So now that we know more about importing landscapes, the next issue is applying a landscape material and textures. By the looks of it we can't use anything basegame. Which is a pity.. So we need to create our own landscape material, and get our own landscape textures I guess ? I'm familiar with Unreal, it's not that, I was hoping we could reuse, instead of reinvnent the wheel and not least, save download size for custom user made routes. Anyone at DTG have an answer?
That's a blow. I thought we would have access to all the terrain textures that come with the routes we own.
And if you convert different objects (dereriva, tasks, bridges, etc.) from TSC and apply them in user routes? Or converting is purely technically not possible between these games, or will it be punishable?
As far as I can tell you will be able to import textures and models, but you can't use any basegame stuff. So I guess the best answer I can give you mikel290 is I don't know what you're talking about. This is the first time I get on with modding for a train sim. Unreal in general will let you import jpg, png, dds, tga, and fbx files.
Well I'm sure Matt in the demonstration clip brought in a building from an existing route so that at least should be possible. TSC allows you to use terrain textures from an existing route, in fact it is quite difficult to do otherwise. But if we have to start creating our own terrtex and not able to use those built in to the core routes and DLC, then the whole thing really is a non starter.
The idea is that some creators have already created their routes for Trin Classic, then they mastered the editor of Sim Word 4 - they were transferred there. Moreover, there is a clear example of Hagen-Sigen, Hamburg-Lyubek in Sim Word, which one-on-one as similar to the same routes to the Trin Classic. This also includes Avigon-Marsel and a number of routes.
The textures, grass/ballast etc are all there and available in the DLC's that you own, in the Landscape material folders. But I think we need to create our own material blends from them as it seems that cooked content material blends aren't accessible? It's not really a problem as we can quickly knock up our own material, there's plenty of tutorials available on YT, it's just a case of following them and connecting the nodes. This is a good starter vid... Just need to figure out how to get Marketplace assets/textures into TS4 editor, anyone know? When I try manually to import from my UE4.26 creation it just comes up with failures. There's some nice looking Quixel trees that look the part...
Don’t the textures blend as you paint them, though, same as in Trainz and TSC, depending on brush strength etc.?
Yes, once you've set everything up. That vid above explains it. This one is quite useful as well, avoids texture repetition etc.
Slight thread drift, but has anyone had any trouble with the distance blend node? For some reason I'm not seeing any available connections to the node in the TS4 editor, but they do appear in UE4.26, as shown below....probably missing a setting/tick box/being thick etc What I currenly see in TS4.. What I see in UE4.26..
Don't worry Vern, I'm definitely not the sharpest tool in the box but it's OK once you watch and do a couple of tutorials. It looks complex but once you go through those couple of vids above it kind of makes sense. I think it'll become all the clearer when Matt et al do their tutorial series.
Be careful with what you see there and think you could use it for a TSW route. That, IMO, is a huge problem with all this stuff. Yes, it looks good, works well, easy to do. But this is always just meant for the single landscape map (usually 64km²) that most modern open world games use for their needs. TSW uses level streaming including landscape. And you move fast over it. Doing a landscape material with lets say 10 layers in the way how it is presented in these videos, you might end up with nothing to use. Same with the always mentioned popping in of assets. Yes, they pop it a lot. And guess what, every modern AAA game does it. But you can't barely see it on those games because you move relatively slow compared to overall map size. They all trick you with the movement speeds. TSW uses real world scale and speed and so such things get way more obvious and problematic. And no, you wouldn't want to have a down scaled game to prevent that visual problem. Would play like a plastic toy train game then.
