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NORO Trams and Textures

Started by noahclem, April 28, 2015, 11:28:12 AM

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Should default TIR and TOR textures be stone (like TOS) or asphalt (like the old versions)?

Stone pavers
45 (35.2%)
Asphalt
83 (64.8%)

Total Members Voted: 128

noahclem

#20
Quote from: mgb204 on May 26, 2015, 02:44:51 PM
Away from home for the moment, but I can answer all these quesitons I suspect, having worked on the pieces you are having problems with. Off the top of my head the GLR base textures can be found in the NAM Core files DAT, I can give you the ID's when I'm back.

:edit: - by core files I mean NAM_BaseContent.dat. GLR is 5f88000E and Rural GLR is 5F88400E, the diag pieces end in 60E instead. I'll report back if I can work out any of your other problems.

Thanks Robin! I've modified the appropriate textures now and it works great--although for some reason I couldn't find the associated S3Ds which I'd need to use to add sidewalks (though trying to do that myself, manually, has had mixed results). I also found a bunch of other stuff there for avenues that I've been looking for so it was quite the useful discovery. Will try to get back to your email shortly :)

Quote from: MandelSoft on May 27, 2015, 02:03:46 AM
This is looking great! one question, though: how easy is it to create Euro Textures for these?

Thanks Marten! Adding Euro textures will be very easy as my plans have always held that as very high priority. I'm not re-doing roads, avenues and my avenue tuleps don't have center lines, all normal-ish intersections don't include center-line textures, and in many or most cases I've already included Euro textures in the GIMP files, so all that helps a lot. The only difficult thing is the shear number of textures.


Today I've been playing around with the rural GLR textures some more. After a good bit of tweaking I've ended up with something I'm fairly happy with but I think I'm probably just going to use a modified RRW texture instead of my own from-scratch ones. Besides being 128px I don't have anything I'd like to change about the RRW ones, I'd prefer the rural GLR match the RRW pretty closely, and redoing RRW textures to match mine doesn't make any sense to me at this time. But anyway, here's the best I came up with:

Z6:



Z5:



Z4:




Z3:




And here's an earlier variant including transition to bridge textures:



Note these pictures include revised bridge textures as well (also you can click most pics for full size ;) )

EDIT: also don't forget to vote in the poll--including if you don't think this project is for you :)

Simcoug

#21
Awesome!  I love that the rural GLR will mesh with the RRW texture - that will really tie things together nicely!


Thanks! Those two networks looking arbitrarily different when they tend to look very similar in RL has always annoyed me--I'm excited to be working on a solution to that finally :)

-Noah

APSMS

#22
I also like that the textures correlate; having a distinction between the two isn't necessary for me, but I always figured that they would not look the same because of the frequency of light-rail traffic compared to heavy rail.

In the cities in California, you may get shiny railheads because of the frequency of trains, roughly 10-12 daily (freight and passenger combined).

But light rail trains run by every 15-30 minutes, in both directions. That's anywhere between 30 and 60 trains per day. So a difference in rail color I think isn't entirely unwarranted, and the textures you've procured match up nicely (and make it easy to modify the tracks without resorting to the query tool). I'm not sure how difficult it is to make the result of the textures, but my impression was that the custom GLR tracks, including the rural version, was generated using model-based curves, which meant that only one texture needed to be replaced to give the entire system a makeover. Are you changing the implementation or the curves so that a different approach is necessary?

A slight downside I noticed is that your rails are less distinguishable at lower zoom levels (further away), but I still appreciate the concrete ties and slight color variation that indicates different track, without being so glaringly obvious like it currently is.


Thanks for sharing your ideas! I haven't actually thought much about rail color with regard to traffic frequency but it must be a factor. My thoughts have been that for the rail to appear really bright you would almost have to be looking at it in a way that it reflected sunlight at you and to appear white as in the original tram textures wouldn't be realistically possible. Varying the brightness of rails between heavy and light could be an interesting way to differentiate them but I'm concerned it could quickly make them not appear to mesh well if I went down that direction. The fortunate thin, with regard to exploring wear/shininess variation is that there are more light rail sets than SAMs if you count all the puzzle-piece, draggable, and ped mall versions, so it's a fertile area for adding neat variations, and also even the fullest sets of them are pretty small so texture mods would be comparatively straight forward. I don't want to get too bogged down now but there's a lot of neat directions one could take things in this area.

