[SVRy_Steve]

I've been learning more about painting directly in TSRE. This is on my personal route, which is one big experiment. I'm a scenery nut... The terrtex patches are all 4096 pixels square, so a pixel is about 1.25 inches, allowing pretty fair detail. In the first image, the stream is painted on from a variety of textures and straight colors applied thinly. The rocky slope is also painted on from a Photoshopped photo I took just for a texture. It needs some scraggly bushes/trees and touches of moss to make it look right.

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[Weter]

It's fantastic.
The only thing, that is not (or, more exactly - very) consistent is "cloned" logs on flatcars :)
Although, we are discussing scenery here...

[SVRy_Steve]

Thanks, I'm pretty happy with the progress! Those logs are ancient, Tim Muir made them and the NP 70 as well, but way back in the old days, I think about 15 years ago for the skeleton flats and logs, back then MSTS didn't like round.

I've gone a bit farther this morning, adding the stream, changing the terrain quite a bit as well.

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[Weter]

Also, I amazed with impressing trees around tracks.
http://www.elvastowe...post__p__274224
Looks very epic.
WRT logs... We can't shuffle them, but we can flip some of flatcars in consist, at least.

[ebnertra000]

So, on average, how big is each of the texture files if one goes for 4096 terrain textures? I wonder if a size like that would make distributing a large route with full 4096 textures a bit daunting

[SVRy_Steve]

Compressed 4096x4096 range from around 5,000Kb to 8,000Kb
Uncompressed 40,000 to 60,000Kb

As soon as you paint on a tile, and save, it is saved uncompressed.

[steved]

Are you using .ace or .dds? I've done a little work in .dds and it's so much easier than converting to .ace.

[SVRy_Steve]

I'm still using ace. However, if you put a jpg or tiff (others may as well) texture in the terrtex folder of the route, it will work for painting. I know dds exists, but that's about it. I've made a bit of progress today.

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[Genma Saotome]

Are you painting your tertex using the TSRE tools or are you doing that in another program and then using TSRE to apply it to terrain?

[SVRy_Steve]

I'm using the TSRE tools. I do make many of my basic textures in Photoshop from photos I've taken. These are put in a folder in the routes terrtex folder.

I start with creating full 4096 texture sheets such as "rough scruffy grass", here it is in 1024 size with an insert to show the detail available in 4096.



Here it is with a beach gravel texture painted on in TSRE.



Here are the other textures I painted from, again reduced to 1024 as my internet connection is too slow to post the full size texture.





These texture sheets are in the terrtex folder of the route and can be ace, jpg, tiff, bitmap and possibly others. You can't place them as entire terrtex tiles, but you can paint on the tiles with them in TSRE.

The controls for size and intensity in TSRE are only really useful at very low setting, especially intensity, anything above about 10 is pretty opaque, covering up completely, what's under it. I wanted the rock texture to show a bit below the water so used a very low intensity in applying the water. I also used the color setting to add a dark brow streak in the middle of the stream flow, before painting on the water.





A note; There is an exact correlation between where you paint and the texture you are painting from, so if you paint in the upper left corner of you terrtex, it will take the texture from the same spot on the texture tile you are painting from. Also, if you have previously rotated the tile in TSRE, it will revert to 512x512 as soon as you start painting, a real pain!

Here's the granite texture I used on the rock face, again, reduced to 1024.