No, not really. TSW is way to specialised stuff to have any tutorial out there. Maybe there will be some basic tut from DTG some time for that since it implies lots of specific things to use for TSW landscape material. Using the one from the video would not bring you all aspects you need and would reduce performance a lot. For understanding shader techniques and how to save performance i recommend the videos from one of the "masters of shader programming" Bend Cloward : Ben Cloward - YouTube. Then, and with some additional information about landscape materials and material functions needed for TSW, you can start to create your very own landscape material. Also a thing to mention, Megascans offers a really good set of quality terrains textures BUT you can't use them in TSW as they are supposed to be. Fun fact (AFAIK) TSW uses Megascans textures all over the landscape already. If you would start to have it looking like in all the neat videos about it, TSW would run with 1fpm (per minute). edit: Maybe i should say, that it all comes down to what you want to create. If it is a full blown route over 100 miles or what, all the tuts out there will not help much. If you just want to create a diorama of some sort, you maybe can use that stuff. But then switch off world composition if possible, so the tiles get not streamed at all. That limits your overall map size and you also could bake a lot of things into it.
I'm pretty sure he's not saying that tutorials can't be made, but rather that tutorials don't exist and will have to be made.
I would say it is even totally irrelevant what i say. It is just all my very own opinion. I maybe got the question wrong. I'm human, that can happen. I wanted to state that there IS no tutorial out there for this specialised stuff. Of course, if someone does a tutorial about it, then there is one out. But not yet. I'm not the one who makes any tutorials but i know how all that works (without having lots of tutorials for it, mostly autodidact knowledge).
I was referring to the idea that TSW somehow has a highly specialised way of texturing terrain that diverges from standard Unreal practice.
There should be official source materials made available to use in the Editor. You can't expect people to just make materials (that most likely not even work 100%) without basic examples. A simple texture material is easy, but not when you need advanced materials like weather and grunge that use the TSW format. I really think people waste a lot of time using the editor until the basics are explained, not even talking about the editor isn't saving most of the stuff.
Maybe not highly specialised, but different. I'm sure you can read between the lines what Maik means.
So just trying to understand what is being said here. Are we saying that after going through all the trouble with terrain, track laying et al, this editor will not allow us to simply paint and blend terrain textures in the same way we would in Trainz or TSC?
No, you can, the landscape material just needs a bit of setting up. I've already painted some basic textures on a test level. The painting tools themselves are straightfoward. But there may be certain techniques to help performance in TSW, from what Maik was saying. For example, the distance blending I mentioned above may not be suitable in TSW, hence why I couldn't get it to work. All will come in the fullness of time, don't be put off.
Just came up in another thread: Link: https://forums.dovetailgames.com/threads/please-say-its-not-just-me.74549/#post-729271
*texturing* of terrain i dont think is any different - but there are some rules that need to be adhered to in landscape materials if you want to share it for consoles in future. I dont recall what they are but... we'll cover it when we can. Matt.
What i was more referencing was the fact (in the video) that they use multiple copies of the same texture sampler and then multiple multiplies and distance blends to make it work. This might work for lets say 3 or 4 different textures on the whole landscape, but not 10 or more as you would need for a route looking good. You also need to feed in the weather effects that are quite heavy in addition to the layer blends. We used such a "bad" technique on the Niddertalbahn and it consumes lots of performance. But its a small and slow route experience and so there it is a doable thing. Same counts for the dithered LOD blend of foliage. Looks better, costs a lot.
Out of the box; you cannot texture the terrain. You can't use the landscape materials used in other maps. I guess it's because they are cooked. Textures found in the maps seem to be possible to reuse, so that's something. But you still need to create a landscape material before you can start painting. Auto landscape materials is also possible to create and use. It will automatically apply textures based on some rules you set up, such as "if the terrain slope is steeper than X, apply texture Y". As far as I can tell by looking at some of the default files (without having access to the node network though) it looks like some maps use this too. Even if you use auto landscape material, you can still paint to override certain areas, such as along tracks. The fact the lanscape is divided into tiles is exactly why it will perform better. What landscape material method is used shouldn't matter much for performance. The same with auto placement of foliage.
Way above my pay grade then. Shame, but back to Trainz and TSC for route building and hope the DRS SRTM import turns up in due course.