GLR pieces are both model- and texture-based but no "morph" model curves are used so editing a single texture won't change whole sets, unfortunately. But, as mentioned above, the small size of the sets does provide nice opportunities for experimentation.

-Noah
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

My Mayor Diary San Diego: A Reinterpretation

Gugu3

#23
I like the RRW-like texture!Thinking about the overground tracks of the london underground...



That's exactly the type of situation I'd love to see us be able to recreate! Isii94 even made prototype 4th rail texture versions which would be nice to have some time. Thanks!

-Noah

art128

#24
Looking great, Noah. Love the rural GLR texture.


Thanks, Arthur!
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mgb204

#25
Nothing but praise for your efforts, I've had a play with the current textures installed and you are certainly making great progress on what is after all a very large amount of work. I keep thinking how you are making my efforts on the Sidewalk/Grass automation repository redundant by updating the pieces to include sidewalk layers :P, but I can't argue with the style and quality of your textures, so I'll get over it ;).

The Rural GLR texture is a good compromise, like the picture above from Gugu3, I see light rail as something that often does mingle with regular rail lines, especially at stations. Then again a network like Frankfurt really is a dedicated tram network, for cases like this more rail-like lines might seem out of place, but since I prefer to build more like the London system in my cities, I wouldn't hesitate to install these textures. If the HSR overhaul with RRW-style textures works out, we could intermingle the three networks and make them look good together, right now differences between the track textures are quite undesirable for this purpose and are not typical of how similar rail tracks are in the real world - tracks on the left with gantries in Gugu3's picture are almost certainly a High Speed line with Rail/GLR mingling at the station on the right, which is just how I'd like these networks to work too.


Pictures please! :P  Seriously though, I appreciate you trying out the mod and am really happy to hear you liked it. Obviously some of the stuff our projects are doing overlaps functionality but they do a lot of unique stuff too. I'm really excited about your ability to change grass textures, which has never before been a feasible project, and my style of sidewalks seems to fall slightly short of yours when it comes to details like translucency. I'd really like to get my textures to work within the systems you've been developing for wealth and sidewalks but also for having standardization through a repository. In our work towards more or less the same goal we have a lot of potential to create something better than either of us were thinking of when we started out (I hope) ;)

As I mentioned above, I think these light rail textures make it easy to do variations, and it might even be possible to have significant sets of London and Frankfurt style lightrail/tram/etc at the same time--but besides that the small size of the sets makes it pretty easy to make different texture mods of them that people could install. HSR is also conveniently simple for the moment and I've been itching to mess around with that (lots of possible interesting variations but not something I should distract myself with for now). In any case, I'd definitely like for all these rail networks to fit a bit better with each other.

-Noah

noahclem

Thanks a ton guys! I was actually planning to use a more RRW-similar texture for the rural light rails then the one I showed--128px and designed to look much more similar to the RRW textures--but after the feedback here and thinking about it more I'm leaning towards going with one based on that shown. Isii94 had actually done significant work and planning for a light rail revamp designed to dovetail with the tram work here and any work I do in that area while she's away will be based on the very promising planning and effort she made (and hopefully will pick up again ;) ).


I got a bit attached to my textures, against my better judgement (there will be no rejigging of other rail network textures until higher priority items are finished), and made some tweaks to the previous one:



3rd rail version of Willy's textures but I think it gives a pretty good idea of what the 2 rail version would look like:



Some basic orthogonal textures:









And here's some layered GIMP files if anyone would be interested in trying their hand at a more optimal rail look:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By6RG2miktERVWRVdE05bHBQQVE&authuser=0

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By6RG2miktERTFI4c1dubnhTelU&authuser=0

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By6RG2miktERMjBoUzhTRy1Eamc&authuser=0

(feel free to use these however you like ;) )

noahclem

#27
I'm super-busy with work at the moment, to the point where I'm not actively doing any SC4 stuff, but before I was overwhelmed I was working pretty hard on reworking the draggable rural GLR. The whole thing was uniquely difficult and exciting as the difference between HD and SD is huge when dealing with individual rails and ties. Worth at least a progress pic I suppose ;)

click




I hope to go more into the various exciting things, etc, before too long, and of course to start working on them again. The draggables have a decent amount of diagonal capability so I'll have to tackle that and the crossings but it's still a really small set. Just a ton of work per texture, at least at this time.

Themistokles

This is really coming about nicely! Am looking forward to the less busy times ::) but the quality of these textures no doubt makes them worth the wait.  &apls
Come join me on a hike to St Edmea!

