How to Make the Texture

in the last post

 

The following uses Photoshop CS6 but other paint programs should work.

 

Two things you need first:

 

1. A UV map of the mesh:

 

2. A AO map, (Ambient Occlusion) you Bake this from mesh:

 

 

I start with the UV map and the AO map open in PS. Duplicate the AO map layer to the UV map so you have two layers, close the AO map.

 

 

 

 

Note that the layer is named Background and locked.

 



Next change the Background Layer to a Channel, this unlocks it.

 

 

Now add one more Layer and move it to the bottom.

 

I have renamed the layers and made the AO one active and visible and added an Alpha Channel.

 

Next you need to get the AO map into the Blue Channel. Start with the above and go to Channels.

 

Now you fill with black, it should look like this:

 

Do the same with Green Channel.

 

Here you see the AO map is now in the Blue Channel but it should have a white background, Color Select black and fill with white.

 

 

 

 

 

Next set up Layers like this:

 

Then like this:

Channel like this:

Fill with white or gray:

 

 

Channels look like this.

 

Do the same with other the other Channels. Turn off the UV map or delete it.

 

PBR setup

Part 1

name.m.pbrmetal

 texture.005 This is all new and all just data so it will look odd.

 

 

You must use Hardness or none of it will work, do not know if Intensity worked or not.

 

 

 

This is the hard one to make. The RGB channel is not used as is.

 

Red Channel is Emissive this is not a light but it keeps the same color in daylight as at night.

 

Only time of day changed.

 





Green Channel is Roughness this is shiny or dull. Not a lot of control that I can see, more one or the other.

 

Blue Channel is your AO map.

 

Alpha Channel is Metallicity that is, is it shiny metal or not.

 

All of the wheels and axles have just one material, the wheels treads have the Green Channel set to black and Alpha Channel set to white.

 

 

 



PBR setup

Part 1

name.m.pbrmetal

 

texture.004 is the normal and bump. The normal gives an angle and the bump the displacement. The bump is in the Alpha channel and is in gray scale only.

 

 

Set to Normal in Blinder.

 

 

The RGB part is the same normal map we have been making. The Alpha channel has a new use, how high or low it should look, white is max. up and black is max. down.

To do this turn on the Alpha so it is visible and active. In the above it is not visible or active, the RGB is, you need all visible and only Alpha active, then you can paint over your normal line.

 

Here you can see only one panel line has a black line in the Alpha channel.

 

This also gives you parallax that make the flat mesh look like it had deep indent.

 



PBR setup

name.m.pbrmetal

 

 

This is used for painted metal, wood, or plastic. It is made up of 3 textures.

 

 

 

 

On the right you see the 3 textures named

 

texture.003

texture.004

texture.005

 

Blender makes up the names shown but you can re-name them. I think the order is important and is what 3D Max uses as slots.

 

 

texture.003 has the color and is almost the same as the old way but has no Alpha channel.

 

 

 

All you need to set in Blender is "Color".

 

 

This is what a RGB texture looks like as Channels.

 

to be cont. 



 

FBX and PBR

 

 

FBX works in trainz build 4.5 and up, PBR only in 4.6 and has to be in FBX. The Wiki has most of how to export FBX from Blender, animation is not done yet, only some things work.

 

Things to look out for when exporting is the size and Y forward, the default is 10x size and -Z forward. Also Blender(2.78) will export everything on all layers and hidden, this includes cameras and lights.

 

 

 

 

On the left is a car made with IM and old materials on the right is FBX and PBR. The bogeys are both FBX and PBR. This is in Surveyor of the Developer build witch is not final. Both cars have ANR, LOD and animated wheels.

 

What PBR lets you do is have shiny and dull parts on the same material. The old way you would need to have separate material for each.

 

Each PBR material is made of three textures(number varies). This will take some getting us to as must of the textures are data and do not look like anything and they use channels for data so you need to be able to edit texture channels, something most have not done.

 

I well be doing some of them one at a time.





TANE vs. TS12 for CC

 

Making content for TANE is deferent form making for TS12 so here's what I have found so far.

 

Overall color is not the same, that is the RGB numbers that look good in TS12 may not look right in TANE, this is due to all the older Trainz before TANE had the sun to bright(from N3V). I know that I had to fix a lot of RGB numbers found on the Internet did not look good.

 

Alpha channels should be used on almost everything. I just did an update on some A and B units where I added an alpha to the A unit and not to the B unit and in game it showed up a lot. With the alpha you get a much darker color. If you make something new with out an alpha you can end up with a "ghost"  mesh that is blueish.

 

Animations can look wrong in CM but good in game. Some are no longer where they should be. Some but not all of my bogeys show the wheels outside the frame in CM and when you place them in game but it you zoom in on them, the wheel pop back to where they belong and stay there. This was something to do with how they were made but I have not found out yet what is wrong.

 

A very odd one that I have found was on my Alco PA1's. In TS12 one part looked normal but in TANE the same part had a dark spot on it, like it was in shadow, this was only on the sunny side, the other side looked normal. After a lot of work I got it fixed by lowering the poly count.

 

Here's the good and bad part with the "spot" highlighted.

 

 

 



 Update: this was a bug and has been fixed.