Dont worry Vern I didnt understand a word of it either - my goal is to make a model of the North Norfolk Railway as a short simple starter, learning what I need to learn and sharing it in tutorials as I go. This will also help guide me on what will help make the whole process easier both in terms of editor refinements, source samples and such. Matt.
So in general, would the best approach be to get the mechanical parts of the route done first, then add the dressing until performance suffers?
I was gonna do Consibourgh to Swinton but my api satellite overlay doesn't cover that area (wierd) now thinking of doing a part of my second choice of route Skegness to Grantham. Shame I can't extend the in editor ECML route from Grantham would save a lot of hassle
No worries Matt, I will keep myself in the loop. But the experience so far has certainly given me an even higher respect and regard for your and associate route builders who have created the superb routes we have seen to date.
Well that is the one I would love to do, especially having grabbed the Norwegian LiDAR for the area. However I think at this point I will take my own advice and go back to something simple, a scaled up miniature or model railway which takes terrain import and mapping overlays out of the equation. See how some track laying goes, by which point we may know and understand more about how terrain texturing works and where to source some decent but not too performance heavy textures. It’s still a shame we can’t just use terrtex from the built in routes, cooked or not - after all we can use structures, track and other assets so seems a bit odd.
It's not a specific thing that has been blocked - it'll just a be a cooked asset thing, something to put on the solve list whether it's simply providing access to our source landscape materials, or fixing up the editor so it can use them directly. Matt.
Hi Matt, Could you tell us what these rules are and how you actually build your landscape materials? Because all what I do to create my landscape material(s) is basically what is told in the videos linked above, but following what Maik said, this does not seem to be the right way to do it or at least not the way how the developers do it (to maybe save some performance or whatelse - I have no clue at the moment sorry). Maybe direct this to Lukas or Will for the next upcoming masterclass, and they tell and show us how they doing it. Thanks in advance.
Hi Maik, So I followed this thread and really tried to understand what you mean to help me in my route creation process. The problem is, as an almost complete beginner, I still can't really follow what you mean, roughly but not entirely. But let's start with each: This is exactly the way I created my landscape material and I followed the tutorials by Unreal Sensei because noone else of DTG showed us so far how you create and setup your landscape materials instead (neither in some livestreams nor tutorials here in the forum). I also can't understand how you would setup your landscape material in an alternative way as you said, because for me (having no experience and knowledge of some secret weapon techniques) the way how these Unreal Engine teachers on YouTube show, seems for me a legit (if not the only) way how to setup the textures in your landscape material. You said it is a "bad technique" to do so with 10 or more layers, but A. do not provide an alternative way nor B. teached me in an understandable way why this shall be a bad technique. You say because of performance, but I don't really get how a setup of 10 or 20 layers materials in your landscape material as shown in the videos can affect performance so much. What do weather effects have to do with setting up your landscape material? Does that mean for the sake of performance, if I'm planning to create a longer route than yours, I shall use less material layers in my landscape material and less high quality foliage assets? All of that is not really clear to me at the moment following your words. At the side of this topic, I also have another very important question for me especially for you, which I also raised already in another post regarding copyright here directed to the mods to send to the legal department of DTG and give us an answer, but unfortunately until yet received no answer here in the forum for: Can I use the assets (houses, buildings, vegetation, trees, (maybe the 628) and to come back to topic also the textures) in your Niddertalbahn DLC for my own project since you are a third party developer and I'm not quite sure if I only can use assets from DTG only DLCs. Noone answered or stated this anywhere, but it is sooo important. I already placed hundreds if not thousands of instance of assets of the Niddertalbahn DLC on my route and I'm going to include more and more every day. But I want to finally know now, are you okay with this (freeware or commercial release)? Also it's not a thing about not sharing any potential income with you (if it would ever came that far - I highly doubt and plan to release it as freeware instead), but I just want to ask whether this is allowed or not in the very basic understanding of your copyright.