Latest update: 7

"In the end, our society will be defined not only by what we create, but by what we refuse to destroy." - John Sawhill

noahclem

Thanks Themistokles! I'm assuming less busy times are on the way but it increasingly looks like the current streak won't get almost any break until after the mid-summer holidays the weekend after next. Then I'll have it pretty easy but will be swinging between the last month of my relatively slack work and a series of three vacations with all that changing to moving to a new town temporarily for my wife's psychology internship and being unemployed for the duration of that. Obviously that will allow plenty of time (though I have a number of things to keep me busy then) but I hope I'll make substantial progress before then too. Anyway, your comment and interest made me decide to post the rest of what I'd been up to:









Older textures including the distortion of the ballast resulting from the former technique of simply rotating the whole texture 45 degrees (and then aligning it perfectly with the neighboring diagonal textures, and adjusting the frequency of sleepers to make the spacing of them even in diagonals:

Note also previous problems with shading in places





Some current versions:



Besides  blue the current versions include:
-"Bending" the shading and layer masks instead of the whole orthogonal texture
-Curves that are equal turning radii for inside and outside tracks, allowing extra space between tracks in turns
-Realistic (according to my best research thus far) track switch layouts
-Sleepers placed evenly and aligned as would be seen in a real situation




I believe this problem with the shading has already been fixed but it's much more obvious with a solid-colored background rather than what would be found in game:




All together with some other parts of the project (minus UDI this time ;) ):
click



Until next time  ;D :thumbsup: :troutslap: :squirrel:

Gugu3

Noah amazing job!The textures are amazing!love the 3rd rail one!really looks like the London underground

art128

Great textures indeed, Noah. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

vester

I will have to agree. Amazing textures.

noahclem

It's been a long time! Summer's been quite hectic between traveling, moving, and working but I've had a little extra time the last couple days and tried making a couple textures. I was quickly reminded both of much of a pain these detailed rails are and how much more of the set remains to be done. Happy to have a couple done though ;)











Hope to get back to regular development again soon but have more travel on the horizon. Wish me luck :)

eggman121

I have not seen this thread in a while and I am amazed at the new tracks that you have made for the RRW and the Light Rail system. I especially like the modification you have made to the overtruss Bridge  :o

So with the flex track in the works I can't but help wonder if you would like a copy of my repository of textures that I have made for the RRW? They are still in the works but mainly complete. Just have to get the RUL 2 right.

Leading on from that I have had long term plans to revitalize the Light Rail network to a suburban transit network. Just pulling thought out of my head. I guess everyone has a different way of using the light rail network and I would like to explore the possibility of adding additional functionality that would satisfy many members wishes. The light rail network could be two things, a metro network, or a tram/ light rail network.

I am keen to see what thoughts you take from this  ;)

-eggman121

mgb204

Great to see you are still plugging away at this project, some great details with the track switches too  :).

manga rivotra

I can't imagine better texture, the level of detail and the precision of the crossings are absolutely incredible !  &apls &apls &apls
I am impatient to redo and develop all my tramway network with your textures. Thanks you  :thumbsup:

vortext

Awesome detailling indeed, great work!!  &apls
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Vizoria

Nice track textures, for some reason the tracks have some kind of 3-dimensional depth to them, although it could be a trick of the eye.

noahclem

Thanks for all the support guys! These rail textures are very tedious to make compared to trams and regular roads and getting a nice response like that can help prevent me from procrastinating or moving to a different project. Just to explain quickly what it is I keep complaining about, here's what goes into each one:

1) Ballast areas are made by placing layer masks with shading over a standard 256x256 ballast texture--I originally just bent the straight ballast texture but this resulted in blurry ballast, and although it's a relatively minor flaw it was clearly taking a shortcut at the expense of quality. I can mostly recycle existing masks for this purpose but the blurred edges make precise placement very tricky, as you can see in a number of my textures where the edges don't line up properly over a white background. Fortunately this variation isn't noticeable over terrain textures and I think the bit of non-uniformity makes it look just a little better. After the ballast areas are in place a layer of shading needs to be placed over them to give the illusion of depth, which is again tricky due to blurred edges.

2) Rail textures, normally including sleepers, are placed which is quite easy and uses a pretty small set of pieces that keep getting recycled. Creating the pieces required careful fiddling with sleeper spacing and diagonal hassles but only had to be done once. Inside and outside curves have the same radius so there is more space between them in curved areas to avoid collisions with longer railstock.

