terrain textures I've been creating for the Fort Kent route. This is just part of a small test scene I created on the route to see how the textures are working togther.

Rich G

2 more pics, one of a new texture and one where a texture was revisited. - Rich G

Tweaking the shadow texture:

Hiya Rich - been dipping in now and again and have been meaning to say - excellent !

Really good range of textures and I especially like the dirt road and new ballast. Looking very fine overall. Love the dirt road crossing.

Have you been able to make much more progress on the route itself, or is that taking a back seat for the moment?

Rod

Heya Rod,

Today I started working in Eagle Lake so the route is coming out of back seat mode. Terrain textures in RS/RW is a big deal. First, they do take some doing. Second, a good set of textures gives you a ton of versatility we never had before. They add not only to the realism of the route but the immersion factor goes way up if you think you're a part of the scene itself. And a good texture set can do a tremendous amount of work for you. But it takes some planning along with experience to know just what kinds of textures you need. Using the default set for my first two routes gave me some ideas. So doing that was a big help. Doing the test scene allowed me to see how the textures worked together and so the past couple of days I've been tweaking their looks. I still need a couple more textures which I think I'll add along the way.

But I hear ya. I'd like to get this show on the road as well and so I started work in Eagle Lake. But another big issue is models. For me that means getting reacquainted with 3D Canvas which I used back in 2003. I think, I'm not totally sure I have to do that. I can still use TSM and the trick with that is to break down each primitive to its polys and never to tile. This way I will ensure using only 1 texture per poly. 3D Canvas doesn't like that and it will mess up if you try to import an intact primitive using more than one texture. The good news is whichever way I go it shouldn't be too bad beause this area is not urban heavy so the models should be easy to build.

Last but not least, there's the issue that 1/3rd of my MSTS library isn't available yet for me to use and I wasn't sure I could get it out along with my Fort Kent library. New platform means new thinking and at times it's a guess how is the best way to put things out without screwing up your copies as well as mine.

I'd like to get Eagle Rock more developed before I start posting any pictures. But thanks for asking!

Rich

Last pic for this thread...

I felt I reached a point in the terrain texturing where I could begin the route so for a few days I have been building in the Eagle Lake area and here is one pic from that area.

Rich

Rich,

Looks impressive so far. Will this run on both, KRS and Railworks, or Just Railworks?

Heya Tom,

So far it'll run in both. Wasn't meaning to make it run in both though, just Railworks, but at this point it should run in both. Best you ask me this question again when I'm nearly done.

Rich