[mod] Clinchfield Reimagined - New Update - V 1.3

Updated for Rush Hour!

I present to you Clinchfield Reimagined. A texture mod for the Clinchfield route for Train Sim World 2. My primary objective was to get rid of some of the repetitive patterns in the textures, and since I was going to do as much, I decided to adjust the tone of said textures to bring together the terrain, and make all it's features feel a bit more cohesive. I feel as if now I've finally managed to get a good balance of color between all the terrain textures, and they truly work together well with the colors of the foliage, which in turn makes foliage distance culling almost invisible. In any case, with my mod, everything should be a little bit easier on the eyes, whilst maintaining the original artistic vision of DTG and realistically depicting Eklhorn City, KY to Dante, VA.

I initially created this with no intention of releasing it to the public, however I am actually quite pleased with how it makes the route look and thought that if I do, so will others. I feel like I made it look as good as I can. If you have any suggestions on changing any features, please feel free to let me know.

If you would like to support me, please consider donating. I normally wouldn't ask, but recent times have been very trying for me.
http://paypal.me/PJtotheK

Requirements
Train Sim World 2: Clinchfield Railroad: Elkhorn - Dante Route Add-On

Installation Instructions
Extract the file 'TS2Prototype-Clinchfield-Reimagined.pak' into '(GAME_LOCATION)\WindowsNoEditor\TS2Prototype\Content\DLC'

(GAME_LOCATION) being the game directory ex. 'C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Train Sim World 2'

Download
Available from Train Sim Community.

Screenshots - I edited them to reduce size and increase compression (originals were 20 mb each), so they're still 1-2 Mb each, but that's a lot better than what they were. Apart from that, they are as shot in-game.

 

Why CSX locos?

 

Update History
v 1.3
Further tweaked a whole bunch of textures, many times over
Completely revamped Dante Chapel.
-- original model has been edited by me, both to add a bit of detail and to further optimize UV maps
-- created entirely new texture maps, along with entirely new materials which are fully integrated into TSW's weather system

v 1.2
Version uploaded to rail-sim.de; pretty much the same thing as 1.1 with a few extra texture tweaks

v 1.1
Changed Wheat Grass texture to portray a version of the grass that's not mature/dried out
Further tweaked the Ballast texture and height map to remove some very small patterns and make the ballast differentiate between one another a bit better with the height map
Adjusted Grass texture and mask as it was causing a washed-out effect on fade between 2 textures on terrain
Corrected Ballast to match by bridges and tunnels
Minor tweaks to other textures

v 1.0
Replaced 2 ground textures along with their respective Diffuse, Specular, Mask (where applicable) and Normal maps.
Replaced ballast Diffuse and Specular maps with texture/map created by me, also replaced terrain ballast normal map with higher resolution version used with track
Reworked another 7 textures (Diffuse and Specular maps) to better suit the area.

 

TYVM for sharing your work, Gr8 job man!
Ist suggestion, don't stop doing what your doing, It really helped moss out.
Now if ya can figure away to get these tipples to load coal......

 

Thank you.

 

It looks really nice - is there a performance hit?

 

@soliticr,
On my rig I have no loss of fps using this mod

 

There should be literally no difference in performance. At all. Although I replaced both the dry grass and ballast textures with larger versions, the game might use a tad bit more memory, which does absolutely nothing to your performance. That's about it.

 

What exactly do you mean?

 

The loading of empty hoppers with coal at all of the tipples or coal loading docks/ facilities on the crr route.
Ex- scenario planner, like yourself I to made
A trip from dante to moss. Upon arriving
At moss instead of hitting the scenario
End marker I pulled in the next track and then I attempted to take a cut of empty hoppers pull them thru the loader in hopes of it loading.
At this point the loader doesn’t work.

 

Thank you, it looks amazing!

 

Oh I know what you mean. Yeah there is no way to solve this. I just wish DTG created a better Scenario Planner with more complicated instructions akin to those of TS2021.

 

@TheSchotte,
Pretty sneaky updating your mod without telling anyone! Can Ya let us know in the future please?!
Apparently I'm not the only fan of your work, Someone made a Y/T video showing it off-
check it out

 

Installed it and it looks fantastic!

Would you mind doing a similar ballast mod for Sand Patch?

 

Great job and far beyond. Very, very nice. Thanks for your effort \o/
PS I have another challenge for you - it destroys my psyche

... is it possible your textures are lighter (more fps)? Or maybe my Lenovo is in a better mood today.

 

I didn't yet, I just updated the description. I do plan on releasing a minor patch tomorrow to fix the issue with the ballast by bridges not matching (because there evidently are 3 versions of the same damn texture) and some other minor tweaks.

 

I only had a few minutes last night to try your mod out and it looks very nice, indeed. On the Weekend I´ll fortunately have more time for CRR so I´m looking forward to get a better impression of all the changes. One last thing: could you maybe post some before-after screens?