3) Sleepers in switch areas need to be carefully matched or removed and replaced, with a significant amount of editing done by hand.

4) Extra rails added to switch areas by carefully bending a bare rail texture to the proper radius and removing unneeded sections. Areas where rails intersect require editing by hand.

5) Split piece into individual 256^2 sections for multi-tile pieces, check alignment to match existing pieces in Reader, export .png to folder with all other textures in the set, run batch png fsh on the whole folder to get the newest version of the rail textures.

I've had enough practice that by now it's probably easier and quicker for me than it sounds like, especially if I can remember where to find all those recyclable components  ::)  However, the hand editing, blurs, and masks make this process completely different from all the other textures which I can process pretty quickly by now. This is the reason I'm not exactly rushing to promise a similar treatment for the dramatically larger RRW set--however it is something I really hope will get done. Of course it's possible I'll figure out an easier way to do this without compromising quality--maybe somebody reading this even has a tip for me  ;)

I finished most of the wye switch last night and got a start on the OxD crossing and hope to have those finished this evening. That leaves road crossings, which should be able to reuse their urban draggable lightrail counterparts, that funny diagonal-to-two-not-quite-symmetrical-ortho switch, and heavy rail crossings, plus some other stuff I'm doubtless forgetting. Any opinions on whether the heavy rail crossings should use a standard RRW texture or one based on these rural light rails?

REPLIES:

Quote from: eggman121 on August 17, 2015, 05:05:45 PM
I have not seen this thread in a while and I am amazed at the new tracks that you have made for the RRW and the Light Rail system. I especially like the modification you have made to the overtruss Bridge  :o

So with the flex track in the works I can't but help wonder if you would like a copy of my repository of textures that I have made for the RRW? They are still in the works but mainly complete. Just have to get the RUL 2 right.

Leading on from that I have had long term plans to revitalize the Light Rail network to a suburban transit network. Just pulling thought out of my head. I guess everyone has a different way of using the light rail network and I would like to explore the possibility of adding additional functionality that would satisfy many members wishes. The light rail network could be two things, a metro network, or a tram/ light rail network.

I am keen to see what thoughts you take from this  ;)

-eggman121

Thank you so much! I'm very excited for all the RRW work you've been cooking up and would certainly appreciate a copy of your RRW textures if it's not too inconvenient. I'd love to work with you on future improvements to the light rail network. My vision for it is based on the plans I've discussed here, in the main NORO thread, and in me, Erik, and Red's private NAM thread regarding the tram component and based on plans Isii94 and others discussed in her light rail plans, which are much more developed than my own thoughts regarding the non-tram lightrail. I think it should be quite possible to create a system that works very well for both lightrail/tram and metro systems. Even in its current state which hasn't got a lot of attention in recent NAM dev cycles it's a network with more cosmetic options than anything besides SAM. This area is my biggest NAM interest now but I quickly get bogged down in technical issues and I'd be extremely grateful for expert help and collaboration.

Quote from: mgb204 on August 18, 2015, 10:38:23 AM
Great to see you are still plugging away at this project, some great details with the track switches too  :).

Thanks a lot! I have a lot of plugging away still to do but am very determined to finish and share this project--someday :D

Quote from: manga rivotra on August 18, 2015, 11:14:47 AM
I can't imagine better texture, the level of detail and the precision of the crossings are absolutely incredible !  &apls &apls &apls
I am impatient to redo and develop all my tramway network with your textures. Thanks you  :thumbsup:

Thank you for such a nice comment and a warm welcome to you here :)  I have bad news if you're impatient though: after reading your MD yesterday I got really inspired to make a golf course and switched from this project to that  ;D  Don't worry though, I'll get back to work today  :innocent:

Quote from: vortext on August 18, 2015, 11:15:56 AM
Awesome detailling indeed, great work!!  &apls

Thanks a lot Erik, great to hear from you :)

Quote from: Vizoria on August 18, 2015, 12:32:43 PM
Nice track textures, for some reason the tracks have some kind of 3-dimensional depth to them, although it could be a trick of the eye.
Thanks a lot and welcome :)  I've added shading to the ballast to give the illusion of depth--similar to what I do with curbs on road textures actually. If you're seeing depth on the tracks themselves than it's a fortunate but unintentional accident ;)

I'll try to be back soon with pictures  :)