Keeping an eye on the future development!

 

Yeah, I watched that. Good video, but the dude needs some advice on how to pronounce 'TheShotte'!

 

theSchotte, I really love the work you have done on the ground and grass textures it looks fantastic, but is there a way to keep the old track textures as I kind of like the look of the old dark dull track textures. thank you for your work it is appreciated
Thanks

 

@theSchotte,
TYVM for update, You are really dialing this thing in! what a difference from the stock texturing. For me this mod is a game changer

 

The new version is even better. Good job!

 

Man I really appreciate the kind words guys! Thank you, I am very glad you are enjoying my work.

 

It took me about 4-5 hours to create higher resolution versions of the textures including their respective normal, AO/roughness and height maps (which I'm using in the material just for extra detail on normal map). Being one of the few most notable pieces on the whole route, I felt like this church needed some love. It went from having 3 maps (all base color, no normal maps or anything for detail, straight out of TS2021) to having 12 maps. Here is a shot of the Content Browser:



Also, I know certain things need to be tweaked a bit, which I will do, but it won't drastically change the way it will look, maybe just enhance it a bit further. For reference, here is a picture of the original Church.

 

Very nice, but perhaps you should reduce the image size you post, the are around 7/8mb each.

 

The images won’t all load because they are so large. But it’s your choice if you’d rather people didn’t see them. Not everybody is viewing the forum on a powerful PC with a huge cache. Your loss.

 

The images are all hosted off site. As far as powerful computers go, I'm running this on an i5-4400 with 8 Gb of RAM and an AMD RX 580. My PC is my borderline.

 

I can't see some of the images with my computer. But I assume they look good whatever they are

 

There are no images to looked at

 

Nope still no images

 

Works for me

 

BTW, I like that you've reproduced the sign outside. When will this be available for D/L?

 

Soon. Since I replaced the material for the Church, I essentially had to make material functions to handle rain and snow. The snow was fairly easy and has been done, and I've prototyped the rain part as well (drops landing on surfaces, water streaking on the sides, etc.). So, in answer to your question - soon™. Good part is, once I've got them done, I can reuse them for whatever materials.

 

I really like this screenshot. Cropped to cinematic aspect ratio.

 

Is this reliable data? (today's screenshot) BR o7



EDIT This is a bit of a rhetorical question, but perhaps someone has not yet had the opportunity to appreciate the new version. I will assess in a moment what the church looks like after the renovation

 

Link me to the mod manager please?

 

check the information tab link

Perhaps this information is misinterpreted by me. Just in case, I downloaded this larger / newer file today.

 

I'm downloading it now... at 20 kb/s... 2 hours to download a 20 mb file. This is absurd.

 

Yo do you still have the Setup file for the Mod Manager? Can you throw it up on Google Drive for me and send me the link? Dude this thing is not downloading, what is up with his server?

 

Nope, don't have it. Weird, because this is GitHub (or not) - should be OK. TSW update eats the connection?

 

Decided to make some solid inroads to my TSW2 journeys this weekend, and have never been a fan of the way the foliage LoD cuts in on Clinchfield (the white 2D trees changing to green especially). Downloaded the mod and followed the instructions to copy the .pak in to the folder specified, but unsure what else needs to be done? Do I have to replace/rename the ClinchfieldRailroad.pak file already in there, or does this run in parallel? Does it create a separate route on the selection screen? If so, does my existing CRR progress carry over?

 

Runs in parallel. Do NOT remove ClinchfieldRailroad.pak, or you'll have no route at all! What this mod does, like all .pak mods, is overwrite certain graphics and/or sound textures in the original route .pak; in other words the game loads the main route .pak first, then loads any mod .paks it finds and these replace certain files in loaded memory.

 

Hmm, first impressions unfortunately seem to indicate that the dreaded white 2D trees do not infact change....

Everything that _is_ close does indeed look better, but it doesn't do much for long-range (at least not in the autumn/spring scenarios)

 

hopefully this awesome mod gets updated soon too to the new version

 

Updated for Rush Hour compatibility!

 

I was surprised to find out today that the church is suddenly completely untextured.

This is definitely due to this mod, because when I remove it, the church is textured again. Can anyone confirm this? Unfortunately I can't say when the problem started, I haven't used the route for some time.

 

Must have been very recent, or the problem is with your setup, because last week I drove through Dante (with the mod installed) and the church was fine.

 

I tried it with a vanilla setup (without .ini-tweaks)...

 

Do you have any othe Clinchfield mods installed?

Or, OTOH, it could be related somehow to the fact that, recently, the EasyJet livery as part of the Brighton enhancement mod has suddenly got grayed out.

 

To your question: no.

To your idea: exactly, that's what I think too.

 

You're right! All of that work, gone!